Blaine Painter of Unknown Munitions: Precision Hunting, Load Development, and Bootstrapping Manufacturing Growth

About This Episode

In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Blaine Painter of Unknown Munitions. Blaine shares the growth journey of his precision rifle company, from expanding their machinery to becoming the Director of Operations. He delves into the meticulous process of load development, emphasizing the importance of systematic approaches for achieving optimal accuracy. Blaine also highlights the company’s collaboration with Bat Machine, their marketing strategies, and future plans, including launching a titanium 3D-printed suppressor line. It’s a fascinating look into precision rifle manufacturing and innovation.

Insights In This Episode

• A structured approach to load development ensures accuracy and consistency, crucial for long-range shooting.
• Utilizing digital marketing, social media, and industry events to build brand awareness and customer base.
• The relationship with Bat Machine grew naturally, enhancing the company’s product offerings.
• Investing in new technology, like a titanium 3D printer, to innovate and expand product lines.

About Tactical Business

Tactical Business is the weekly business show for the firearms industry. The podcast features in-depth interviews with the entrepreneurs, professionals and technologists who are enabling the next generation of firearms businesses to innovate and grow.

Episode Transcript

Wade: Welcome to the Tactical Business Show. I’m your host, Virginia Beach based firearms entrepreneur and copywriter Wade Skalsky. Each episode will be exploring what it takes to thrive as a business owner in the firearms industry. We’ll speak with successful firearms industry entrepreneurs about their experiences building their companies, leaders and legislators who are shaping the industry, and tech executives whose innovations will reshape the future of the firearms industry. Let’s get after it. Welcome to the Tactical Business Podcast. I’m your host, Wade Skalsky, and today I’m speaking with Blaine Painter from Unknown Munitions. Blaine, how are you doing today?

Blaine: Hey, I’m doing well. Glad to be here. Oh, I’m.

Wade: Excited to talk to you. You’re doing a lot of cool stuff. That is in my current area of interest for firearms. So we move around from what we want to start focusing on. But I’m super excited to talk to you today. We were talking a little bit before we started recording, and you were up in the panhandle of Idaho with some very pleasant weather today, so I’m sure that’s awesome.

Blaine: Yeah, it’s we’ve not gotten the snow this year. We normally get and it’s been very wet. The La Nina weather pattern is set up and so it’s been rainy and minimal snow not too cold either. So yeah, it’s been pretty pleasant this year.

Wade: There’s a lot of excitement in the country right now. Either your house is on fire or you’re getting dumped with snow, so it’s nice to hear that not having those issues. So. All right, well, let’s dive into a little bit here. Let’s chat. Walk me through how you got into the firearm space. Like, how did you end up with a two way business?

Blaine: My career is interesting. I’ve been shooting since I was six. That’s 58 years ago. I went in the Air Force, was a pilot for 24 years, retired from the Air Force, worked for a forest products company for the next 12.5, and then the whole pandemic and all that stuff. And I was looking to move from southern Oregon, where I’d lived and, uh, kind of had a flying opportunity. It looked like it might be in the Spokane area. And I was thinking about that, but it was part time. So I was looking for a day job, and I stumbled across this ad about this company called Unknown Munitions. And I go, what is that? So this is back in 2020. So I did some research and I stumbled across a podcast that Jake, the owner and founder of the company, was on with, uh, pretty sure it was Ryan Avery of Rockslide. I listened to the podcast and they were talking about the loading and the stuff, and they were. And I was going, well, wow. I use a lot of that equipment. At that time, I had gotten back into thousand yard Benchrest shooting, which is my big shooting competition. Right now I shoot with the guys out at Missoula, typically the deep Creek a little west of Missoula and IBS. Anyway, so I was listening to that and I go, huh, well, I don’t want to be a guy just to pull a handle on a reloading press, but maybe there’s something I can do. So I reached out to him and said, hey, give him a call. And all he told me was, he said, hey.

Blaine: He said, I can keep you as busy as you want to be doing load developments. So that started the process, and we sold our house in southern Oregon and moved to northern Idaho. And I started out doing load development, semi-retired part time type thing. So I would about 3 or 4 days a week. It started in one Bay of three bay garage. I think the company started in late 2019, early 2020. So I got there in February of 21, and by that time he was in three bays of his three car garage loading custom ammo. I’d swing by and pick up rifles, go out to the range, shoot them for accuracy, just doing standard low development stuff and then come back and did that for about a year. And he was wanting to expand the company and start building rifles. Well, I when I got back into competition shooting in 2018, I bought a lathe and a milling machine because I got tired of waiting 9 to 12 months to get barrels chambered for competition, where sometimes you need it done pretty quickly. So I self-taught and I had very good success doing that. My rifles were placing very well at matches and shooting as well as anybody, so the machine work was not hard to figure out how to do. So I was doing that so that next year and starting about mid 2022, for the next eight months or so, I chambered about 8080 barrels for the company, and we built about 80 rifles then and then the company expanded again. By that time, we’d moved from the three car garage into 3600ft² and set up.

Blaine: We bought a lathe and a milling machine and cerakote and all that process. The next year we expanded. We doubled our space, added some more capability, added another lathe, and at that point I moved out from being a primary lathe operator to being more of the general manager of of the the company and overseeing all this stuff. And we continued to grow and put out good quality products. We’re tied in with Bat Machine who makes some of the finest actions out there. They’re five minutes from our shop, so we got some help and guidance from them. In fact, they make actions for us and stuff. Anyway, we got going on that and expanded again and then now I’m off the lathe completely. I’m the Director of operations here, responsible for oversight of the company operations basically, and on whatever task and project need to be done. We have Taylor Thumb on the lathe, who is the nephew of Bruce Thumb of Bat Machine. So he does a does a great job and he’s a general manager now, as well as doing work on the lathe. And it’s been an interesting ride from semi-retired to full throttle into this. As a consequence of working here in the industry, I was able to go to Africa last August and fulfill a bucket list item I got at Cape Buffalo, which was a huge deal. So this is the coolest place to work. People love to be here, and the companies are still expanding and poised to grow even more.

Wade: So what an awesome story. So there’s a lot to unpack there. I11 kind of through line for a lot of people in firearms industries that I’ve noticed is their ability to be a quick starter, right. So you’re like, all right, so I’m going to take this job, I’m going to upend my whole I’m going to sell my house, I’m going to move to northern Idaho. And I don’t really know what’s going to happen from this, but I’m going to take that adventure. So you’ve been rewarded for taking that adventure. So I think the first thing to think about is if, from the firearms perspective, is that you got to be able willing to take that leap of faith into a business, right? And you were rewarded for that. The other thing I wanted to talk about is walk me through a little bit, because I’m not a precision shooter. I’m interested in it. It’s like my next phase of shooting. So walk me as someone who’s like a layperson in that field. Like what? Low development is what that entails. From context, I know it’s basically finding the right. I would assume it’s like finding the right load for whatever ammo for whatever type of competition and for your gun. But walk me through how that works and how you’re kind of your thoughts on that.

Blaine: So the basic way, the basic idea behind load development is optimizing a particular ammo for a particular rifle or firearm. And it’s usually barrel specific certain barrels in the past. And there’s a lot of people that kind of think this way. They go out and they buy a gun and they buy some factory ammo, and they go out and shoot, and they’ll probably be fine for hunting or whatever they’re doing. The precision is not that demanding. When you’re shooting 100 or 200, Even 3 or 400 yards. The precision really isn’t that demanding. A lot of people are able to do that and it works just fine. Then there are people that want to be more precise, and it’s a combination of wanting the best that they can have and also requirements. When you start shooting past 600 yards, the environmental factors start to become a big deal and everything becomes important. You need to have a rifle that is very consistently place the shots where you want them to go, and not every gun will shoot every ammo well. Even a full blown high end custom gun is going to have a preference for what it likes. So what we do is we start and it’s pretty simple process. We have a we know what most of these cartridges are going to want to shoot. And we start with that and we start a little bit low with our powder charges.

Blaine: We set that. We measure where the the bullet ogive contacts the rifling. That’s easy to do. Simple inexpensive tools. We measure that we start the bullet typically about 20,000. From that point. And then we work through varying powder charges depending on the capacity of the case. You take, like a CFC or a 300 PRC or 65 PRC, which are very common cartridges now, very good cartridges, probably half a grain increments will start low and will work up. And we’re looking for accuracy as well, as we don’t want to have too much pressure. We don’t want too hot of a load for the gun. And there’s ways to tell that with reading the brass. So basically we work through and we find what is the best powder load. And if it looks promising, then we’ll fine tune that with seating depth. And we will vary the seating depth kind of the same way. It’s a very systematic process. There are several different ways to get there. What’s important is being systematic and consistent and changing only one thing at a time, and then testing it to repeat, and then the end state for the custom rifles we build. Our guarantee is that they will shoot a pair of three shot groups at 650 yards that are half minute or better.

Blaine: So that’s 3.25in or better. At 650. We get a lot of them that will do better than that. But that’s that is adequate accuracy for 1000 plus yard shooting on animals. And and most of the hunting guns we build are capable of meeting that. My bench rest guns, if that’s as good as it’s shot, I’d pull the barrel and throw it away. A bench rest gun is got to be stupid accurate at 1000 yards. Ten shot groups really need to be under five inches. And just to be remotely competitive. And you’re not going to win if probably unless the conditions are really bad, you need to be in the low four inch range. Five shot groups need to be in the two inch range or low threes to be competitive. That’s a whole different level. It’s a competition gun. Hunting guns cannot do that. Regardless of what you hear on the internet. You hear about these people that oh, my gun is goodness. All day long. Well, yeah. Occasionally any gun is a quarter mile a gun. Anyway, that level of precision is obtained by systematic and disciplined approach to load development. And like I said, there are 2 or 3 ways to do it. But the key is to be systematic and change one thing at a time.

Wade: How do you now how do you monetize that as a business. So is that something that you are you do it on a like on a macro level where it’s like, okay, we’re going to develop this, this ammunition for this specific gun and that’s our ammunition. Or is it more like on a micro level where someone will be like, hey, here’s my gun, let’s find the best ammo for it, or both?

Blaine: Well, it’s we do offer custom loaded ammo. That’s how Jake started the company as a custom ammo loading company, which you talked about taking risk earlier. Anybody that knows anything about the firearms industry wouldn’t start a company with custom loading ammo, but he did and made it work. But yes, we have some custom loaded ammo. It’s very precise, but that doesn’t mean the particular rifle is Rifle is going to like that ammo. So we have a couple of options. We build a lot of guns and with the service we offer is load development where we charge people for load development. And we take out the gun and shoot. I hate to call it break in because it doesn’t do what people think it does, but we get some rounds through the barrel before we start trying to find the load, to try to make sure the barrel is stabilized and settle down. We do that and we start out at 100 yards to find out what doesn’t work. And then we go to 650. When we find what’s promising to fine tune it. But yeah, there’s a charge for that. It takes a lot of time and skill and effort. Sometimes people are maybe a little bit taken aback at the cost, unless they have done load development on their load. It’s not hard to get sideways with a gun and be 3 or 400 rounds in. Then you add up how much you spent in components and time, and then all of a sudden our load development fee seems pretty reasonable.

Wade: And what’s nice about obviously about that too, is you only got to do it once, right? So for that particular barrel particular gun you load, you do the load development and then you know, okay, this is the round that we’re going to use.

Blaine: For a while. That’s another misconception. The barrel changes every time you pull the trigger. So over time the throat will erode and the accuracy may deteriorate. It’s easy to get back, but that’s why we don’t like to sell much more than about 200 rounds at a time to somebody. Depending on the cartridge, some cartridges can shoot a lot, but like a 300, PRC, 100 or 200 rounds, it is very possible in the amount of that time the load needs to be adjusted slightly by a little bit longer seating depth, maybe a slight different powder charge. That’s and and this only is important. Back in the day when people were happy with an inch and a half gun, you didn’t have to worry about any of this stuff because you would stay within that. But if you really want to stay around that half MOA accuracy standard at long distance, then you’re going to need to Need to maintain it, and we help people with that too. We say, as you get near the end of your 100 or 200 rounds, if your accuracy has deteriorated a little bit, then we’ll send them basically some ammo to test that the bullets are seated a little bit deeper or something like that, to get them back lined up again for the next several hundred rounds. It depends on the gun. In a typical hunting gun, you can have pretty good accuracy for a lot, you know, several hundred rounds without changing anything. But if you want to maintain that very precise accuracy, it’s required to be maintained. And we’re set up to help people do that.

Wade: Well. But I would think that once you establish the baseline for that gun, though, because the barrel is only changing a little bit, then the load only has to change a little bit. So you don’t have all that ramp up work because you already have the baseline. Right. It’s pretty.

Blaine: Simple. It’s probably a matter of just heating the bullets a couple thousandths longer.

Wade: Well, and that’s awesome because that’s the thing that I always tell people when, you know, people that don’t know anything about firearms. Is that the firearm as a vertical? There’s so much depth to it. Right. So you can go deep on shotguns. You can go deep on hunting. You can go deep on because you just the ammunition that we’re talking about, we can talk about that for two hours. And the amount of the amount of time that it takes for you to learn how to do that as a business and monetize it. It really is. That’s one thing about this that I love about talking firearms is you never run out of things to talk about, and that is an interesting service to start the business on. That is about as niche as you can possibly get. But you were there in the beginning in terms of when that was the core part of the business. Walk me through a little bit about the decision to build some guns and then what was that like in adding that on in terms of if someone’s thinking about because you guys have gone through a lot of expansion, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned from that expansion, especially because you’re on the manufacturing side?

Blaine: It’s a balance between risk and reward, and it takes that willingness to take a risk that you talked about earlier, but being smart about it and trying to approach it in a way that was fiscally sustainable. So I don’t recommend somebody go out and borrow a whole bunch of money and jump into it. You want to ease into it. You want to start in manageable chunks, and you want to start with some skill in the area. And that’s how we so we started with the animal stuff and with the low development where the company started. Then when it was time to build rifles, that was interesting. We knew we needed more space, or else I was going to have to do everything at home. So we had to find an appropriate size building, and we didn’t go to a 10,000 foot building right off the bat. We started with a 3600 square foot building in an industrial park, basically, and I was very careful because I knew about lathes and milling machines. I knew what we should get. I had enough experience at that point. I think I’d had my lathe and mill for about four years, and I’d done enough that I understood what was what was required and the components to set up, and did a lot of research on it as based on my own experience, and reached out to a lot of people in the industry.

Blaine: There’s a lot of very helpful people in the firearms industry. It’s the demand is so great. It’s we collaborate way more than we compete. So we looked at those particular issues and made my recommendations, and we started in with that. And people got to understand too. You’re never going to be 100% sure. We all have various personality types. My personality type is one that I like to be 98% before I engage on anything. If I just were to be left to my own devices, well, that’s never going to work. You’ve got to make a move when you’re 80% sure or whatever it is, whatever that number is, you’ve got to make the move and there’s going to be uncertainty and there is risk of failure. You have got to be willing to take that risk or you’re never going to accomplish anything. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to be smart about it, and you’re smart about it by doing the doing the research, making sure you have appropriate funding in place that’s sustainable and just being smart about the whole process.

Wade: Yeah, the bootstrap model seems to be the model that works for a lot of people, right? Where it’s. And by bootstrapping, okay, we’re having success in this area. We have this dialed in a little bit. All right. Let’s take some risks now. Right. Because we have a kind of a base that we can make some moves from and then get that feedback. So you decide to build the rifles. Are they precision rifles. Are they AR platforms. Are they hunting rifles or all of the above. What was the decision making process that went into saying because we have a lot of options, what was that like and what did you guys land on?

Blaine: We’re primarily precision bolt action hunting rifles for shooting long range, and that’s an interesting point that I should have brought up earlier, is that’s Jake’s passion. And because that’s his passion, he immersed himself in that and learned it. And he has a very good understanding of what guys want because they want what he wants. So his decisions on products and what to do are very spot on for what people need. I’m a lot longer in the tooth than Jake been doing this a whole lot longer, so I’m very niche in what I want and like to do. Very niche however you pronounce it. And the long range bench rest world is extremely small. We do all the R&D on bullets and stuff that people get to use, but you know, we’re very small. It’s very specialized, very difficult sport. But that was the key is so Jake had a passion for this and his passion was long range hunting rifles. We’ve done a little bit with AR’s. We typically recommend other businesses for AR’s. We’ll do Sierra coating on AR’s and stuff like that. We’ve built a few competition rifles and we have to be careful with that because I’ve got experience with bench rest. I know from being in the industry and being around other competition shooters, what guys in F-class want to build what guys in PRS want to build. So I try to point people in that correct direction. But so we do a little bit with competition rifles. But the primary market is long range hunting guns. And if you don’t need to shoot at long range, you don’t need a custom hunting rifle because you can buy one off the shelf and do just fine with it. Unless you’ve got some really weird, you’re a really weird shape, or you just want something really nice or very specific.

Wade: This episode is brought to you by TacticalPay.Com. Every few years, it seems large banks and national credit card processors suddenly decide that they no longer want to process payments for firearms and firearms related businesses, and so they drop these businesses with almost no notice, freezing tens of thousands of dollars in payments for months on end. If you want to ensure your partner with a payments provider that is dedicated to supporting the firearms industry, or you just want to find out if you could be could be paying less for your ACH, debit and credit card processing. Visit technical pay.com. Again, that’s technical pay.com. From a marketing perspective, from the business, it sounds like that that you’re the guy. The owner is the market. So he intimately knows. All right. This is I know how to talk to these people. I know what they want. I know what their pain points are and I know where to meet them, exactly where they are. Because I am the market. And I think that is a great place. And I think that is a great place for most firearms people to start, because you’ll see people who are an AK guy, right? Well, then they make a case. So many businesses start by people filling the void for something that they want. And I think that’s a powerful lesson. And it seems like you guys are staying within that niche. Cerakote still within the niche. Your custom builds for the hunting is still within the niche. Starting from that low development, how is your marketing in terms of is that word of mouth? I know you guys have an online presence. Do you guys just rely on rely on organic marketing? Or do you have campaigns that you run? What is your kind of your philosophy on getting the word out?

Blaine: We have a couple of ways. Believe it or not, Instagram is a huge marketing tool. We have a marketing department, a couple of guys in there that are real sharp. We do a lot of, uh, videos and posts on Instagram. We have our email list. There’s word of mouth. We go to shows. Jake is going down to shot show later on this month. And by developing relationships within the industry that also generates business and people come in to check you out. It’s it’s funny, we get a lot of local guys that come in and say, hey, I didn’t even know you guys were here. It’s probably because local marketing, I don’t think, is done as much as it was. We started out, we put up flyers at the ranges and stuff like that. And then I would say this probably more word of mouth for local. We’ve had a couple of events here too where we brought people in, but I think our online presence is probably bigger and there’s advertisements through Rock slide. Rock slide is a huge firearms related hunting and fishing forum. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. It’s I think Ryan tells me that it’s the largest hunting related forum outside of a particular bow hunting forum, and I don’t know how they do those metrics or do that, but I know there’s a lot of information. And also we have podcasts too. We do a weekly podcast. Jake and Ryan typically do it that generates a lot of interest. We’ve got stuff on YouTube, stuff on Google, so I guess it’s all above. It’s typical 21st century digital marketing, word of mouth, the whole thing. You have to engage in every possible way to make sure people understand who you are and what you’re doing.

Wade: Yeah, and I write for the two way community and for firearms businesses. And the one thing that where it’s different from some of my other clients that are in other industries is that it requires a much higher level of trust. So just the consumers themselves, the other businesses in connection. So I think doing things in person, like going to shot show or going to going to events or holding local events. Um is very smart because it takes longer to break down that distrust with that people normally have in the industry on the internet or whatever. Whereas in person, when you can see that, see someone in your geographic area or whatever or at a show. I think that’s makes a big difference. And I like to talk about geography a little bit, because one thing I’ve noticed is that almost all of the businesses that are successful that I talk to, there are some element of the geography that helps them in some way. So for when you were talking about when you guys moved into your space, that you have another business that helped you, I can’t remember what you said, who they were, that there was another business close by that was like five minutes away or whatever you guys collaborate with. What was their name?

Blaine: A bat machine. Now, was.

Wade: That on purpose that you’re like, hey, when we pick this location, we know these guys are close, we’re going to do that. Or did that happen organically? And then walk me through how that’s helped you guys.

Blaine: That happened organically. And that’s actually an interesting story. Bat machine became aware of us, and I was aware of Bat Machine for a for a long time before I ever even knew, before unknown munitions was ever an idea in Jake’s head, I was using that machine actions for my Beatrice guns just because they’re some of the best. I had familiarity with it. I didn’t realize at first when I moved out here, it was like, wow, I’m right down the road from Bat Machine. I don’t have to call anymore and wait. I can just go down there. We started that way and as we built and we started doing the rifle builds, Jake reached out to them and said, hey, we would like a action for us to use and here are the requirements of it. And they were glad they built. We call it the Vesper. It’s a long, medium and short and they build that action for us and that goes on our premium rifle builds. That’s where the relationship started. And after a while, watching us grow, our general manager, like I said, is the nephew of Bruce and also his dad works. His dad is Daryl. His dad works at Bat Machine too. So the collaboration say, hey, we’ve got this kid, kid, he’s 30 that would like to come work for you. So we brought him in and he’s been a huge success story.

Blaine: But so it’s any of these collaborations, they probably start out with a personal relationship probably is how it starts and then it develops and the trust and which is I’m more the other way. I’m more of a data and numbers kind of guy. But that’s never going to grow your business. You’ve got to reach out and connect with people. And all of those good connections we’ve made have resulted in revenue. So we’ve seen a lot of those actions. We sell them to people directly as well as on rifle builds. That’s something else I think is important, is that you have to balance what you’re going to keep proprietary with, what you’re going to release to everybody. And if you want to do everything and say, if you want this, you can only get stuff from us. Maybe that works when you’re really big, but when you’re first starting, you have to take the business however it comes. If somebody just wants to buy an action and build it themselves, yeah, we’ll let you do that if they want you to build the whole gun. That’s why we have various options from us providing all the parts to a rifle build to somebody, buying all the stuff and building it themselves. We support all of that.

Wade: There has to be give and take. So it’s the melding of all those things together. You talked earlier about risk and reward and having to do that balance. Well, the same balance has to be for the human connection and then the numbers. Right. Because the numbers are important, you’ll have a lot of people that are still running their businesses off of a legal pad. And then somehow in manufacturing, I’m like, how do you do that? So you need to be able to have a little bit of both. One thing that you did say that I heard I wanted to follow up with is that you said that there’s a lot of demand. There’s so much demand that you’re not really competing with people as much as you’re collaborating with them. When you refer to that demand, what demand are you referring to?

Blaine: Just consumer demand for firearms products. Right. And it’s interesting. It’s there are busier times and slow times for sure, but from the time we have all the components here, it takes us about 4 to 6 months to build a rifle, and components can take a while to get here. So I have tried since I’ve been here to speed that up. And no, it doesn’t take that long to build a rifle, but that’s just the backlog of orders. And for the longest time, every decent firearms manufacturer or rifle builder or whatever has had long lead times 6 to 12 months. Mcmillan stocks. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. They make very quality fiberglass and carbon fiber stocks. They’ve been around forever. 30 years ago they had a six month order file. And at the time I lived in Arizona, it was my last assignment in the Air Force. And the general manager for McMillan would shoot with us there in Tucson, and I pressed him and said, why don’t you guys buy another machine, add another shift or whatever? And that’s something else interesting about the industry, is people reach a certain level of business and seem happy with that, and it’s because it’s sustainable that through the ups and downs, they’re going to be able to maintain their level of business, I’d have to lay people off. That’s why I say that there’s a whole lot more collaboration than competition. Just because the demand is so great that it’s not like grocery stores or automobiles. It just takes so long to get stuff because the supply just hasn’t caught up. And I don’t know if it ever will.

Wade: Well, and I think that’s for manufacturing businesses because there are not enough manufacturing businesses for firearms and or just in the United States in general. And there are not enough gunsmiths. Those two things together, anything that requires a gunsmith or anything that requires manufacturing, you’re going to be able to have that from a business perspective like that wait list or that back order that is going to give you that stability and it will be a leading indicator. So you’ll say, all right, our wait list has gone from six months to three months. What’s happening? And then you’ll be able to maybe make adjustments or and that is a very powerful place to be in business. What this is off off the topic. But what years were you in Tucson?

Blaine: I was in there oh four to oh seven. Okay.

Wade: I went to high school in Tucson, so that’s why. Oh. Did you? Oh, yeah.

Blaine: I was stationed at Davis-Monthan. Yep.

Wade: I went to high school. I went to high school and college in Tucson. So very obviously my dad and my dad lives there, so I’m very familiar with that. And let’s talk a little bit about the manufacturing. So obviously you’re going to have this capital intensive requirement the more you grow because of the manufacturing. Right. So you said, okay, we’re going to have to get another lathe or whatever. And it’s not like you’re buying a building or whatever. But does that go into the equation about you say, hey, maybe we want to go into other areas like Cerakote, or maybe want to go into other areas that aren’t going to require as much on the manufacturing side. Or is that something like, no, we’re going to keep growing on the manufacturing side as big as we can.

Blaine: We’re trying to grow everything. Shoot to hunt is the associated business. It’s all under the unknown parent company, but they’re technically a different company, and I’m sure you’re familiar with that. You set up different companies in different ways, and they’re right here in our building with us. And in fact, it’s where I’m sitting now. But they do marketing and they do web design, and they also do web design for other companies. So the idea is a broad approach to try to reach several different market segments. So we sell components, retail and reloading supplies, we build rifles, we do Sierra coating and sometimes we cerakote stuff other than rifles. They’ve brought in vehicle rims to get Sierra coated before headers. We also have what we call the Shoot to Hunt University, which is there’s shooting schools that we put on and classes and, and we’re trying to increase our online presence as well. I want to put a reloading class online. The idea is we’re trying to grow in all areas. That way we’re not tied to one particular area. One thing that I can tell you, and this kind of gets to the future. We’ve ordered a titanium 3D printer that’s coming this month. And we’re going to start making suppressors this year. So we’re adding a whole new area to that. And our focus is going to be on suppressors for hunting rifles. Suppressors are getting easier to get as people realize they’re not these big evil silencers that criminals use. It’s more PPE, personal protective equipment. But all those suppressors now tend to be built for range guns type thing, and you don’t need a big long nine inch suppressor when you’re out hunting. You want a shorter, lighter one just so it doesn’t damage your hearing when you shoot.

Wade: Well, yeah. And I don’t think it should be regulated because it’s a it’s like you said, it’s a PGP thing. It’s like having it’s like having ear protection for your, you know, for headphones or whatever. And, and hunting loadouts are really loud. You know what I mean? Like you’re you’re out deer hunting, you’re shooting some things loud and, uh, you need more than when you’re shooting a nine, that’s for sure. Well, that’s exciting, and I know that you got this. I know there has to be an element of you that is like, I don’t know what the percentage is, right. But like 10% of you of your gearhead personality is like, I can’t wait to get my hands on this titanium 3D printer. That’s just cool. That’s just like, let’s do this one because it’s a good business idea, but two, it’s just cool to have one of those.

Blaine: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I geek out on machines like the lathe and milling machine at home, and I’m not a trained machinist, and I fully admit that. But it’s not hard to figure out how to make a barrel, how to chamber a barrel to make it accurately. But yes, it’s cool. It’s like being a kid. So I come to work every day. So in the Air Force I got to fly jets. That was cool. A lot of work associated with that. They managed to take the fun out of it with all the additional stuff you have to do. Then when I worked for the forest products industry, that was just a typical mid-level corporate job. Not exciting. Here I come to work and talk about guns all day, which is one of my major hobbies. In fact, everybody here is enthusiastic about firearms and that’s that just keeps you coming back and the machines are cool and having access to them. And yeah, that’s an Unintended fringe benefit of being here.

Wade: Well, you get to. Everyone says monetize. Or if you’re able to work on your passion, it’s not really work. That can be true, but can also be a trap, right? Like you have to find that special, like you said, like jets. I’m in Virginia Beach and you can’t spit and not hit a jet pilot or a or a Special Forces person, right? So I know guys obviously, like you said, like, yeah, flying jet seems like it’s amazing, but you can make that not fun. Whereas that’s anything can be like that. So the fact that you are in a situation where everyone likes what you’re doing, you’re having fun, you’re getting to play around with gearheads type stuff that’s really great. And it does take some work and some skill to create that situation and create that environment, which is a good place to go next. So how do you guys, in terms of from a work environment, what’s what is are you finding success with for your team? How is it that managed? How is that culture created, sustained, grown? What’s working for you guys on that front?

Blaine: We’re very picky about who we hire. Fit is everything. We discovered this. We lead the direction before we ever started because of my personality. And Jake’s is that we want to hire sharp, motivated people, even if they’re not as skilled in an area. That stuff can be learned. I’ve spent my whole life learning how to do stuff that I didn’t ever think I’d be able to do. I’m a complete nerd band geek guy that got to fly supersonic jets in the Air Force so we can learn to do way more than we think we can. That was our approach. We want sharp people that are a good fit. It’s a bonus if they have a skill set that really fits strongly. But so so we look at that when we hire people, they have to be liked and get along with everybody, and not everybody is a good fit. And that doesn’t mean they’re a bad person or whatever. But the environment here is to be positive and uplifting. And with my time as an Air Force officer, I had basically I was in 24 years. And when you count ROTC, 27 years of leadership training and you’ve been around guys like me. The leadership training we get is top notch and it’s not who’s wrong, it’s what’s wrong.

Blaine: And that’s one of the things here people don’t get in trouble for making mistakes. We try to address where the system broke down. And I remember telling these guys, I’m the oldest guy here. Most of the other guys that work here are in their 20s or 30s, and I think maybe 1 or 2 in their 40s, but I’ll tell them, look, so if so and so is doing this job and they’re not doing a good job, whose fault is that? And the idea of teaching leadership is you’re responsible for that. So you have to train them. You have to help them that that they’re going to come in and they’re going to have a pretty good general skill set. But specifically what we do, and this applies to any industry, the specifics of how you do it is a little bit different. So we try to take that focus. The whole idea of praise in public, criticize in private. That’s an old military idea, but it really people have the wrong idea about the military. The times where you get stood up and chewed out publicly are extremely rare. But and we just don’t do that here. So we try to empower people, encourage people, want people to take initiative and it’s okay to make mistakes.

Blaine: I think that’s people have got to be free and empowered so they know if they make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. Because if people are afraid to take risks and try stuff, we’re not going to grow as a company. And we’ve all made mistakes and we’re going to make more mistakes, and we stand behind what we do and we make a mistake. If the customer is involved, we make it right. We’ll send out a shipping label to have a rifle sent back, and we’ll check it over and do whatever it is to make it right. So that reputation is important. And Jake often says that the person standing in front of you as a customer is the most important person. So he’s from day one, tried to emphasize that that’s the kind of culture I’m trying to bring. I’m trying to bring the best parts of every place that I’ve worked. Of working where Interaction have gone well and have also been part of bad teams as well. That’s one advantage age provides, is that you’ve seen the good and the bad. Trying to emphasize the good and that seems to be working. People are generally happy to be here and, uh, do a good job and look forward to coming in and working.

Wade: Yeah, I’m 52, so I’ve had my experiences and we’ve all been part of bad teams, and nothing will torpedo an organization faster than a bad hire. Yeah.

Blaine: Organizational health is as critical as your specific expertise in a particular field.

Wade: And I think one lesson that that I think is really important that you’re emphasizing is if you have two candidates and one of them has all the skills that you need, like super hyper skilled would be like everything you would a dream candidate for the skills, but has not a great attitude. And you have someone who is coachable and has a great attitude and is capable of learning those skills. You take the dude who you train, right? You? Absolutely. Because the first guy has the potential to ruin your organization and the culture is important. That’s I don’t think people understand that. I agree. So what’s the plan for the next, like 2 to 5 years? I know you said you want to expand the manufacturing base. You’re doing the silencers or the suppressors. Maybe. I think the suppressors is probably your guys’s next step. Why did you want to get into that? Is it the regulation was going down a little bit or you just that was a natural progression.

Blaine: The demand is insane for suppressors. That’s why it was the next logical place to go. There’s a lot of revenue potential in suppressors. And not to sound just like a greedy businessman. Also, it’s cool we get to play with them and use them, but ultimately it’s got to sustain itself and support itself. So I think that’s the main reason is there’s a big need for suppressors out there. So we’re going to get in suppressor market and we’re trying to find a little bit different market than everybody else. Like I said, we want to have these suppressors that are specific for hunting in terms of other growth. We just hired a guy whose job is going to be to answer the phone and answer emails, because it’s gotten so overwhelming with the calls that we get that we’re not getting them as timely as we need to be. That’s good. And you were talking about demand earlier, too. And these are rough numbers. The first nine months of the year, along with being general manager, I was also the primary rifle salesman and oversaw load development and any troubleshooting or knowledge issues in the shop. And a certain amount of rifles the last two months of the year. And I trained a guy that’s dedicated as a rifle salesman.

Blaine: In the last two months of the year, we’ve sold more rifles than we did the first nine of 2024. Now, part of that people are feeling a little better about the economy and everything, and there’s a little bit more stability. Also, I think part of it is we got somebody who’s dedicated to doing that. So for the future, we’re looking at growing each segment of the business. We’re willing to add people when we need it, and we’re going to have to add more space. We start doing the suppressors. We’re looking at other projects, some I can’t talk about that we’re looking at doing in the future. We collaborate with a lot of other companies, like as a brass making company called ADG, and they make, I think, some of the best brass out there. I use it in my interest guns, and we’ve got some collaborations going on with them, and they’re also not a huge company. And that’s probably something you notice to firearms companies generally aren’t great big companies, they’re small companies and everybody is. People get frustrated. Well, I called and I can’t get Ahold of anybody. Well, it’s because everybody has got wears multiple hats and is so busy. So as we grow we’re trying to address that and people get more specialized in their particular field.

Blaine: I’m only I only do really weird funky rifle builds now. And like I said, my my main task is overseeing operations and trying to optimize that because that’s where we are now. I’m looking at some awesome software optimizations and process optimization, all that kind of stuff, which I’ve done all through my time in the Air Force and with the Forest Products Company. I think that’s the path that continues to expand all our opportunities. We’re going to have to add more long range shooting schools because those are filled up all except for the one we’re doing one in Africa this year. It’s a shooting school for four days and four days of a play plains game hunt. And just every place we can find growth, we’re going to grow because you have to. You never know what segment is going to be up and down. Sometimes retail is up, sometimes rifle builds are up, sometimes cerakote is up more than the other. So we try to just be able to do all of that and grow every part of it. And pretty soon we’re probably going to have to add more machine tools like another lathe or something.

Wade: As there’s a guy called Dan Kennedy who is big in the marketing space, and he says one is the most dangerous number in business, right? So the fact that you’re diversifying, the fact that you’re not afraid to experiment with things, I think is one of the reasons why you guys are experiencing so much success. Well, we’re coming up against it on time. I’d love to have you on the show again in the future, because it seems like you guys are one of those businesses that you’re going to have three new things to tell me about. We can talk about. How do people find you guys? Obviously the website is unknownmunitions.com. If they want to get a hold of you or if they want to talk to someone there, the phone number is (208) 262-6103. Is there an email that they can send their questions to if they have questions for you?

Blaine: Probably the place to start is sales@unknownmunition.com. Okay. If you’re typing that with your phone, be careful. Unknown munitions is one word, and it’s easy to put a typo in there, but the sales line is where it’s probably the first place, and then it branch out from there to get more specialized.

Wade: Amazing. Well, again, I’ve had a great time talking to you, and I think that people are going to get a lot of value from this, especially people who are on the manufacturing side. Blaine, so great to talk to you. Thanks again. You’ve been listening to the Tactical Business Show by TacticalPay.Com. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the firearms industry.