Exclusive Services

I have been working most of the trade shows in the LE/MIL and Commercial spaces of the firearms and tactical gear industries since 1993. Too numerous to list, but USA, Canada, most of Europe, South Africa, Jordan, and the UAE. I know which ones are worth the money and which ones are best avoided.

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      How many trade shows that you want to attend do you miss, because you can't be out of the office, or you work alone and are overwhelmed?  I'll go with you to work the show or work it myself so you can stay in the office and run the business.

My network of international distributors is second to none. In any country worth doing business in, I have a strong relationship with the number one or number two distributor in that country. Many of them are long-time personal friends. Whether it is the commercial market you are after, or the LE/MIL market, I know who to go to that can get your products to the end user, be it hunters, LE or military. And for the LE/MIL markets, I know the end users, as evidenced above.

Both for reach and effectiveness, whether you use it on your website, YouTube or trade shows, product videos are one of the most effective tools we have for getting the word out about new products. They can also be sent to your target audience by e-mail and are a resource you can use for a long time. I am very comfortable in front of a camera. I even earned the nickname "One Take Buis" from the videographer at one of my former companies for rarely having to stop or reshoot a segment.

Early on at my last company, I was tasked with getting media coverage to drive sales. Working with the PR person I found for us, I began to put together our first firearms industry writer seminar, kicking off the inaugural one at the Blackwater training facility about 45 minutes from our offices. We eventually went to separate seminars for the LE/MIL and Commercial markets for several years.

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       The media we generated was fantastic and you could hardly pick up a shooing or LE magazine that didn't have one of our products in it. After one seminar our PR person estimated that the approx. $40,000 we spent on the seminar wound up generating over $2,000,000 in media exposure. Many of the writers became good friends that I still keep in touch with. 

I have been involved in the international commercial and LE/MIL markets since 1995. Either as the LE/MIL sales director for the domestic and/or international side, or as the Director of Product Development, working with the end users to develop the solution they needed.

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      I currently count LE/MIL projects I developed that are still ongoing in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, Czech Republic, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Colombia.

For 17 of my last 24 years, I either worked in or led the team for Product Development. Even running the International Sales Team for the last 8 years, I was still neck deep in the development side, working with the end users and running the LE/MIL product development meetings at the request of our VP of Sales. I am also a co-holder of seven patents.

I can help turn your concept into reality from just product development alone, to a complete turnkey package. With my network of injection-molding, thermo-forming and cut and sew design engineers, I can take your idea from concept through the design stages, to tooling, testing and validation, so you can begin production. I can connect you to multiple injection-molding, thermo-forming and cut and sew production facilities that can fill your needs. If the product needs intellectual property, I can handle that for you as well.

Just like the question "How many shows that you want to work do you miss, because you can't be out of the office?", how may line reviews do you not do that would increase business, precisely because you are busy running the business? With all the different product lines I have both sold and worked on the development of in my career, I have a very broad knowledge of the products in our industry. I can increase your company's participation in these and help to drive the business while you are running the business.

You're never going to make anyone's sales staff experts on your products, but you can give them a basic working knowledge and feel very confident discussing it and we all know that people sell what they're comfortable with. One of the largest customers for my last two companies was Gall's. I started what I called Lunch 'N Learn training sessions where I catered lunch for their sales team and did back-to-back one hour training sessions on our latest products. We did two sessions in order to split their sales staff into two groups, so not everyone was off the sales floor at the same time.

      When COVID knocked the world sideways and I was running the international sales team for my last company's tactical brands and could no longer travel, I started using Zoom Pro and barely missed a beat with product training for distributors and product demonstrations for end users. I picked up a few tricks on maximizing Zoom that were very helpful.