EP 64 Buying Ammo a Better Way

Buying Ammo a Better Way – Episode 64

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Topics in this episode: 

  • AmmoSquared.com has created a new and innovative way to buy ammunition. Dan Morton, the owner of AmmoSquared gives me the inside scoop on this podcast episode.

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Buying Ammo a Better Way Episode 64

00:00:01 – 00:05:09

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. It’s time for the gun guy. TV podcast hi. This official persinger. I’m the gun guy. Thank you very much for listening to my podcast as you do. I am extremely grateful to cash is growing like crazy as is the youtube channel and While I can’t tell you how encouraged I am by both of those things in the first half an hour the podcast which is syndicated. It on your favorite podcast player. I’m going to play an interview that I did with Dan. Morton from ammos squared. emo squared is a really interesting ammunition supplier fire. That has a very unique way of providing ammunition to folks and I think it might actually work for folks who are in California which is very restrictive state. We’re going through a lot right now with the difficulty of obtaining ammunition so I’m going to play that interview in its entirety with Dan and then in the second part of the podcast which will be unpatriotic. Not only I’m going to address church security and security in houses of worship for now. Here’s the interview with Dan. Morton from ammos squared. Dan Would you tell me a little little bit about ammos squared. What exactly do you do? Yeah so Ms Court was started in two thousand fifteen. My wife and I Basically started out of our garage and we had this crazy notion that you should be able to buy Ammo like you fund your 401k. So a little bit every month And since then we’ve grown and were operating our warehouse in Idaho and we’ve got a over thousand customers now but basically the the nutshell here is is that people will Set up a budget. Pick out the calibers you want. Don’t and whatever that budget accumulate so I could use example. So let’s say you want Ten dollars of nine millimeter so that might buy a box. It might not bio box so with what our program does. Your budget will buy ammo based on the price parameters and that Ammo then goes into your your inventory your inventory in our warehouse. It accumulates overtime you have automatic delivery triggers which which say okay once my ammo gets two thousand rounds ship it to me or once Mammo hits once I’ve had six months in then ship it to me And and so what this allows people do is to put a little bit of money each month towards a variety of different calibers. So you might by five dollars of three hundred wind Mac. So you can’t do that today in a store but you can with ammo squared. Because what it’ll do is at night by. Let’s say the price per round is a dollar all our program to that three hundred win mag you’re literally by five rounds that’ll be in your inventory now. Obviously we can’t ship just five rounds so it’s gotta be a full box so oh it adds to it every month as it accumulates and then once you get your delivery triggered than you’ll get your full box no shot ammo physically weekly there. Let’s say for example. I can only do ten dollars a month so I put ten dollars a month in there and at ten dollars buys me however many rounds Ammos ammo actually physically in your warehouse. At that time I am or do you wait until I need it and then purchase it and then send it to me. Yeah and that’s a question we get a lot and it definitely is physically here. In the reason why is because of the ups and downs swings of the Mo Industry WanNa make sure that we have the MO available and ready to go. And so what we do is we have What we call a floating voting inventory so for example You know if you were to buy a a nine millimeter or your three hundred win Mag You you don’t have a been with five rounds in it right so what it is. It’s an entry on our books that says okay. You’re five rounds of three hundred win MAG will be added with this other person’s you know seventeen rounds this other person’s twenty five rounds and that total is the amount of three hundred win mag that we have in our warehouse. How do you track that? I mean if you’ve got a thousand customers and each one has a varying different number of rounds that in particular caliber. How do you actually keep track of that? And as a customer. How do I keep track of it on my end before ship to me? Yes so actually. We have an online dashboard to all of our customers can log in and they can see exactly how much they have at any given point so we’ve got literally customers that have been deployed overseas and they accumulate for eighteen months or or longer And they can log in. You could see exactly how many rounds you have and each type of caliber and then our side. It’s really simple because you just add up all of the amounts that all customers have and then that gives us a single number that says okay we need to have have you know five thousand rounds of three hundred win Mag on hand and then we look at our our inventories to just like any other inventory system and it says okay.

00:05:10 – 00:10:02

This month were a short. You know two hundred rounds and so we’re going to need to put order in from our distributors for two hundred rounds to bring us up so you keep track of that through an inventory awesome. Yeah Yeah exactly and Kind of the unique thing with with our system and kind of with the story is that We’ve we’ve essentially commoditised ammunition in that we don’t Customers aren’t buying particular brands. So going back to the nine millimeter service as are most common Caliber so what. Nine millimeter service grade is to us is any brass case. Full Metal Jacket. amunition are nine millimeter so It could be Remington Winchester Agila seller Bella anything that we actually have a list on a website website And so with our with our inventory. What we’re what we’re doing as we say okay? We need to have X. amount of nine millimeter service. Great right and then for our inventory system. It’s actually broken out into you know the different brands and so when we ship we try to give people a variety of brands So that it’s it’s different than like if you were to place an order. Let’s say Midway USA or somewhere and you know exactly which boxes of ammunition you’re getting with us. You know you signed up for nine millimeter service grade or three hundred win mag hunting grade And you’re going to when you get your shipment you’re going to get a variety of things things and what we try to do as we actually try to include A mix of what recall like budget brands but then also higher quality brands and and some mid tier so we actually balance it out so that the average price per round is a little bit over the the price you would buy if you’re buying a case so we try to get to the price you pay if you were to buy off of statement way. USA for Box Occidental. Let me make sure I get this right if I buy a thousand rounds from From a company I’m going to pay less per round typically than if I buy a a box of twenty correct. Okay so you’re talking about giving me then let’s say I’m I’m your customer. Let you’re talking about giving giving me the volume price without my having to shell out all the money initially for the volume. Did I get that right. Yes essentially so. We’re not quite to the case price but were better than your local retail price. So if you were to go into you know Cabela’s or your local Ben. Starting you buy a box of of nine millimeter. You know it’s GonNa cost you right now. Probably Eleven twelve bucks are prices ten but if you were to buy it by case it might be you know nine per box so We D- Way we try to prices that we price a little bit over your bulk pricings essentially okay and then I I do have a cost of shipping when it comes to me. And then there’s a hazardous material charge shipping is ner when you’re shipping ammunition or not. There’s actually I’m not so that’s the only for powder and primers okay. So there’s no hazardous matures charges just essentially shipping and if and where sales tax applies obviously at some point all you have to apply sales tax. I assume exactly. So we’re in Idaho. So we collect from our Idaho customers and then I know when we to California they charge sales tax there and you know the sales tax situation is always changing so okay well wait a minute. You just said something magical here that I think is good for California’s to hear you ship to California we you. I am speaking to you right now. From behind enemy lines in the People’s Socialist Republic of California. You’re telling me that if I ordered ammo today a day or I joined today that at some point when you needed to ship to me you could ship it to California. How does that work? Yeah we definitely do. We have a lot of customers in California so so one of the the rules with California’s Scott to go to an F. L. L. dealer or an AMMO reseller And so unless you’re police officer or you have your own relic. NFL that we could ship direct to you for our Mo for California customers. What we do? And it’s the same ms with everybody but basically you can accumulate over time. A large amount of AMMO and then have it shipped. Your F- fell once and you know they do a background check in California so you just have to go through that rigmarole just one time instead of putting lots of little orders online and then constantly going back and forth to your F. L. Dealer doing that background check so with are kind of unique system it actually works out pretty well for people in California. You’re listening to the good night.

00:10:02 – 00:15:15

TV podcast please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain you just mentioned the Curio and relic of Appel. We’ll talk about that briefly. My understanding is from just looking at the law and then talking with the folks at the California rifle and Pistol Association that if you have a as a Californian if you have a Curio and relic. NFL which I think is he. Oh three federal firearms license and you have what California calls its certificate of eligibility to due to purchase a firearm which you have to get from the California Department of Justice. You have those two things you can order AMMO and have it shipped directly to you but my experience. France has been that some ammunition companies. Don’t want to do that because they don’t WanNa take the time to figure that out first of all and secondly they’re skittish and honestly a little nervous about about getting on the wrong side of California but you just mentioned that you would do that. So can you clarify that for me. Yeah and you know if you look in the in the law. Aw the rules of what Who can receive AMMO Without going through a AMMO dealer. NFL Dealer Way will ship to the cure relic F. F. L. dealer I mean essentially they are NFL dealer. And we’re already shipping to your regular F. F. L. Dealers are seven of dealers. I think the thing who is that because of California they make you go through the background check to get the Curio or to get the The certificate of eligibility. So essentially. You’ve already you’ve already done it and you do it once a year. You have to renew that the cost for that upfront is Kinda high but every year you renew it and then every three years. You Renew Your Cer F. F. L. and you’re good to go so that actually is an option if you’re in California at least at the moment. Yeah exactly. I mean it’s a way to get ammo delivered right to your house Okay so I guess the next question would be you’ve got you’ve been in business. How long now a word this’ll be our fifth year? Five years started in the garage. And now you’re in a warehouse the house and you got how many customers going on. We’re just over a thousand Last time I looked so you’re doing okay. That’s pretty cool. Yeah and what’s going on with you now. I wish I read somewhere on Amland or something that you guys were trying to grow a little bit. You had a plan to do that. What’s happening with that? Yeah so you know we. We started off as a mom and pop. And we’ve been that way for the last four years. We decided that we wanted to bring on a technology guy helps gonNA build our technology And so we started looking for for funds for capital And you know you as a start up you know for your old startup. We kinda started looking at the regular sources of of capital like going to a bank. And you know Talkin Doc and Angel Groups. NBC’s and whatever Because of the industry were kept getting shot down so You know I remember specifically one one. BC Group said that they want to invest in companies that they can forget how they actually said it so it was like how they could take the moral high ground or something like that and it. Just we’re my mind. Yeah that they could defend publicly and take the moral high anyway so It frustrated enough that we started looking looking at And this has been a thought of mine along with equity crowdfunding. So what equity crowdfunding is it is just like a regular crowd fund And you but instead of getting the product which you would at a normal crowd fund you actually get ownership and so we’re doing an equity crowd fund through site called we funder under that’s a crowd fund portal In were issuing a preferred shares of stock in Emma squared At a Four four and a half million dollars valuation right now So you can buy in with as little as one hundred dollars. We start just like with the regular crowd fund. You get perks and so We start perks at five hundred dollars and they go up up to you. Know if you put up to ten thousand dollars you know you can join us at shot show or something so you know there’s some different Perks of available. But the point really is is that there’s not any. There aren’t any other investment opportunities for to a company’s Other than you know the publicly traded ones that you know we know about like a big Smith and Wesson and winchester through all INC ruger probably on the ones Answer this crowd fund which is an which is an equity crowd fund is is an opportunity getting in kind of buy stock in a small innovative company in space. It’s pretty cool now. You mentioned a four million dollar valuation. Forgive me a business. Guy Guy knows that how much you’re looking to gather as far as crowdfunding is concerned for investment or is that what you’re saying is evaluation of your company currently no so that’s evaluation of the company so we looked at basically the other companies that are crowdfunding in you know to be honest with with some of these companies because they they set their the road nation and and they’re just off the wall you know twenty eight million dollars for a company that doesn’t have any customers.

00:15:15 – 00:20:04

It’s just ridiculous. So our annual revenue right now is right around five. Hundred Thousand Ed So I looked at about a little less than ten times that our annual revenue As kind of a a baseline for evaluation Because the thing too is if we get to You know trying to do some some math in my head here. You know if we’re if we you just grow by you know to four thousand customers. I mean we’ll we’ll have four million dollars revenue right there so Our target it is around. We think we could get to you. Know Forty million fifty million dollar company Just based on the industry so ammunition is this might be a good good for you and your listeners. I didn’t even know this until I started looking up but ammunition sales account for four billion dollars a year in the US It’s a big market as me. Yeah I it’s it’s but what’s interesting with with ammunition is very fractured market. So you know you’ve got all all kinds of companies that are selling right. You know your your big boys like your Cabela’s and your Sportsman’s warehouse and then you’ve got your online companies midway USA et CETERA. And so it’s it’s a a market that a small company like us can enter in and grow Through through having a different type of offering a kind of an innovative approach to buying and Managing Ammunition Again I mastered. I’m shifting hatcher. I took my my gun guy. TV and I put my businessman’s hat on. I have to ask you from the standpoint of revenue you’ve got revenue which is great. That’s the top line figure right but then you pay all the bills you gotta bottomline figure you’re either profitable or you’re not and so. Where does that bottom line stand? Are you guys profitable currently so we’re right about breaking even so once you pay my salary were breaking So we you know this is like a mom and pop We don’t have any other employees. And so it’s you know I actually put my kids to work packing boxes And so you know. The point of kind of the the crowd fund funding to take us to that next level to be able to build out the technology to be eventually hire some employees to grow the business to scale it. You’re you’re at the magic point that a lot of small businesses get. which is they get to the point where they really need help but they can’t pay for the help and they? They need to grow but they need the help in order to grow. And if they can’t get the help then they can’t grow that statue super-duper common so you’re not shutting the world on fire but at least you’re at a break even point point. Now you’re at that point. Where unless you can hire some employers hire the right person to do something then growing is going to be very difficult for you so I can understand why you want the the crowdfunding at this point it makes a Lotta Sense? Yeah so how much. How much money are you trying to get out of the crowd fund so our target is five hundred thousand In right now we are our as of today. I think we were at one thirty. One hundred and thirty thousand is what we’ve raised so far I’m sure by the time this this goes on the air it’ll be a bit higher but So it’s a it’s quite a a difficult process to get the word out into educate people on what we’re trying to do and and you know I was on I was on One of the gun. Boggs yesterday The truth about guns and they. They ran our story and a lot of the first comments were. Why would anybody do this? I’ll just keep my mo at home. And you know this. And that. And and I I had to kind of laugh but I also had to respond to a bunch of comments because when you’re trying to do something unique and different people immediately attack it and they’re used to the status quo But you know what we’re trying to do. Essentially is bring ammunition into the the digital age so if you think about the management of your animal normally you buy ’em oh he stored in your garage is and you take it to the rage And you shoot it. I mean I know you know up until recently I had twenty two. That was probably you know fifteen years older older or whatever because I was hanging onto it was. I didn’t WANNA WANNA shoot it. You know it was an add on it But what. I’m what I’m saying in what I what I was posting thing on On this blog was that yeah there definitely should have ammo at home. But this is a different type of Of an idea where you can actually have your ammo at home.

00:20:04 – 00:25:01

And then you can. Also be accumulating more AMMO offsite. That’s easily early exchangeable and deliverable on demand so give you an example. So a lot of people recently switched from Say Your Your Handgun Caliber Albright. So forty was the hot caliber for a long time and then you know the FBI switched over deny millimeter now. Release has nine millimeters. While if you had been accumulating elating forty cal and you have five cases of forty counting your garage. Let’s say and you just got rid of all your forty forty missiles. What are you going to do with your forty count? Now you’ve got a list it locally or try to sell it or do something with it Kind of the idea here with ammo. Squared is is. What what we’re saying is you have advocates of of your immediate need ammo at home? But then what you WanNa do as accumulate your future Ammo in this case with your forty cow with literally a click of a few buttons. You can exchange it for nine moment so a lot of a lot of our recent exchanges have been things like oh I want exchange all my three hundred eight for six point five creed more. So people have been accumulating. Let’s say three await hunting and before they get a shipment they’ve they’ve bought a six point five greed more rifle that they wanna take hunting so now with just a few clicks they can but right now it’s actually an email but Our Future goal. Let’s just have a few clicks online You can exchange one caliber for another which gives you a huge amount of flexibility and convenience shooting straight and always right on target. This is the gun guy to heap podcast. Well here’s another point to and This is GonNa make some enemies. I’m sure saying this but it’s just true I’ve got adult children and I’m my wife and I own a business and we have rental properties not a lot. We have you know enough. And so on and I’m in my sixties and I’ve had many people say well it’s one for you because you’ve got a rental property and you’ve got this well. Yeah but but I’m I’m a working man. I’m a blue collar. Working man is what I am. The difference between me and the other guy who’s my age doesn’t have those is simply financial understanding how money works and and not letting every dime I make burn a hole in my pocket. It’s extraordinarily common for folks to do that and find themselves Chelsea nothing down the road which is why we have 401k’s and those kinds of stuff where you can dribble away at it over over an extended period of time. So you say yourself I would like to. They have a thousand rounds of this two thousand rounds of that and five hundred rounds of this and six hundred rounds of that or whatever and I’m going to save the money and I’m going to do that as soon as I’ve got that money in my pocket doc. It and then you’re carnage tires or you. You know your kid needs this or whatever and that money’s gone and you never get that Ama- because because you’re not disciplined enough to set aside that ten bucks a month or whatever. It is to be able to finally get enough money to buy that. This is yet another way. Hey I think for folks who want to have some oh and they wanna be able to get a large or larger amount of AMMO and have it on hand to be to actually afford it. Where many folks tell me that? They can’t because they can’t save up the money to do it so I don’t know it’s just an idea on my part I suppose but when you’re talking about how this works that’s one of the first things at least in my mind. Maybe it’s because I’ve got kids that are grown always struggling to save money to buy thing so it seems like that’s a that’s a pretty good Pretty good plan. You’ve got there. I like it. Yeah and and one of the most common request we have is for people to put their renewal date on the same day as their paycheck so they get a paycheck every two weeks wchs. They’ve got fifty dollars coming out and going and buying ’em So that kind of gets back to my original vision of hey I wanNA buy ’em alike contribute in my 401k And so you know what. We have all kinds of people with different scenarios and different strategies that they’ve come up with to use our service. The most common is that they set up a certain amount. Come out goes into the variety different calibers that they own and then and we offer a two hundred fifty dollar free shipping trigger. So once you hit two hundred and fifty actually gets back to your shipping question You know once you hit two two hundred fifty dollars it ships for free and on our side we have actually a trigger set up so that once you have two hundred and fifty dollars of ship. -able double amunition it. Will you know it’ll trigger an order for us to pack it up and send it out and so you don’t even have to do anything it’s like it’s a true set it it and forget it Ammo cumulation program how does this function as a bulwark. If you will against ammo shortages you know what I’m saying we’ve gone gone through a number of those.

00:25:01 – 00:30:00

Were the ammos become very hard to find. Does this help people position themselves so that they don’t have to experience that you know. I think it definitely does because what it does is like you’re saying the the enforced savings of buying ammunition on a regular basis. I think part of the problem with an ammo shortage order shortage of anything as a people start seeing the the store shelves run dry and then they’re like Oh crap I don’t have any. You know defensive. Three fifty seven seven. I need to go buy it or I don’t have any you know nine millimeter. plinking ’em or whatever and they need to go by and then they’re fighting everybody else for what’s what’s on the shelf. Well you know with this it it basically takes that away. Because they’re already accumulating what they need over time and You know as long as we can still we’ll get stuff you know. It’s SORTA like a store right. As long as the store can still buy ammo from their distributors. We will still have it and whatever Somebody has already accumulated is in our warehouse so they have it so you know just you know who knows what the future holds but as long as the manufacturers are still making ammo and they’re still shipping it will still be getting it and customers will still be get well and you’re not gonNA sell the same around twice so as you said if somebody’s already purchased at it sitting in your warehouse you’re not GonNa Resell that to someone else. So if I know on my account I’ve got a you know. Five hundred rounds of like you said three fifty seven magnum or something sitting in my account count than I can feel comfortable at five hundred rounds still sitting there. It’s not something you have to go out and purchase an environment where AMMOS next to impossible to get. It’s already. There can just ship to me whenever I needed. Yeah and then you can go online and look at your inventory and you could see what you have and You know what this comes up a lot from Like I was tell me about the the blog is that people will say. Oh you know I I just want my Emma with me all the time and that sort of thing and In what I say is well. There’s a couple couple couple things one. Is We ship out when somebody requests it. So if you don’t have an automatic trigger you can get your Mo that you’ve accumulated within one week so oh you’ve put into this and and accumulated over time. You do a shipping request. We box it up. We ship it to you. As long as Fedex is still delivering packages. You’ll get your gramma you know. And and one of the one of the comments that I had to laugh at if all hell breaks loose than than that Ammo that I’m never getting that AMMO. Well yeah I I mean if people are fighting over Kansas Soup and shooting each other and Phoenix has not delivering yet. But if you’ve got at least a week warning before something like that happens you can get your mo from us well. I think the ideas have a certain amount of animal in your account. Have it shipped to you so that you have as you said you have your stock at home. This is for adding to that. I don’t regular basis makes an awful lot of sense. I think the idea is phenomenal particularly here in California because the problem with California’s you gotta Shell out all that money all at once. If you WANNA the only have to do the background check one time you gotTa dump a bunch of money to buy a bunch of AMMO and have it shipped to you all at once and then do the background check. Check one time. Well the truth is not a lot of folks can afford to do that so they have to buy a box and do an ammo check and then they gotta buy two boxes and do an ammo check and then they got by four boxes and do an ammo check and then they gotta do one box they gotta do every time. It’s a background check. Every time they do the background check. And after a while one it’s a nuisance intuit gets kinda pricey if you think about it whereas if I can drop a a little money on you guys every month that I’m not gonna Miss Because all it means is. I’M NOT GONNA stop at starbucks twice this week. I’ve got a little money in there. And then suddenly all of a sudden I got five hundred rounds ship that baby to me and I gotta go down and do my background check once. That makes an awful lot of sense for California’s literally literally buying ammo like you’re paying a utility pretty cold so with your with your equity funding. Let’s go back to that. How does that work? Let’s say for example. I have X. amount of money I I I WANNA put into that crowd funding site and I go and I do that. What’s the benefit to me other than the fact that I’m helping you guys stay alive? Yeah so So first of all kinds of percent question there so the Max that we can raise via crowd fund would be a a million dollar million seventy I think is the Max And so if if we were to hit the Max it would be twenty five percent of our company so you know that kind of just for reference there what percent you’d be buying Based on what you’d be contributing so the the benefit is that We’re we’re not today issuing dividends and but we will As soon as we are able to build our technology and we grow You know the thing with with companies you want issue dividends when you’re when you don’t have any anymore invest in things you can invest in. That would give a better return so we want to be able to use the money to grow. Our technology grow our company him once.

00:30:00 – 00:32:24

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