Kydex, Innovation, and Pushing the Line Forward Part I

By Ben Dakoske is the Co-Founder of Kinetic Concepts Tactical

When I first got into working with Kydex, I looked at what was out there and just thought “I could make something better than this.” I kicked around the idea with my business partner Damian St. Parker, and we ordered some gear from a local guy to see firsthand what people were doing with the material. Immediately we looked into what it would cost to set up shop in the industry, and within six months we had our product up on retail shelves, we had a webstore that was drawing quite a bit of attention, and we had a budding presence in the industry.

What I’m going to discuss here is primarily for those interested in working with Kydex, but also applies in a broad sense to anybody getting into a design-based business. There are a lot of broad principles that apply to any business, so if you’re designing targets, machining rails, or milling a new sight system, these principles most likely apply to what you’re doing.

Foundation

The first thing you’re going to want to do is simply get some of the material and play around with it. Make what you want to make. If you have a knife you don’t have a sheath for, or a magazine that doesn’t fit into your mag carriers, make some carriers of your own. Don’t be afraid to get things wrong, Kydex is a very forgiving material to work with. If it’s messed up after you press it, you can simply reheat it and it will smooth right out.

Eventually, you’ll want to move on to some more marketable items. One thing to

remember is that uniqueness and innovation counts almost as much as your ability to clone a popular holster. For example, we’re toying around with some Mosin mag carriers for the 7.62x54R magazines for the Promag Mosin kit. Not because we think they will outsell our MOLLE-Link system, but because we think they’re cool, and no one has done them before.

When you get to that point, and you want to branch out into standard items, take a look at holsters that are out there that you like and make one. Yup, I just said it. Notice I didn’t say copy their design. What you want to do is see what it takes to make a commercially successful holster. What pitfalls will you encounter? What will have you scratching your head asking yourself “how did they do that?” When you start tackling these challenges, you’ll start to develop your own style. Your own way of doing things. Again, don’t be afraid to fail.

Now that you’ve gotten that under (or on) your belt, turn off the internet. This is where a lot of people fall flat. The start churning out derivative designs, malformed clones of good products and they think they have the market cornered because their stuff is $5 cheaper. The finish is garbage, there’s rivets all over the place, and it barely looks like what it was supposed to be a copy of, and that’s a huge mistake. Take your time and perfect your designs. Accept that there is going to be a lot of change between the original design and what you finally bring to market (if that’s the direction you’re going to go in). At KCT, we have a shelf of older designs that chart the path between where we started and where we are now. It shows us where the changes happened, and why.

If you get stuck, and legitimately hit a wall, then you can fire up Google and see what other people did to solve the problem. But your innovation should not start with Google, or any other search engine. You’re looking at creatively solving a problem, not copying the problem, or someone else’s solution. For example, when we heard that people in the industry were complaining about their belt clips breaking, we looked at our holsters and decided to make them a part of the holster. Nothing to break, it’s all one piece. This, in turn, fuelled the development of the MOLLE-Link system, and the whole line of products that represents. None of that was done by copying our classmate’s math homework. It was a lot of hard work, trial and error, measure thrice, cut once, and so on. And that was our follow-up to the Axios, and that is a whole new area of design and testing.

The Branch

At this point, you should have a design or two that you are proud of and can reproduce on demand. Ideally, you want to have an IWB and OWB design to cater to most needs. For the molds, you may be saving money by using your own guns instead of buying a molding prop like a Bluegun or other prop. This is more than OK, especially if you have a common handgun. A Glock is a great place to start, as it is a popular gun. If your only mold is a Super Redhawk, you’re going to be catering to a much more limited market.

This is where you decide where you want to take your Kydex business. Do you want to do this as a hobby, or do you want to do this as a business? Both have their upsides and downsides. If it’s a hobby and a pastime, you will most likely struggle to get the business to pay for itself. You will have people come to you for models you don’t offer or have the mold for, or struggle with the decision to order a pattern you might not have the demand for just to fill one order. The upside is that you can pretty much drop it and walk away at any time and not suffer for it, and that out is an important thing.

On the other hand, if you decide to make it a business, you have a new set of challenges. You’ll be buying molds, building presses, trying to optimize your production methods to deal with the volume of orders you’ll get if you’re doing it right. You’ll be dropping hundreds of dollars with your suppliers, getting phone calls, emails, and messages at all times of the day with people needing things or asking if you can make their dreams a reality. Sleep, relationships, and your mental capacity will be taxed to the max. But its like that with any business I suppose. To put this into perspective, my business partner and I work 40+ hours a week at our day jobs, and at least that many at KCT. The best part about being in this business is that it’s not all work, and it’s something we love doing. If you feel like that, it might be worth getting into it as a business.

It’s very important that when you get to this point that you really make a plan and stick to it. If you go half in and half out, you’ll be miserable. I personally know Kydex manufacturers (I hesitate to use that term in some cases, but I also really hate the term “Kydex bender”) that are in that half-in, half-out stage but want to do it as a full time job and really struggle to make enough to keep food on the table. Their sales pitch is 80% desperation, and you can see it any time you take a look at their pages or items. They are not coming at the business from a position of advantage. Anyone who has been in commission sales or had one of those sales calls knows what I’m talking about.

Either way, you’ll need to do what those in the literary world call “killing your darlings.” What they mean by this is having your designs taken out into the real world and beat up by a lot of people. Oh, and it’s better if those people are not your friends, family, or associates. Why? Because people will be more honest when they don’t have a stake in what you’re doing, and you need honesty at this point. Trust me, we’ll get back to that.

The Next Move

Next up I’ll be talking about the actual mechanics of what you’re doing when working with Kydex. Stay tuned for Part II in the Crusader’s Den. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments, and thank you for reading.