MissouriBullet
Member
I figured this would be the place to say this, having been welcomed into this forum and treated very nicely by all you nice people. THR is the official forum of the Missouri Bullet Company and so it naturally is the place I chose to share some good news.
But first some background: I started this company 3 years ago, incorporating it with my wife as a Sub-S corporation in January of '07. I had a full time job in Kansas City, 50 miles away, as the sole Unix support person at a county utility company. I ran their Sun server/Solaris infrastructure and the job paid very well. More than I had ever dreamed I would make, in fact. But I was getting on in years and wasn't happy with having to drive a hundred freaking miles every day to do the work that paid so well. I didn't want to have to depend upon my 401k and social security to get me through the last years of my life and I didn't want to have to fight the traffic in the meantime. So I came up with the idea that maybe I could start a bullet casting business on the side, work a few hours evenings and weekends, and then when I retired in a few years, have a little bit of income to get by on for my wife and myself.
So I sold the idea to my wife. She's entrepreneurial as well, of course, owning a web hosting/design company (Suncoast Networks) which we run out of our home on dedicated static DSL. She runs her stuff on Windows servers and my stuff is all on Linux. Jo Ann did our website, you know, everything from the ground up including the SQL backend to the shopping cart. Anyhow, she thought I was nuts, of course, but told me to go for it so I did. In a month I ran up 40k in credit card bills buying equipment and getting an area of our property cleared of trees in readiness for concrete and an 18x35' steel building. The building went up on the pad on a 10-degree day in early January. There was nothing to do about the 5 inches of ice that was on the pad, now inside the building, except to attack it with a pick and torpedo heaters, so it took us 2 days before we were able to stand on the floor and start laying out equipment and getting electricity run in. The casting equipment from Magma was still crated, covered in tarps, while we struggled with the building in that bone-chilling weather.
And a struggle it was and it continued. Continues. This is a difficult business to learn, y'all. But we have been blessed with great good luck and are thriving in these difficult times. From the first day our goal was to let the customers lead us where we needed to go. We do try hard to satisfy our customers and are always happy when one of them drops us a note thanking us for making them feel that they were treated honorably and their needs serviced efficiently.
So business started slow and grew. In those days, we were able to sell on eBay and that is where most of our trade was, before our website began moving its way into the web crawlers and the buzz started. We did a couple of gun shows and had good results but begrudged the time it took away from the manufacturing of bullets. I had a full time job, remember, and a 100-mile daily commute.
You all know the story of eBay going into a fit of Stalinist pique and banning the sale of all cast bullets. That was in August of '07. Well, it was a blow to us but by then, our web traffic was picking up and we were doing better there than we had with eBay, so it wasn't a big problem for us. And sales kept growing and we hired some folks. Some worked out and some didn't. Danny worked out and Josh worked out. Josh needed some tuning up but he is doing fine work now.
So three months ago I quit my job and went full-time into the bullet manufacturing business. Not a moment too soon, as March marked the milestone of having sold and shipped one million bullets in a month. April was better than that, and so was May.
Since I quit, we've added another caster (4 now) and two more sizers (5) and a spare collator that's dedicated to the .380 bullet, which is very very difficult to collate. We had more land cleared, paved it, built a parking lot for employees and customers, bought a 28-foot travel trailer for use as a field office/break area, bought a forklift, and are ordering lead by the truckload.
So we have had a good run, one that in fact has exceeded my wildest dreams. We're making lots of bullets and are able to ship them quickly at a time when (and I don't understand this) other casting companies seem to be having immense difficulty filling their orders inside of weeks or even months. What the heck is that about? Seriously, I want to understand the problem because I don't know.
Anyhow, I'll quit rambling and get to the point:
I've been a Missouri boy all my life. I think that I was maybe 6 or 7 the first time I heard the name "Graf and Sons", based out of Mexico, MO. Throughout my life I have heard nothing but good things about them: Good people, prices, honorable, et al. I knew they were big-time folks who earned their way up the way every successful business does, by pleasing their customers, being smart, being persistent, and being lucky when it counts.
And so today, Missouri Bullet Company is truly honored to be able to announce that Graf and Sons has picked us as their supplier of cast bullets. Our machines and our people will be running real hard next week, I believe, as we get their huge stocking order onto the pallets.
They've ordered every bullet in our lineup and we will shortly be adding new bullets to satisfy their requirements.
So, that's the news I wanted to share with our friends here on THR, as I am convinced that you folks have contributed to the "buzz" that got Graf and Sons interested in us in the first place and I am truly, truly grateful.
Brad and Jo Ann
Missouri Bullet Company
Brad
But first some background: I started this company 3 years ago, incorporating it with my wife as a Sub-S corporation in January of '07. I had a full time job in Kansas City, 50 miles away, as the sole Unix support person at a county utility company. I ran their Sun server/Solaris infrastructure and the job paid very well. More than I had ever dreamed I would make, in fact. But I was getting on in years and wasn't happy with having to drive a hundred freaking miles every day to do the work that paid so well. I didn't want to have to depend upon my 401k and social security to get me through the last years of my life and I didn't want to have to fight the traffic in the meantime. So I came up with the idea that maybe I could start a bullet casting business on the side, work a few hours evenings and weekends, and then when I retired in a few years, have a little bit of income to get by on for my wife and myself.
So I sold the idea to my wife. She's entrepreneurial as well, of course, owning a web hosting/design company (Suncoast Networks) which we run out of our home on dedicated static DSL. She runs her stuff on Windows servers and my stuff is all on Linux. Jo Ann did our website, you know, everything from the ground up including the SQL backend to the shopping cart. Anyhow, she thought I was nuts, of course, but told me to go for it so I did. In a month I ran up 40k in credit card bills buying equipment and getting an area of our property cleared of trees in readiness for concrete and an 18x35' steel building. The building went up on the pad on a 10-degree day in early January. There was nothing to do about the 5 inches of ice that was on the pad, now inside the building, except to attack it with a pick and torpedo heaters, so it took us 2 days before we were able to stand on the floor and start laying out equipment and getting electricity run in. The casting equipment from Magma was still crated, covered in tarps, while we struggled with the building in that bone-chilling weather.
And a struggle it was and it continued. Continues. This is a difficult business to learn, y'all. But we have been blessed with great good luck and are thriving in these difficult times. From the first day our goal was to let the customers lead us where we needed to go. We do try hard to satisfy our customers and are always happy when one of them drops us a note thanking us for making them feel that they were treated honorably and their needs serviced efficiently.
So business started slow and grew. In those days, we were able to sell on eBay and that is where most of our trade was, before our website began moving its way into the web crawlers and the buzz started. We did a couple of gun shows and had good results but begrudged the time it took away from the manufacturing of bullets. I had a full time job, remember, and a 100-mile daily commute.
You all know the story of eBay going into a fit of Stalinist pique and banning the sale of all cast bullets. That was in August of '07. Well, it was a blow to us but by then, our web traffic was picking up and we were doing better there than we had with eBay, so it wasn't a big problem for us. And sales kept growing and we hired some folks. Some worked out and some didn't. Danny worked out and Josh worked out. Josh needed some tuning up but he is doing fine work now.
So three months ago I quit my job and went full-time into the bullet manufacturing business. Not a moment too soon, as March marked the milestone of having sold and shipped one million bullets in a month. April was better than that, and so was May.
Since I quit, we've added another caster (4 now) and two more sizers (5) and a spare collator that's dedicated to the .380 bullet, which is very very difficult to collate. We had more land cleared, paved it, built a parking lot for employees and customers, bought a 28-foot travel trailer for use as a field office/break area, bought a forklift, and are ordering lead by the truckload.
So we have had a good run, one that in fact has exceeded my wildest dreams. We're making lots of bullets and are able to ship them quickly at a time when (and I don't understand this) other casting companies seem to be having immense difficulty filling their orders inside of weeks or even months. What the heck is that about? Seriously, I want to understand the problem because I don't know.
Anyhow, I'll quit rambling and get to the point:
I've been a Missouri boy all my life. I think that I was maybe 6 or 7 the first time I heard the name "Graf and Sons", based out of Mexico, MO. Throughout my life I have heard nothing but good things about them: Good people, prices, honorable, et al. I knew they were big-time folks who earned their way up the way every successful business does, by pleasing their customers, being smart, being persistent, and being lucky when it counts.
And so today, Missouri Bullet Company is truly honored to be able to announce that Graf and Sons has picked us as their supplier of cast bullets. Our machines and our people will be running real hard next week, I believe, as we get their huge stocking order onto the pallets.
They've ordered every bullet in our lineup and we will shortly be adding new bullets to satisfy their requirements.
So, that's the news I wanted to share with our friends here on THR, as I am convinced that you folks have contributed to the "buzz" that got Graf and Sons interested in us in the first place and I am truly, truly grateful.
Brad and Jo Ann
Missouri Bullet Company
Brad
