How exactly does T-Rex arms develop new product and what are some of the lessons that we have learned as we have grown?
Because things have changed a lot
Welcome to another T-Rex talk this is Isaac Botkin and today we're gonna be talking about
Lessons that we have learned as we have
Changed how we do things when it comes to R&D and most of those changes are actually because
The company has grown and so we just need a different way of doing it
But as you can imagine we've also learned a lot of new things and with learning the new things comes
New ways of doing stuff. That being said the growth is really what is probably brought about the biggest change in the
Holster development department we have like half a dozen guys and then we have a couple of engineers
Supporting them that the engineers do a lot of stuff for everybody in the company, but primarily
They build the tooling for building the new products, which means they're heavily involved in the new product R&D process
So that's quite a few people doing R&D for a company our size
But it's also a lot of people doing R&D compared to
Five years ago and the reason we've been talking about that this week is because we've been discussing
What things were like earlier when the company was smaller and a lot of our procedures were different but also because
a gentleman came in to visit the shop and
We were able to talk to him about his work as an industrial designer and product developer at a giant company
We feel like a pretty big company compared to where we were five years ago
But this guy was making very complicated products for a company that has
two or three times as many factories as T-Rex has employees, so their R&D process is
Very different than ours when it comes to scale and yet
When you're talking about teamwork when you're talking about having a bunch of people working together on the R&D process
The process is in systems that you have to put in place for that teamwork to actually work
apparently not that different between a team of
eight or nine guys or
larger and larger teams obviously the the team at the top that's doing the R&D is going to be
Running subsequent teams that run subsequent teams in those bigger
situations, but we still get to be very very hands-on. That's something that hasn't changed that much over the last five years
But five years ago Holster development was pretty different. We were still making a lot of holsters by
putting hot kydex around a
Blue gun with popsicle sticks taped to it and squishing it between two pieces of foam
So Holster development was pretty simple if you found out that say Cogworx had made an extended slide release
Then you would just tape another popsicle stick to the blue gun and every holster that you made subsequently
was Cogworx
slide release compatible or if you decided that a holster needed an extra hardware hole an extra retention screw you would just
start drilling an extra hole and adding the extra screw and
All subsequent holsters were that new design
Actually about five years ago our volume was high enough that we'd kind of gotten rid of tape and popsicle sticks and we were gluing things
I permanently to the blue guns, but still it was a pretty easy thing to modify one way or the other and
We had low enough volume going out the door that we did not exactly all of our beta testing on customers
But once we knew that we had enough blocking to clear the Cogworx slide
Stop then we would just make all our holsters that way from then on out same with new retention screws
Same with a slightly different cut path shape at that point. We were still cutting everything on bandsaws
So it was just a matter of telling the guys cutting the holsters to make it longer make it shorter cut a little deeper into here
Make this sweat guard an extra quarter inch higher just write it on the instructions that they look up at and
Done. There was a huge amount of speed and agility that comes from partly running small teams of people
And partly because we were selling to small groups of customers the consequences for
Making 10% of our holsters wrong was pretty minimal because that was you know
One holster and we knew that our customer support was really good
We would catch that one holster
We would make him a new holster and so the consequences for making one holster bad
We're not very good and the volume was low enough and our customer
Support and customer communication was good enough that we felt comfortable doing some level of beta testing with
Customers obviously we weren't sending out stuff that was unsafe. We weren't sending out stuff that was wildly experimental, but
We didn't do nearly as much of the little teeny fine-tuning and ergonomic and other stuff
We didn't do quite as much of that stuff in house when we were selling to lower
Volumes of customers and that is how a lot of people work
There's a ton of people in the gun industry that have really low volume
And they get a huge amount of customer feedback from stuff that they make in really low volume and when you make
Definitely low volume you can change stuff really quickly and the feedback loop between product development and customer is very small
and so you can get changes very quickly and
There's an advantage to that for sure and it's something that I
Definitely miss at times partly because there's a very nostalgic
sort of memory of that time but also because I like the speed and
The nimbleness and having that really short feedback loop where we know exactly what customers are thinking right after we make
The first prototype. I'm just kidding. We never sent out first prototypes
But we would make a couple of prototypes
We would decide that we like them and we would start sending that product out to customers really quickly
And we would start telling people about the product changes that we had made on instagram
Really quickly there would be even if we weren't sending product out there would usually be some kind of conversation with folks on instagram
About something that we were tinkering with and doing
The same day or week that we were doing the tinkering and the doing that's probably the thing that I I miss the most
But we work on stuff that has a much longer development cycle
And so we can't really talk about stuff ahead of time as much the number of things that we try and experiment with that don't go anywhere is
relatively high and
We're slow enough that some of our really really good ideas
Uh, we really want to flesh out and confirm before we blast them out across the entire internet
And it's not that we're necessarily trying to keep
Secrets necessarily, but a lot of times we do want head starts on competitors
Even if we're going to open source the product later, we do want to get a little bit of a head start on
Uh, this thing that we're working on but a lot of it is we just want to vet the product
We really want to test this and make sure that it's a good idea
Before customers buy it or before other people start to jump on that bandwagon and make something that isn't
Fully tried and it's because our sales volume is really high
That that this has become a priority when we're
Launching a new product a brand new product that we know will sell 10 holsters a week
It's not that those 10 customers don't matter as much as hundreds
But fixing their problems is so much easier and can be done so much more quickly
If you launch a product that's going to sell hundreds and hundreds of holsters the first hour
You really need to make sure that those are good holsters
You really need to make sure that you're not going to do a recall of hundreds of holsters
And you're going to be making those hundreds of holsters on tooling that is fairly difficult to change
So that's why everything takes longer and everything takes more testing and everything takes
Just a little bit more
I would say secrecy during those early stages because we don't want to disappoint people by announcing a product
That is six months of testing and tooling up away from being
Available now it sounds like I'm complaining because I miss the old days of nimbleness
And agility and really quickly getting feedback from customers and really quickly making changes to molds and to our process and just having
constant improvement happen
every other day as opposed to after months of
Massive upgrades to the production line then I do I do miss those days
But I'm not complaining about where where we are today
This is kind of the cost of doing business when you have so much business
And I'm not complaining about the growth and I'm not complaining about the opportunity to send holsters out to so many more people
Um, then we were able to five years ago and I'm not complaining about
Working on a team. This has actually been a tremendous thing that has happened
Uh, is that the holster development guys have gone from being me to half a dozen people and a couple of engineers and we get to work together
And that has been tremendous not just for the products
Having multiple people in a room bouncing ideas off of each other is really really good for the product development and the design and bringing in
People who have engineering experience and capability is really really good for the finished product and the process
But it's also just been really fun and good for me. I have had a tremendous time
Learning stuff and just the collaborative design process with more people has been really fun
The only downside is you guys aren't involved in it nearly as much anymore
That's the thing that I miss and I kind of miss the speed because I can uh, I can get impatient
There's lots of times when we're working on something and I think it's really cool
And we do the first days worth of tests and we find out something really interesting and I think
This would be a great instagram post
But the product is going to be months away from
Physically available because there is obviously a pretty big difference between being capable of building a
Prototype to production standards and being capable of supporting every gun and every light
For every t-rex customer who's going to buy it in that first week
Those are massively different amounts of preparation and tooling we lose some speed we lose some agility but
Obviously we're a business and we like it when business is good
We like it when the manufacturing process is efficient with good automation and good tooling
And we really like it when we have fully tested and vetted product and we're confident that a we can meet the demands of the customers
When it comes to quantity, but we can also meet their demands and expectations when it comes to quality
So these are really really good things that i'm not complaining about
But it is just a new process
The other thing that has changes is there's a little bit more division of labor
This is a neat thing that comes when you are running teams as opposed to doing everything yourself
Uh, but the team is small enough that everybody still gets to wear a lot of hats which is probably equal parts
Rewarding, you know having the variety and frustrating because it's difficult to focus on the one thing
But the division of labor means that there can be a little more focus even though the product development team is doing
Multiple things at one time and and it's not just kydex development
We work on the development of other products
And then there's other people in the company that work on the development of products as well
There's actually lots of people tinkering with designs
And um, everything does kind of swim around the company and get feedback from a lot of people
This is an advantage of having a larger company is
We are able to do internal product testing with
Quite a few folks
So we have a much better program of keeping track of
Prototypes now than we did say this time last year when we launched the iron side project
But we have a whole bunch of random things. Please do not speculate on what they are
We have a whole bunch of random things floating around the company
Uh floating might be the wrong term because we have like spreadsheets saying who has what version and when they got it and how long they've had it
And when they're supposed to bring it back so they can get an upgraded version
Uh, we we have had to build a bunch of those processes
But we have a lot of feedback and we have a lot of testing
And that teaches us a lot of stuff on a lot of different products
Some of those are the kydex development team developing brand new holsters
From the ground up like the side guard 2.0 or the iron side
Some of their work is new model support
So they will work on all the molds to support a new cz or a new hk
Uh just kidding
We're now making holsters for the new hk
And then there's some level of not exactly maintenance but sort of troubleshooting work for the production line
So we make lots and lots of hdpe molds which are bolted to aluminum plates with vacuum plenums cutting them and
Um, that's pretty sturdy if you drop one of those it's probably fine
But if you drop it a second time, it's probably not fine
So making new molds that occasionally get dropped fixing stuff that occasionally gets broken or
if stuff changes occasionally a
Fire arm manufacturer or a light manufacturer will make
Tiny dimensional tweaks to their product and we usually hear about this from customers
We usually don't hear about this direct from the company making the tiny tweaks the customer will usually write to us and say
Hey, this this such and such tlr one holster just has a lot of slop in it
And customer service
Talks to those guys about the different things that they are experiencing and ask them exactly what gun they have and exactly when they bought it
and exactly what light they have
And sometimes we find out that there is a new light
Um, it's just they've changed our production process slightly or there's a new gun
They've changed the injection mold for the frame of the gun just slightly and we have a few thousands difference
And we decide whether or not we can
Fix this by changing the mold or some other some other solution
So
We're kind of split in between these three jobs of inventing brand new product
Adding wider support to existing product and the overall product support and production line support
And those different jobs are yeah, they they offer a lot of variety. They offer a lot of very interesting
Opportunities to experiment learn new things and solve
New unexpected never before seen problems the one thing that all three of those different hats have in common is
Troubleshooting and that is where a team really comes into its own having
Multiple sets of eyes and multiple brains figuring out how to troubleshoot very mysterious things
Uh, that is great. I am so so glad that I'm not the only one trying to figure out
Very mysterious problems and if listeners to this podcast work at other gun industry companies or other holster makers or smaller holster makers
Uh, you should be right in saying that
A larger rnd team would be an asset. This is absolutely true
But it does come again at a cost of some level of overhead
some level of
Just time coordinating the team and figuring stuff out and in order to support that team you need to have a higher volume
Of sales and you need to have a more complicated production line and that's going to cost you some speed
And it's going to cost you some agility
Um, that is definitely true for us now
We did have a very interesting experiment this past week and again
Because of all the things that i've just talked about I can't give you any details
Also, this involves another company that isn't us so we're not at liberty to talk about their stuff either but
Occasionally a company will come to us and they will tell us about something that is going to be new
Uh, we don't have to troubleshoot it
After the fact
And sometimes it's something that is not super amazing like a new h&k pistol and we're like, oh well
Actually just kidding h&k's never come to us
But occasionally a company will come to us with something new and they would like us to move quickly
To support it or we want to move quickly to see if we can support it
And when we actually drop everything that is on our to-do list or hit pause on some of the procedural stuff that we have to do
And we actually go full throttle making 3d models cutting molds building prototypes
We get to go pretty fast and it is very fun to start the week off
Learning about a new thing and finishing the week with actual functional prototypes that look pretty good and feel pretty good
I think uh, the team has done a phenomenal job at maintaining
A bit of agility even within all of the other stuff that we have to do now
Sometimes we got to push pause
In order to sprint but the fact that we still have the ability to do that
Uh, is really really fun
But now we run into another problem, which is t-rex
Model support has grown so when we invented the new iron side we actually
Got that iron side dialed in pretty quickly
We went through a lot of prototypes of small changes and tweaks to the ergonomics
The durability testing a bunch of stuff and we got that thing to a point where it was extremely comfortable
It was extremely practical. Uh, we knew how we were going to make it and we knew that it was a really good product
Pretty quickly. It was not very many months of dialing in changes and testing before we knew that we had arrived at a really
Solid outside the waistband concealment holster
But in order to turn it into a product that t-rex customers could buy we needed to make
Something like 150 molds because we wanted it to be available for
almost all of the guns and
All of the lights for all of the guns and right-handed and left-handed and so on
So it took us about six months to actually tool up to produce the holster
Once we had a really good idea of what the holster was now as we tooled up to produce the holster
We also made little design tweaks here and there discovered new things continue to our endurance testing
Sopped a couple things out here and a couple of things out there
So there was continued product development
But just the the sheer amount of labor that is involved in building the tooling for the product
It's not insignificant and that's why the the t-rex arms channel or my
Instagram page no longer has videos about stuff that we were working on last week
We've also just changed some policies internally
We no longer make a mold for a gun and a light and put it on the website
We kind of wait until that particular model is well supported right hand left hand all the holsters
There's now three different holster lines and a bunch of lights
That's just it ends up being 20 to 30 molds when we want to do that
So building and testing 20 30 different molds making sure that holsters that come off of those things have a super super low error rate
That just takes time. So my recommendation to you if you are a small
holster company or a small gun company or a small any kind of company and you're thinking about having the kind of resources that t-rex does
Having an rnd team of multiple people who can put their heads together and really function as a team
Um, I won't lie to you. That is a tremendous asset and it is a joy to be a part of
uh, but
The cost is that agility. So if you are small
I want you to remember the agility that you have and really lean into that and then if you are a bigger company
And uh, you kind of like me miss some of that speed and that agility
That you have lost as you have grown
Just remember the assets and the capabilities that you have as a result of that growth and of that size and
lean into that
Um, there's someone that I have been listening to on some other media talking about other processes
Actually talking about creating media and as he has talked about different mediums or media and different
Tools he says try to figure out what this tool gives you for free and then lean into that
Well, well technically there's no such thing as a free lunch, but as you are a certain size or have a certain capability or have certain structures in place
Figure out what are the strengths of?
Being a small one man band and then lean really heavily into those strengths and then what are the strengths of coming from having a
large development team and a slower process
And lean into those so that you can make the most of where you actually are and don't just you know
Assume that the grass is always greener everywhere else and that'll be true outside of uh of companies
I mean right now uh, Heidi and I have kids that are pretty young and occasionally we say to ourselves
Oh, if only the kids were older they could help us with such and such but i'm confident that when the kids are older
We will say oh wasn't it great when the kids were younger and we would do this
So figure out what the strengths are to the situation that you are in now and lean into those things for the maximum
Productivity and joy possible. That's your that's your homework assignment for today
Bet that wasn't what you expected from an r&d podcast
And then as you grow or as your family grows your kids grow or your business grows or your r&d team grows
You will have more power you will have more capability and you know with great power comes great responsibility
And then you know with great responsibility comes great caution and with great caution and testing
They're usually comes great cost and with great cost to you
You need to really look into uh greater rli, you know to be a good steward of these things
And then in order to get greater rli you you need greater power
So that is uh, that is kind of the growth curve of of companies. Sometimes that's the feedback loop
So that's uh, not necessarily how things have always been at t-rex
But uh, it certainly has felt that way sometimes from the the r&d side in order to afford the kind of r&d that we've needed to do
We've needed to market product in order to support the product that is already selling
We've needed greater processes as the market or the customers or the situation kind of drags you into growing a team
Or changing the way that you do things or adding complexity here
Yeah, don't just follow along blindly
Be mindful about the new things that you have access to or the things that you can no longer do and
Lean into the new capabilities. Uh, don't just find yourself someplace wishing for the old days
That's uh, that's kind of my my takeaway from thinking about this thing
Thanks to the input from
Guys who have come along from bigger companies and talked to us about what uh, what some of our strengths are and what we can be doing better
and
Reminiscing about the older days and thinking about some of the things that were really nice
But also some of the bottlenecks we ran into and problems that we just couldn't solve with the resources at our disposal
So that is the podcast
And I want to thank you for listening to this podcast
this this principle of
Smaller and more agile and larger and more resources but less speed
Uh, this is also true of our media
One of the things that I really love about the podcast is how fast it is to produce
Uh, I can just pull out this recorder and record almost anywhere
And uh, that's really quick and simple and easy and not that many people listen to this podcast
So it feels like there's considerably less pressure
Than working on a youtube video that needs to be you know high production value and is going to be seen by millions of eyeballs
That is uh, that is a little bit different
So thank you so much for listening to the podcast giving us a place to talk about some ideas
And test some stuff out with you if it's shorter feedback loop more directly
Uh, thank you so much for your feedback all of you that write into the customer service guys
That feedback is really really valuable here at trex
Our big goal is equipping serious citizens
And so we want to reach as many people as possible with the best equipment possible and the best
Information possible the most useful content possible
So your feedback is invaluable and uh, we appreciate your listenership and viewership and
customorship immensely
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