AAC, Silencer Co, Griffin Armament, TBAC, Rugged, Liberty Suppressors, Military Arms Channel, Silencer Research, Robert Silvers, Al Paulson, NFA Talk.  Probably some others I'm missing.  It wasn't like testing and publishing results didn't exist, it just wasn't every company that was involved, because some of the companies like AWC chose to talk about tone and stuff like that and act like testing was totally pointless when also their lineup was like stagnant since about 1995.  

Surefire and KAC did testing but didn't release the data as far as I know (I never saw data release anyway).  Ops Inc tested products and even used oscilloscopes to look at frequency, but as far as I know didn't release testing data.

It isn't uncommon for companies not to release data.  I worked at a lighting company in the engineering department and they did all kinds of testing (like rain / storm / hail, illumination, life / heat / cold fire) and they didn't release most of the data but the testing was happening.    

I didn’t attend that event. One of our sales guys [who wanted to move to Texas to be closer to a significant other and recently took a job with Q] took our cans there.

So I don’t know how long TBACs method took, but I believe they took strings and saved labshop templates as projects or something and came back in later and did substantial processing and that was probably the reason the publishing of results took a while after the event was concluded.

I know ours takes about 6 minutes to hook up and shoot five rounds and the one unsuppressed and about half an hour to 40 minutes to process the 6 AHAAH slides from the unweighted wave files that support unsuppressed and 5 round string.

Because of windows, 365, and HBK, the system kind of needs some maintenance intervention every six to twelve months and that involves setting up to test, having a reporting issue (generally failure of excel to communicate with labshop) and then having to update windows call hbk and get a link to a download and run that and reboot, update firmware and update the license and then typically it is operational again. Bill Gates can’t get $400 a year from 365 users without having his software engineers break their software constantly to keep people dependent on updates and subscription services and new versions.  

The 2209 just needed D cell batteries. So the new system is much more cumbersome.

Tone can be as simple as the peak being really short and the rest of the sound being lower, or the A weighted sound being lower.  Sometimes the lower A average (Laeq)has the better tone.  There isn’t a hard and fast answer for how good tone is achieved.  Sometimes a style of baffle sounds better than another.  Sometimes a different style of baffle can be brought into a system to improve the system, or an endcap can change sound level or quality. Over time you pick up a lot of different things to do to change performance.

More volume is going to increase performance so long as the baffle technology is identical.  Often companies with larger cans have them because their technology is poor and they use volume to make up for the technology they don’t have.

The most dramatic tonal differences I have seen are probably something where I would be willing to lose 1.5 maybe 2 DB for a better sounding configuration. Most of the time better tone favors the better performing silencer in peak sound.

I have dropped 2-3DB peak for better performing flash suppressor systems. It would be great not to have to, but flash and sound performance run into each other a lot.

I read that the first time but it didn’t seem like an intentional insult so I didn’t see the point of making a thing of it. I think Rugged has done a fairly good job of manufacturing, and I know they test products and they have published some of their results. I mentioned them on the answer to who tests.  And I missed suppressed nation and that wasn’t intentional.

I agree that the reduced cyclic rate area is a place where greater volume might help, but Im not sure the tactical operators (mil/le/agency) want to tolerate longer cans.

I think people forget that companies have to be profitable. For whatever reason inflation of manufactured goods in metal is far behind food/gas/cars/building materials/wages.

I looked at a charging handle yesterday and the material cost had gone up ~$15 in a period where we have improved the handle and where its price relative to inflated currency devaluation has reduced $26, so thats $41 less profitable product that a shift in pricing of $15 reduces to $26 less profitable, and all I can say as to how that’s feasible is that we have improved efficiency of manufacture and are to an extent downplaying a problem in the interest of continuing to sell a product in a very competitive environment.


To the commentary of testing being a four letter word (which I’m assuming is a negative connotation), Testing that has a cost measured in the profit on 53 units sold is not helpful to the bottom line of companies, and is obviously more of a marketing spend, because most companies have their own testing equipment.  The companies have to support their employees and attempt to give those people a bright outlook on the future. They also have to support customers and some of the profit covers unprofitable undertakings like customer service and warranty repair.

I haven’t ever seen a grocery store hand out 53 cases of free beer to promote a brand of beer.  Grocery stores make a lot of money and mass produced beer costs something like $0.23 a can to make so it is a high profit item.

I don't believe 1-3% at all.  I wouldn't be surprised if they made 20%.  Most of the grocery stores in this country operate with very little competition.  In my area, it's Roundy's Pick N Save (which was bought by Roundys from the McAdams family, and Roundy's was then bought by national brand Kroger) and Walmart predominantly.  When you have two major competitors, you don't have much competition.  Most of the reason to buy other businesses is to reduce competition and increase profit.  

Then you have odd stores like Aldi, who give considerably better deals and a hint of how much the grocery chains make through what they don't take on similar items.  Aldi however doesn't have enough selection to replace the chains. Take local Walmart on Carrs watercrackers- they were charging a price that was something like 2.5 times what Costco charged per ounce (evidence walmart isn't making 1-3%).  Costco is similarly segmented oddly in bulk, with fewer items with better discounts, and is not a total grocer replacement.  Convenience and locality push a considerable amount of where people go for commodity items.

I worked at a grocery store in high school 3 years, and never saw a case of beer thrown out due to expiration, but our current business - the old building was formerly River City Distributing's Watertown import beer storage building, and the former owner's maintenance guy mentioned most of the expired beer was expiring at the distributor and disposed of here.  

I'm tired of people telling me how thrilled I should be to let someone gouge the hell out of my company on test marketing, when none of them are paying money specifically targeted to getting the data they want.  I say it's a bad spend.  And I'm actually in the position to say that.  Todd from Dead Air said the same thing.  This is just an area where some of the consumers who aren't spending the money and the companies that are, differ in their opinions.

Can the two issues even be separated?  If the people in the cat thread could stop stumping for pew it would help the thread to be about CAT.

End users relating their experience with Cat compared to other products would be helpful to move this thread along.

Dealing with posters who essentially are arguing the waltons don’t make money is a waste of time.

Costco is a buyers club, operating in a profit category lower than walmart and grocery stores, and has an average 12% markup, max 15% markup and makes 30% of profit selling companies the ends of aisles, bringing 12 to 16% total profit, before the club membership card profit is figured.

The internet says the gross profit margin of Kroger is 22.7%- my 20% was a total guess.

There are a lot of different ways to discuss profit. My guess would be the smaller number is impacted by Kroger’s operating cost and reinvestment in things like buying out competitors like roundy’s for $800,000,000 to afford them better control of market prices.

Sure, and net can be manipulated to a low number by strategic acquisitions and then that number paraded in front of customers, hiding real profit levels as the companies become present everywhere under a confusing assortment of seemingly competitive brand names.  

There's one more factor you may not have considered.  The industry is busy and it is likely everyone is eventually going to sell out of stock (marketing or not), no matter how much they have, due to the wait times dropping in the regulatory process with the ATF. Even boxing completed stored inventory to fulfill orders is challenging personnel strength at the moment.

We are working to put additional people on shifts to try to maximize productivity at the moment, and have been working in that direction for 3.5 months.  We're running 3 shift production, and two shift assembly to support the goal of not going out of stock right now, and we have a decent amount of inventory, so we're looking like ten months ahead right now, trying to be pro-active.

Everyone knows the NFA has always interfered with interstate commerce in a Constitutionally protected space.  No one ever says it doesn't infringe the Constitution, or that it doesn't interfere with interstate commerce.  We live in a country where we call ourselves free, but we know we're not, and none of our elected officials seem concerned with the fact that they constantly limit our freedom more and more.

At what level of tax does tax constitute legalized slavery on a continent sized plantation?  Every working person I know is sort of working themselves slowly to death with very limited personal time to themselves/families.  All the retirement age people I know are working to pay the bills as if retirement is no longer an option in our economy.  It would be neat to be able to describe that more optimistically but that seems to be how it is.  I don't know anyone whos investments are beating inflation right now.

I appreciate the NFA doing better recently.  That's nice of them.

I think you are talking about the question pertaining to what number of units would have to be sold for the marketing spend to make sense (If I'm not in error).  That depends on the marketing budget % of the product being sold.  2-10% is normal for businesses to spend on marketing according to the internet again, although statistics will vary.  These percentages are probably higher in stuff like straight from China goods like amazon basics stuff that get marked up like 5 fold, but traditional metal CNC manufacturing, made in the US is a much more conservative space for markups which are typically more like vicinity of 20% markup, and the markup % is going to some extent dictate where the marketing spends go in an industry.  

Certainly we shouldn't give companies an award for having metal manufactured in America products so shit that 12% of total sales (not profit but total sales) has to be spent to essentially "program" people to buy them.  That's like the realm of stuff that underperforms or catastrophically fails and is built in a compromised way to be more profitable than normal and essentially "fool people into buying it".  

At 10%, 530 cans would be the answer to validate that 53 unit spend, and that would be a buy 10 get 1 deal in the background before any promotions which are always in play (not insignificant).  

at 3%, 1766 cans would have to be sold, and at that point the marketing spend would be more like an aggressive term set discount in the background before all promotions and discounts.  

A lot of this stuff is going to go to a place where it depends on the emotions of the company.  I think our products should be selling themselves to an extent, because cost to value relationships are high at street prices.  That model has presided over the company while we have grown something like 27,400% in sales from year one, so that's not to say that the model doesn't work.

Still underneath all of this, the testing company needs transparency, like the equipment, the method, and a published market rate table to provide enough confidence to even be considered for doing business with it.  

And that's only the foundation of an initial attempt to see if the "marketing expense" creates the sales to justify itself.  If the marketing doesn't deliver, then it gets the axe.  A lot of marketing models fall flat by failing to properly describe deliverables or to help companies understand how the benefit will happen- like marketing groups that can't even tell companies what they will get in exchange for $___ spend.  Blind faith is a shit business model.