Advertising Strategy
I sometimes get asked: Why don't you send your plates to be tested by Channel X on social media?
The reasons are pretty simple.
Social media personalities often think they know more than they really do. Unless you are designing, building and testing armor - you can't "know" what we know. You have to have experience with all facets of the process to understand those complicated relationships. As an example, a testing video on social media simultaneous with a narrative based on personal opinion does little to educate our customers on the relationships between our armor elements and "why" things are the way they are.
I don't want to discount feedback. Having incoming data from field testing is important and from that perspective, there is some value in it. But folks need to understand that manufacturers are the experts and have seen most of the "issues" with their armor many times over. If the issue(s) still exist, then the manufacturer either allows it due to a cost issue, performance trade-off, or does not fully understand how to address it.
We rarely advertise and build based on word of mouth. We don't need it... and frankly, don't want exposure through social media if that information is lopsided, inaccurate and based on affiliations with other armor manufacturers. Many social media videos will highlight great performance in a product and then cast the armor aside in favor of a manufacturer that's paying them a higher affiliate percentage. If you pay attention, there is little consistency across these channels over time.
We will be selecting a limited number of social media channels to test with in the coming months. But, these channels will be known for objectivity, knowledge and dearth of affiliate links that influence their analysis.
We build to a standard. That standard is the National Institute of Justice 0101.07. To be perfectly clear - I am not aiming to sell a million plates per year. I've run mid-sized companies before and I don't want some of those headaches again. We are a small company, making highly powerful armor that performs as well (often better) than the most famous brands at prices that you can afford.
If you purchase our armor, you are acquiring some of the best built armor in the world. We aim to keep it that way.
WG