On the podcast, Chris Mosley, the creator of Mutant Metals, made an appearance once more to share about his recent partnership with Rogue, his vision for the future, give a tour of his impressive warehouse, and more.
We start off by discussing how social media went crazy when Rogue created the Velocidor, which was a very similar product to the Ultimate Dip Attachment from Mutant Metals. However, and not to spoil the story on the podcast, it seems like all worked out in the end.
You can listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts – YouTube, Spotify, Apple, etc.
He states the best way to support what he’s doing right now is to purchase the UDA through Rogue.
Podcast Transcribed
Hey everybody, this is Jake. I have Chris, the founder of Mutant Metals back on the podcast for round two. We’re going to dive right into the rogue stuff. So Chris, um, first question, when did you see that rogue release the Velocidor and what were your initial thoughts? Um, I think I seen it the first day that they previewed it.
Or maybe the day after, um, I actually didn’t see it myself. I just kind of woke up to, you know, after I checked my Instagrams and email and Facebook, and I was getting lit up with all kinds of stuff about, about their dip attachment. Um, and at first I think it was just kind of like, you don’t know what’s going to happen.
You know, is it, is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? You know, don’t know. But then it went into kind of, you know, this, this fear of, well, you know, I know there are different products and I, I checked them out before I said anything. I tried to get as much information before I said anything. Um, and, you know, they, they look similar on the face.
Um, they are, they are different, um, but I didn’t really know how different until I kind of dug a little more into their preview and, um, but at first it was kind of scary because, you know, you have this, this freight train coming at you, you know, that’s, that’s rogue fitness and, you know, you don’t know, like, are they targeting you?
Are they just, um, have they just noticed that it’s some, um, part in the market that they want to address, whatever. Um, but yeah, I mean, initially it was kind of scary. And it was basic, basically it all happened within two days. It was just a bunch of people sending me posts, um, you know, and then. The day after, after everything kind of came out, um, I got an email, uh, from Roke the next day.
So, I’m like, oh boy. Yeah, the first, first initial reaction is, you know, what is this going to be? Are they, is there something about their patent that they’re going to try to do whatever with? I don’t know. You know, so initially, My guard was up quite a bit. Um, you know, they asked to have a phone call with me.
Uh, and I talked to Omic over at, uh, Rogue Fitness. And, you know, at first I, I told him, you know, I’d like to record this phone call, you know, real guarded. Um, cause I didn’t know what they’re going to say, what they’re going to do. You know, I, no idea. And I just know, I know about as much about rogue as like any other person would know that’s just in this industry.
Um, you know, I, I knew that Bill was the owner, you know, I’ve seen him on Instagram. Um, And I was familiar with their products, but besides that, I really didn’t know what was going on. But, um, yeah, so that first, that first phone call was kind of nerve wracking. Um, but they, they seemed initially really concerned about, you know, they didn’t want to target me.
They, they wanted to make it clear that they weren’t targeting me, um, and that they didn’t want to impact me financially. And I don’t think they really knew. Our whole situation and how it might impact us. Um, you know, because if say three, four people decide to buy the rogue version over our version a month, yeah, that’s our, that’s our electric bill.
That’s like. That’s, that’s going into a shipping account. You know, it’s something just to keep the ball moving forward. And, uh, that was the scariest part is just because you know the power of their distribution and they make good products. So it’s, it, it wasn’t like the Chinese versions that I’ve seen previously where.
Um, you know, you look at them and you could tell they’re, they’re pretty low quality. Um, they don’t really look the same. They’re kind of just sloppy, uh, all around. Um, but the Rogue version, I mean, they, they got their stuff down as far as manufacturing goes. So, um, and for like a cost plus model that they run, you know, they usually produce a pretty good consistent product.
So it’s like. I used to be able to just kind of hang my hat on the idea that, you know, our quality’s higher, you know, people like American Made, um, so it wasn’t a huge deal, and I don’t have any patents or anything like that on any of my stuff so far. Um, so, yeah, I mean, it, It was, um, it was interesting, but
I, I, yeah, I’d be, yeah, I’d, I’d be curious to, to just like hear who is Amik. I, I, I’m doubt, I doubt most people listening. No. And then, um, and then, yeah, what, like, where did you leave, where did you leave that first conversation? Like, what were the next steps? So I believe Amik is there. Um, he’s kind of like their head of, uh, like development or, um, and he contacted me first.
Um, and their initial, their initial solution to the problem was. Um, so our problem was that they offered to let us, uh, sell our products in their store, you know, and that that alone would have been huge. Yeah. Um, and I thought about that for a little bit, you know, we got off the phone and, um. Yeah, initially I was pretty excited that they were interested in trying to do something to rectify the situation a little bit.
Um, but then it was just this, it was back to terror again. Cause it’s like, this is rogues distribution. I can’t keep up with my own production right now. Um, you know, there’s no way that I’m going to all of a sudden be able to handle another, who knows, you know, 100 orders a month or whatever it worked out to be.
And it would take me forever to get these things in stock all the time. So I knew they were just going to be out of stock constantly. And it was just going to be another scaling nightmare, um, that I knew I couldn’t handle. And I expressed that to them. And, um, they, they said, well, you know, they, they had a different idea as far as why don’t we take a look at maybe building a version of this thing for you and that, that was, that was a, a crazy, you know, I’m, it still hasn’t really sunk in what’s going on right now, but, um, you know, they, they offered to, um, to build the dip attachment.
And, um, so… What I did was we set up, we set up a meeting. I went down the road HQ. Um, you know, they walked, they walked us around, um, kind of showed us what they do, what, what they’re, what they’re about there. Um, I met with Bill and Amik, you know, they took us to lunch. We, we talked everything over as far as like what our intentions are, what their intentions are.
Um, and. I talked to Bill quite a bit and, um, I talked to him before I went down to Rogue HQ also. He gave me a call and, you know, he, he seemed really adamant that he didn’t want, um, he didn’t want this vision of Rogue as some kind of, Big bully in the market that’s just going to take over everything, you know, um, you know, they still, when we were down there working on a lot of projects, still trying to, to innovate on certain fronts.
And it’s just this, it’s this crazy facility that is kind of reminiscent of like, what you would see it like GM or Ford or something like that. Everything is just so systematic. Everything is dialed. Everything is like this military esque. You know, in a good way, kind of just everything has its place.
Everything does its job and everything is, you know, is dialed in. And, um, so, and that experience to kind of open my eyes a little bit to what it would take to scale a manufacturing business. Um, and I was, I’ve been kind of looking at my life recently as far as, you know, do, do I really want to go down this road of scaling a manufacturing business?
Because to build something like this, to build these systems to. Um, find the right people, everything that it takes to do what they do. Um, I’m not sure that I’m in the position right now to do something like that. Yeah. So it, it was a combination of like excitement and awe just being able to see this facility that, you know, I have products from most of the people in the community have products from, um, and to see what it takes to put out things at that level.
Um, and it was this mix of, of that and kind of fear again of what, what do I really want to do moving forward with this? Because it’s, you know, I’m, I’m mid thirties. I have 2 kids. I have a teenager. I have a toddler. I have a wife that is ex military. She’s disabled, a lot of foot issues, both feet, leg issues, nerve issues, everything.
And, um,
it’s, and that’s one of the, one of the problems we’ve had with, um, you know, scaling recently is, you know, we’re, we’re relatively, we’re, we are organized, you know, we, We have systems in place. They’re just not as robust as they need to be yet. And a lot of that came from, you know, when I started this and we talked about this before, but when I first started, I looked at it as how many of these do I have to build just to pay my bills for the next month?
It wasn’t. And, and that’s really where I went wrong the first time the mistake was thinking about this as just the first month in the future or first couple of months in the future. Um, I wasn’t thinking of it as a business initially that I was going to scale that I was going to build into this, this big thing.
But people kind of latched on to the products and you know that ball got kicked down the hill and it’s been this constant game of trying to scale the business on the fly. And try to integrate new systems and try to improve, you know, our work environment to be more efficient. And, you know, when I started, I started with, uh, 19, I think it’s a 69 or 70 clausing lathe.
Um, that’s that was beat the hell, um, a bench grinder. bandsaw and, um, you know, uh, uh, drill press that wasn’t even a drill press. It was a, uh, old valve seat grinder that I bought at a, uh, at an industrial auction. Yeah. So it was really just getting the tools to, to just start making things, but they’re, they just weren’t, um, they weren’t built to do what we’re doing now.
And you know, I, since then I’ve bought, you know, a better band saw, another lathe, another drill press, um, and we, and, uh, made these efforts to scale. But it’s man, when you, when you go in rogue and you see all of this crazy equipment and the automation and like. And what it takes to do that, it, it really kind of, you know, it, it really opened my eyes to what, what, um, what am I going to want to do to, am I trying to scale a manufacturing business?
You know, what, what am I going to do? As far as, you know, what, what is this business going to look like and you asked me before, um, you know, last time we talked about like, what, where do I see Newton in 5 years? And I don’t think I had a really good answer for you because, you know, I wasn’t really thinking that far ahead yet.
And you also asked me what advice I’d give to somebody and. Yeah, that part’s still true, but you know, if you’re, if you’re going into a business or, um, you’re going, you need to, you need to look at it from the standpoint of this is going to be successful. How do I handle that? You know, what systems do I need to put in place to make sure, um, everything runs smoothly and everything does its job and the people that need to do those jobs are accountable and.
Um, you know, I made the mistake of coming at this from like a technician standpoint of, you know, we’re gonna, we’re going to do all the welding. We’re going to do all the cutting. We’re going to do everything, you know, just to get just to get this. Thing moving. Yeah, because I had to get out of this situation.
My wife couldn’t work. I, I was really struggling mental health wise with where I was at. Um, a lot of that was my daughter getting a little older. And, you know, they start talking about, well, I want to do this when I’m, when I grow up and I couldn’t, I couldn’t keep, uh, looking at her and telling her, you know, follow your dreams, do, do whatever, you know, go after it.
Keep. You know, all the, all the stuff we all want to tell our kids to do, you know, and then, but I’m working this job that I hate and I’m miserable every day and I can’t engage with my kids. And, you know, it was kinda,
it was really messing with me for a while. Um, and I, and I started, I started this to do that, to be able to, to, to be able to tell my kids to do what you want to do, to, you know, if you see something in the world you don’t like to try to change it. Um, but, you know, I’m here being this hypocrite, you know.
Because I’m not, uh, hold on. Give me a second here. Uh, no, you’re, you know, good.
I just, I, I didn’t feel right, you know, constantly, constantly telling her, you know, you need to focus on your grades. You need to get your stuff together. Um, you know, and at this time she was 13 or whatever, you know, she’s more focused on her friends than anything. And, Um, but so I was just in this, I was in this rush to get out of that situation and get into some environment that was going to push me forward regardless of what that was.
And instead of building the business, it was. Just building equipment. You know, it wasn’t one wasn’t building mutant metals as a manufacturer as a developer is whatever you want to call it. Um,
so, and so we would, and we kind of got our stuff together for a little bit there. I had my cousin working for me. Um, we were banging stuff out. We were finally making lead times consistently. Um, and then, you know, he decided that he was going to go work for his dad on his business. Um, and when he did that, I was solo for a few months and that’s when stuff really started getting out of hand as far as lead times.
And I was keeping up for a while, but. You know, the lathe would go down, the other lathe would go down, the drill would go down and there wasn’t anybody I could call to come repair this stuff. You know, I, I had to figure it out. I had to modify a lot of equipment. Um, you know, I’ve had 3D printer go down multiple times.
Um, you know, just everything and it would be. It would be, you know, um, I’d go to order a more stainless bar and they say, well, sorry, you know, this component of this stainless comes from Russia or whatever. And because of that, we’re back ordered for, for six weeks or, you know, so any mistake, any, , any like issue in that chain of what it took to produce this stuff kind of snowballed into bigger and bigger issues.
And there was no robust system to fall back on. You know, I imagine if rogue has these issues and I’m sure they do, I’m sure they have issues with equipment going down and material issues and stuff like that, but they have such robust systems that back everything up. That it doesn’t grind them to a halt.
Yeah. Um, and I’m sure we could build that eventually as far as just making the system more robust and, um, having backup equipment, which we do now backup welders, backup drill, backup lathe. Um, but it’s just still not optimal. Um, so when Rogue came in and they offered to make the dip attachment and I went down there and seen that and it got me thinking about, you know, that question you asked me, where do I see this in five years?
And do I have what it takes to build this out to what, where I want it to be? And the initial idea was, you know, let’s build mutant metals as this manufacturer of highly customizable equipment that filled as many needs as possible. Um, you know, almost that, that common mistake of trying to be everything to everybody, you know.
Um, and, you know, we did okay for a while at being able to do that about custom colors and, you know, Welded end caps on equipment like all the all the premium features that people wanted. Um, but it was just it was so much work for the way that the way that we have to do the manufacturing. It’s just not sustainable.
And I looked at what what investment would be required to. Really ramp up like we’re talking lasers, CNC lays, CNC mills, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of initial investment just to just to get. To a point where, you know, we can make our lead times that we could come up with new products and, and get them out there.
Um, and the more I look at that, the more unrealistic it kind of seems to be at this point in time. So, you know, I, what I. How I see this going now is, um, you know, we’re still, we’re, uh, we’re still going to make the stuff we make now, you know, Rogue is going to make their version of the dip attachment. Um, it has, you know, some differences to it.
Cosmetically, they have a integrated gusset. , which I’ll show you here in a minute. Um, mm-hmm. , it’s st it’s a little stiffer than ours. Um, it’s a touch heavier. Um, but all around it’s, it’s pretty close to what we’re making already. Uh, right. You know, they’re gonna be offering different options. They mentioned they’re gonna offer color options in the future.
Um, you could get ’em now in stainless handles or black carbon steel handles, black carbon steel pens, stainless. Um, so they’re, they’re, they’re trying to keep like that theme of still feel like filling as many needs as you can, because, you know, this, this community, this industry so individualized now. Um, you know, people want the custom colors.
They want, they want the, the premium materials. Um, so I think they’re so far, they’re doing a good job at trying to keep with that theme and hopefully we could expand into that a little more. But anyway,
when, like, if you read our homepage on the, on our website, it says, you know, we’re focused on the home gym community and we’re focused on, um, innovation and the common mistake a lot of people make is you think of innovation as. Um, as you know, just a cool idea or whatever, but, you know, innovation really isn’t innovation unless you could get it out there unless you could make it a real tangible thing that isn’t just a physical model, but it’s a model that can work that could be marketed that can be expanded, you know, um, it has it has to work and you have to be able to deliver it and, you know, Right now, I’m, I’m good at making things work, but, um, what we’re not good at right now is getting the stuff into the hands of people, you know, at the scale that’s necessary, and I don’t think I really understood how large this community of home gym users was, until I started getting deeper into, you know, communicating with everybody with just seeing how, just seeing what sales were like and all these new people coming in constantly.
Um, and you know, like I said, it was just, it was this mistake of not thinking about, um, not thinking about scaling from the beginning, not thinking about it really being successful, but just thinking about it as this is how I need to make money. And. I just need to figure out how to pay my bills for next month and I’ll figure out the rest from there.
Um, so I think I think what the more what we’re gonna end up doing here is gonna take the opportunity that rogues given us here. Um, because though through the dip attachment, we will get a piece of everyone sold and With, with those resources, um, we’re gonna back off a little bit. As far as manufacturing goes, uh, we’re gonna get our lead times caught up.
Um, once we hit a certain threshold on lead times, there’s a chance that we might stop production altogether, um, for a period of time and restructure the business model. More towards development and restructure. Our main customer is not just… Not just the home gym user, but the companies that have already built these super robust systems to serve these communities already.
Um, because I’m just not, I’m not in a position right now to scale something like this. And I’ll show you, I’ll show you why here in a minute, but, um,
this just makes more sense to me. Um, you know, I have product ideas Maybe, maybe, like, I’d say a third of those, if I had the resources, I could probably get a working model of within the next two years. If that’s all I was focusing on, um, and a lot of, and a lot of them don’t have any current analog in the market.
There’s no, there’s nothing really like what they are. Um, and they solve some problems that, um, that I’ve always had is a home gym user and that I know other people have, and I’d like to really just focus on that. Um, so I think what we’ll do is in the future, instead of instead of keeping with this, um, this model of build the order, which is extremely difficult to predict.
It’s extremely difficult to predict how much material you have to keep backlogged, you know, it’s harder to organize your. Um, your production, um, you do the one benefit is, you know, exactly what you need to make, but you’re already starting in the hole as far, as far as time goes, you know, you’re, um, and because of that, any issue, like the issues I talked about.
We’ll continue the compound. Um, and right. Yeah. Uh, it seems like you were never able to, to catch up and then little, little issues kept popping up. If you followed, you fell even more behind and you weren’t able to innovate as much as you’d like. snapbacks came out. I pretty much stopped working on new stuff.
Like I just, I just couldn’t, you know, we’re doing all these hours. I was already getting burnout. And even with being burnout, couldn’t slow down, you know, I’ve worked seven days a week, every week, pretty much since this started and you know, what I got out of that last job for, to be able to raise my kids, to be able to, you know, I have a physical therapy degree.
But I can’t help my wife because I don’t have time to do it. Um, you know, my daughter has same, some of the same, you know. Mental health issues that I had at her age. Um, and I have the tools to help her with that, but I don’t have the time to do it. And the whole reason I got into this beyond just making money was to get ideas out there.
Was the, you know, take a lot of these ideas that I had from being in a home gym and getting them out there. Because I know people have these problems. I know, I know people are looking for these products, and that’s how I feel I can bring value to the community the best, is by focusing on that piece, and then using the help of these other manufacturers, and You know, not just Rogue, but you know, I’ll be honest, Rogue let out this hand.
So we’re gonna, we’re going to do everything we can to serve them first. You know, if we come up with a product idea, it is going to go to Rogue first. And if they don’t want to do it for some reason, um, you know, it doesn’t fit their manufacturing model, doesn’t make the margin they need, whatever it is. Um, sorry, I got dogs in the background here.
Um, that’s all right, but, uh, you know, we’ll put it out there and I think what we’ll do is we’ll do batch runs of new products. So the idea that I have in mind is to come out with a new product, produce, say, 20 to 100 of them, depending on what it is, and then not produce those again, um, you know, maybe send out some beta test units.
Uh, dial stuff in as much as we can, and then try to deliver it to these manufacturers in a fully cooked version that they can take and directly integrate into their workflows. Um, because like, uh, a business like Rogue, they’re so, they’re so large that and there’s so many factors to consider that when you’re developing something, you know, it’s, it’s tough to really be super innovative because you’ve already, you’ve already, not that, not that Rogue hasn’t innovated anything, you know, they’re, I think they’re doing a lot more than people think they are as far as that goes.
Um, but you have to understand with a company like that, that to launch a product like this might, might cost them, you know, six figures just to get a product going. So like the stuff with the patents and I kind of have to eat my words a little bit here as far as, um, you know, I’ve made posts in the past about not wanting to get patents and.
Whatever, but when you’re talking about that large of an investment and then all the people in that system that rely on that system to make money to produce, you know, you have to try to protect that as much as possible because you’re, you’re steering this giant ship and you got to be able to predict what’s going to happen as far out as possible.
And part of that is. You know, protecting the design. So, and I understand that a lot of these companies would much rather us have protection on it and then license it. Um, so it’s not just knocked off everywhere and deal with the Chinese copies and stuff as they come. Um, so there are some ideas that I think I’m going to pursue some, um, intellectual property on for that purpose.
Um, and then, you know, if there’s an idea that nobody wants to do because we’re supported by Rogue or by any other manufacturer that we decide to work with. Um, because that’s going to be the bulk of our income, we may be able to just release a product and a certain quantity that doesn’t make any money.
This just solves a problem. And I think, I think by trying to add as much value as possible and trying to, you know, provide the best customer experience for those, for those 20 to 100 people who get that run that get that initial test run, you know. By adding that value, we can, we can create a closer relationship with our customer that these manufacturers might have a hard time replicating.
Um, I’d like to be involved in the community more, you know, it sucked not to be able to go down to the home gym con, you know, and see what you guys were doing. And, um, you know, I really wanted to go down and talk to some of the other manufacturers that are doing real cool stuff. Um, you know, you have, uh, like Cleva built and Um, or cleaver or however you pronounce it.
Yeah, there were a time, uh, you know, surplus strengths doing some cool stuff. Um, black iron fit. I mean, there’s, there’s a bunch of different companies, small companies. Darko, um, he’s doing some cool home gym stuff. Um, I thought jd, jd equipped black, black widow. Yeah, there’s tons of them out there.
Um, so yeah, we’re, the plan is, is to, you know, go full, full on development as much as possible while also keeping a manufacturing component so we can better understand what, what the manufacturers need from us. You know, and I think the best way to do that is to do the initial manufacturing and work out the kinks and figure out what the problems are, and then go from there as far as, you know, who, who wants to take this product and actually scale it for us.
Because if people are waiting for us to scale a manufacturing business, we’re not going to be able to put out any kind of real production for a while. Yeah. Um, it, it’s just not possible. I’m, I’m hoping to start maybe, um, building a shop next year. Um, and bring in some better equipment, but I think that’s going to be just reflect the tools that.
These manufacturers have to work with, um, and that’s, that’s the idea moving forward. Yeah, I think all of that makes sense. Um, and I, and I definitely want to, I definitely want to see the, hear about the differences between the, the dip attachments, um, and just see what your, what yours, how yours compares.
But, um, before we do that, um. You mentioned earlier in the call, like early that morning, you were getting the, the, the moment you found out about the rogue velocidor, you were getting blown up by a ton of people saying, you know, rogue copied your product or who knows exactly what they’re saying? Um, So you were getting blown up by a lot of people just saying, did you see this?
It looks like they’re, they took your idea, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are also social media posts. Um, I don’t think there we’ve ever seen it. The community react quite like that. It was like everywhere. It was on, on, I had an Instagram post, um, garage and reviews had a, I think there was something on the Facebook page there where it went really, really deep, a lot of attacking, um, Um, I wanted to hear why you think that may have been, because there’s certainly other smaller manufacturers that were larger companies have been at least inspired by, and you don’t, you didn’t quite see the reaction, uh, as opposed to this time around.
Um, I, I mean, I don’t have a real good answer for you there. Um, only thing that I, I might be able to come up with is. Um, the one thing, the two things I really wanted to focus on, um, coming into this was product quality, trying to produce the best product we could produce and, um, overall customer satisfaction.
And even though we, we fall short on the, um, not getting stuff out on time, on the lead times. You know, we really do try to make a good product. We try to work with customers as much as possible with, you know, they have some weird rack or whatever. Um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know what the big response was other than that, you know, I spent a lot of time, you know, if I was, if I was, if it was before bed or.
you know, I was sitting on the toilet or something. I’m talking to, you know, I’m talking to people. Yeah. I’m, I’m trying to, yeah, I’m trying to, you know, get relationships going with everybody and kind of see what everybody’s up to and you know, just try to understand the market as much as possible and understand the customer as much as possible and try to connect with people on a more individual level.
And I think that’s what a lot of the larger manufacturers lack and why. Why we could bring some value there because You know, like I said, it’s really hard to build all of those systems and have something so systematized also be very personal. Um, and the only way I could really see to scale something like that is with, like, the new AI tools.
But even then, you know, If you’re a person talking to an AI and you figure that out, I, I imagine you probably are not going to feel too great about, you know, you know, I’m just talking to, you know, a computer here, you know, I think people just want to know that you understand that, um, that they’re people that they’re going, everybody’s going through some version of the same thing here.
Um, we’re all just trying, we’re just trying to make it. We’re trying to do what’s best for our families, our kids, um, ourselves. Um, so I just try, I try to keep that in mind, even with, you know, some of the more nasty interactions I’ve had with customers, usually about lead times. Um, you know, I, even, even with the rogue stuff, I didn’t want to just come out of the gate guns blazing and, you know, screw rogue this and all, and all this stuff, you know, like, it just doesn’t accomplish anything.
Um, you know, because at the end of the day, rogue, as big as they are, they were still started by people. You know, that had their own problems and their own reasons for doing what they did. And, um, you know, Bill’s done a, uh, you know, I’ve talked to him quite a bit over the last couple of months. Um, and he’s just, he’s just a normal dude, you know?
I mean, it’s, it’s not like everybody envisions these people that run these large companies. It’s, you know, they’re all these sharks and, um, emotionless. It’s just, yeah, I think that’s. I think that kind of highlights though the issue with those companies is that what I said is they can’t really make these very personal connections because you have to focus so much on making these systems more and more robust, you know, building everything as a system, compartmentalizing everything and all these things just aren’t very You know, they don’t feel human and we’re coming into this world of artificial intelligence and all these smoke and mirror tools that make it look like there’s people behind them, but You get this overall sense of feeling of, of it just lacking some kind of personal touch, you know, so I think if these companies have someone out there that can do development for them that also has a close connection with the community.
Um, where we, where we could be involved in events, where we could be involved in giveaways, where we can be involved in talking to people directly about what their problems are, what they would actually like to see happen, um. I think, I think that is probably the reason for the reaction and, and probably how we could offer the most value to the market right now and how we could, you know, make the most impact.
All right. You want to show me the. Yeah. I’m going to, I’m going to turn my camera off for a second. So you don’t see my violence.
So I’ll turn you around here in a second, but we, if I could figure out how to turn you around.
Um, I don’t see where to spin the fan on this thing. Anyway, I mean, you were in my basement, so like this rogue stuff feels, you know, this we’re going from this to, you know, when I, when I started this, the original drills, not even here, that’s, that’s the original bandsaw there. Um, you know, I, I don’t even know where the bench grinder is or whatever.
That thing kind of a while ago, but, uh, yeah, I guess I didn’t even realize you were doing it in your basement. Yeah. So we get emails all the time of, you know, Hey, mutant metals team. Hey, you know. Can you guys send me to a sales rep? Can you? I know I can’t. So let me try to set you up here so we could see.
Sorry. I lost you a second. Oh, that’s all right. Um, so have might have as far as a little bit. I really need to figure out how to spin. Should just be on the screen. It was, but it’s not now for some reason. Can you click it or tap it?
Yeah, I don’t,
I can’t get it to spin around. I don’t see where it does that. Um, anyway. So, he believes
the rogue prototype that they sent me, uh, pretty similar. This plate’s a little larger, this plate’s a little larger, because they had to use a 2×3 piece of tubing back here to do this integrated gusset, which is a cool feature. Um, logo’s on the bottom now too, so storage position, you could, you know, you could check that out.
Um, still have the plastic on the front for storage position, for protection. These are going to be able to come in stainless, handles will be able to come in stainless. This gusset makes this thing quite a bit stiffer. You know, if you see on a lot of people have concerns about like flex on the on the dip attachment and it’s really just the unit settling in as far as like torque on the on the arms and uh the plastic compressing stuff like that.
Um, but this kind of eliminates that. Versus ours, you know, some people still might prefer the look of this. It’s a little smaller, a little lighter. All of them come on stainless pins, uh, welded end caps, and we might continue to make this, um, for now we are, we’re going to continue to make this version.
Doesn’t have that gusset on the bottom. Does make it a little more low profile plates, a little smaller. Um, but other than that, they’re, they’re pretty similar, um, which, which I like because at first when we were talking about it, it seemed like they were going to have to be quite a bit different for, um, for manufacturing reasons.
Um, so, um, yeah, I mean, that’s. That’s pretty much the difference between those two. They’re pretty close. Um, yeah, but yeah, I mean, this is, this, this is it. And there’s the whole, the whole thing. It’s beautiful. That’s all it’s loaded though. Basement Brandon here with you, dude. I’m not just the garage gym guy.
So the garage gyms that way, um, I’m going to show you that because it’s 20 pieces right now, but
so. Uh, set you up here,
but, um, yeah, you could see my, my pink walls bought this house off of a share of sale. It was in pretty rough condition and the last time it was updated was probably like 1970. so. Everything was green and pink and like you could still see it on the window trim and stuff like that. Gotcha. I’m sure it’s a pain to get some of that stuff up and down.
All this equipment had to come through that 27 inch door. Oh, man. Had to all be carried in by hand. Um, had to put in air quality systems, seal things off. You know, all of our welding, everything is done in our old root cellar. That’s all sealed off. That’s, you know, nothing can catch fire in there. Um, and you know, we filter all our air.
We do all, we do all the stuff that we need to do correctly. Um, but yeah, this is why we can’t keep going this way. We can’t scale. Because I can’t, until this rogue stuff gets going, I can’t afford to build some building, or to rent some big industrial space out, or to buy CNC machines, or to hire three more people.
A lot of people tell me to do, you know. Yeah, we’re working already on razor thin margins and that’s it. If you’re going to, if you’re going to start a business like this, figure out exactly how much you want to make, you know, figure out everything, even if it’s guessing at first, just kind of get an idea of what everything is.
But yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s still, it’s still kind of crazy. We just started this two years ago, um, November, 2020, kind of in the middle of the pandemic. Um, we saw steel prices increased 3 fold, stainless prices doubled, um, and we didn’t want to just jump our product price super high, um, mainly because orders incoming are what pays our house bills, you know, right?
Hold on to the cash to do. To do the production, but, you know, anything if we’re not selling stuff, I’m not making anything, you know, I’m looking at money every day. And that’s 1 of the issues with, you know, um, doing this made to order model is. You know, if these things happen, you have issues. They can end up, it costs you money on, you know.
On the back end of the job, and you really don’t know if you’re going to make money on it versus if you do all your stuff up front and then sell it as an in stock item, you know, exactly what your target is, you know, so that’s 1 of the reasons that even when we move to this, um, this model of doing development, it’s going to be.
Stuff done in batches, we’re going to get most of the stuff ready ahead of time. And the only work that’s going to be done on the back end is going to be the customization, which we’re going to lean into. I want to be able to do, like, some metal art stuff, some more clear grind stuff, like what I sent you, the dip attachment, I sent you to the home gym con.
Um, the blue and red, um, with the grind pattern underneath, we’re going to do some candy colors. We’re going to expand the, um, the colors, the stock colors offered. Um, and hopefully have the time to be able to do adaptions to some of the more odd racks and, you know, because we’re going to be doing a limited run.
We’ll be able to have the bandwidth to do stuff like that, which we try to do already, but. Custom stuff and I get emails all the time people asking for custom stuff and it’s custom custom stuff is just hard to do. It’s hard to take on. There’s so many variables in it. So, I think we’re really going to be doing a lot of custom stuff.
It’s just. What we are as far as cosmetics go, um, yeah, we’re going to do a lot there, but like custom build stuff, it’s just not, just isn’t going to work for us. But, but yeah, that’s certainly, that’s it. Makes sense to me. Yeah. That’s very cool. I’m well, I’m glad we were able to get the story out. Seems like everything’s in a.
A little bit better of a place. I know there’s still quite a bit moving around. Um, you know, a lot, a lot of people I see like online that are talking about rogue cut us some big check or something, but there’s. There’s no check yet. Like these half the, so still plenty of work to do. Yeah. We want people to buy the rogue versions.
Like we don’t have to do anything, make money off the rogue version, buy the rogue version. Don’t think you’re hurting us by buying the rogue version. If anything, you’re helping us not only. With the money, establishing a solid relationship with Rogue, which is what we’re trying to do. Um, it’s, it’s our full intention to offer them as much values as possible and any future manufacturer we work with the same thing.
Um, so by the Rogue version, that’s us to the next step. If you want to see new things come out, you know, share the, share the Rogue page on your Instagrams, your Facebooks, Twitter, whatever it is, just kind of get the word out and, you know, Rogue’s distribution I’m sure is going to do its job. As far as, you know, getting the word out as well, but, um, yeah, that’s all I got.
Awesome. Well, yeah, by the rogue version then, um, unless you want something really specific, you want the metal, you know, we’re still going to do it for now. There is going to be a price increase here over the weekend to reflect that because we’re going to only offer the dip attachment. Welded end caps, threaded handles, you know, all the like premium options.
Um, and the only thing that’s going to be kind of a la carte is like the grind pattern or something like that. So, um, and then there might be a point where we don’t make the dip attachment. I mean, I don’t know yet, but. I, I kind of want to keep that as a flagship product for now. Um, but yeah, the, the next step is to possibly work on getting the snapbacks to a more fin model as far as someone like rogue would want to produce.
Cause right now they’re just not very, and that was our problem too, to. mass manufacturing. Um, gotcha. So, and we’re going to get them as much stuff as we can to try to get more resources to keep, keep this moving and to get more cool stuff out there. Cause if we’re going to innovate, part of that is getting it out there, you know, and right now just not doing.
As well, as we need to do so, um, yeah, follow us on Instagram. You know, if you want updates, that’s where I’m usually given the most updates. We try to send out on
any basis, especially to individual people. And I’m working on systems to fix that, and we shouldn’t have that problem in the future with this batch stuff. So, um, everything will be batch and then stock type stuff. Yeah, that’s it. Awesome. Well, good way to wrap it up. Um, thanks for taking the time to do this.
I think a lot of people will find this story pretty cool and it’s good to get firsthand, um, word from you. Um, so yeah, thanks again. It’s going to do it. Yeah, man. Thanks.