III Arms: Jim's latest pictured above. Sweet. Here's more.
III Arms and the Citadel have evolved over the last 2-3 months, and have ascended to Priority One. As a result I have not been able to hit gun shows as planned to collect signatures and properly promote the Liberty Congress. Holly and I looked at the schedule and the tasks we have to accomplish, and have decided to make a few adjustments.
Since the primary means of promoting the III Arms prototypes will be booths at large gun shows over the fall and winter so that potential customers can physically put their hands on the weapons, we've decided to push the Liberty Congress into the Spring. We've chosen April 13-15 2013 on the National Mall. The 15th (Tax Day) is Monday, and our event will benefit because so many other groups host events on the Mall on Tax weekend.
The plan remains the same, only the dates have changed. Your Liberty Congress shirts are not dated, so they remain useful. As our reps travel to major gun shows over the fall/winter, III Patriots will either share the booth or buy the next booth, and promote our organization and the Liberty Congress, get signatures on our Declaration, et cetera.
IIIGear: Hoodies/t-shirts. I've spoken with a few of you recently about hoodies and more importantly, recent t-shirt orders. In all of my years in business I have never had a more frustrating and embarrassing FUBAR/SNAFU than our 2 recent hoodie/shirt orders. As you know when I fist offered hoodies it was with the caveat that we'd place the order once we had the minimum orders in hand. Well, that took 3 freekin' months, and we STILL did not have our minimum, despite more than 50 people who "committed" to buying the hoodies. In the end I just said F'it and ordered the minimum along with a big shirt order.
I placed the hoodie/shirt order with our original shirt printer, and what "FINALLY" arrived at my shop was a ClusterFoxtrot. I sent it all back and had to wait for our refund. I have since ordered with another vendor (8 dozen shirts as well as hoodies) and it is expected in the next 2-4 weeks.
At the moment I have one (1), yes, one single III shirt in stock, a medium in OD.
As I have said a hundred times before - anyone who is tired of waiting for shirts/hoodies, email me and we'll send your money back.
I'm done talking about shirts/hoodies for this post, because I am grinding my teeth.
Other III Gear: I know many of you finally rec'd packages last week and today, and more has shipped. I have a couple items that were backordered from Condor (XXL Crossdraw Vests, for example), Cold Steel and 1 model of KA-BAR. As soon as the knives show up, I will send them to CADD for engraving, then to you. As may of you know we have been using standard #10 envelopes to send patches (1-3 quantity) for more than a year. Saturday when Holly and I showed up at the Post Office with a batch of about 35 envelopes filled with patches, they informed us we had to use large, cardboard envelopes from now on. So, a bunch of you owed patches, they are coming, but are being re-packaged.
In all honesty IIIGear is labor intensive for the few bucks from each order that helps promote the III. I'm not sure what we'll be doing with it in the near future. I am not the kind of guy who likes making people wait for orders, and since the 527 is not large enough to keep a fat inventory, it is too often that people end up waiting too long for basic orders, and it doesn't sit well with my business senses.
Birmingham: I'm not going to bother with the Alabama gun show/PatCom in the middle of October. If luck happens to shine on us, we'll be at the Indy 1500 gun show instead with our prototypes.
Citadel: Holly and I are headed west very soon. As mentioned, we have meetings with several county officials from several counties to discuss how much they'd like to have us in their back yard. My sincere thanks to Mike C. for a great primer he put together to help us through those upcoming meetings.
III Arms & Citadel: I am very proud to see so many of you fully embracing the Citadel and III Arms, preparing business plans, and looking forward to a life amongst our own.
More later.
Kerodin
III
