How Shipping Lead Times Work

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Video Transcript

So, there has been some confusion regarding the incredible shipping times of our company. People buying holsters, people buying retail products, people buying body armor, people buying AC1s—you name it. So right now, the way our shipping process looks like is we have two different buildings. We have our warehouse with the majority of our retail items and then we have the manufacturing facility next door, which is where the holsters are getting made, some of the nylon products are getting sewn, where the armory is, admin—a bunch of other stuff. So if you order—let us say a holster and say a sling—in your order, what we do is called a split-shipment. We are actually going to remove this sling from that order, essentially, move the holster over to here, and you're going to be getting the sling sooner than the holster itself.

Now this gets confusing for customers if they order a holster (and we've had some of this recently) which takes between one and five weeks right now to get made. And we have customers buying AC1s and those shipping out within a couple days, and then receiving them a couple of days after that. So, you know, four days or so after they order. And the customers who order holsters are going, wait, why is it taking so long to get my holster when other people are getting their retail items from the zone picking line so much faster? Well, these aren't made to order. They're not custom like the holsters are.

So, there's another thing to bring up. Armor is shipped separate as well. We also split-shipment our armor. So if you order an AC1 and body armor, those are going to be coming in two shipments as well. And the postal service in their wisdom and might and greatness could lose one package and you get this but not the armor or vice versa. But we split those due to the weight of the plates and all that stuff. But both do go out really fast. Now, typically we print orders in early morning. They're telling me like 6:00 AM. So if you place an order, say at 1:00 PM on a Monday, it's probably not going out on a Monday. But it is most likely getting printed the next morning and then will be here on the line.

And basically what that looks like…You have your order right here. Let's say it's all retail items, so everything on this line. Your order gets placed here. And then each item has a letter associated with it. So the pickers know, okay, they ordered a GP pouch in coyote, a multicam dump pouch, two IR reflective flags for my plate carrier that I just got… come on down… and a medical kit. They check over to make sure all these items are on the order. They put it on the conveyor belt and this gets shot straight down to shipping, so it can go right to jail right away. But if you order a holster, that's going to need a different process.

So retail stuff all ships out of that building right there. But when you order a holster, whether it's a Ragnarok or a Sidecar, that happens over in the other building, where then it is made to order. So your color, left/right hand, your gun model, your weapon light, all that good stuff. And the lead time is based on how many orders we have coming in. So it changes and it fluctuates. Sometimes it's quick. Sometimes it's a couple weeks. But it works through this whole process, comes all the way back up to the front, where then it gets hardwared.

And the shipping stations for that… We'll go through this door right here. The shipping station for the stuff that gets made here is right there. So it's very similar to the one next door, but it just handles the holsters that are getting made, that you guys are ordering. After it's done getting produced, after it's done getting quality checked, after it's done getting hardwared, after it's done getting fit-tested with a real handgun. And then it gets shipped out right here. So, that's why some packages at T.REX ship super fast, if it's a retail item next door, or a little bit longer, if it happens to be a holster.