SHOT Show 2015 Recap

With SHOT Show 2015 coming to a close at the end of last week, it has taken me a few days to collect my thoughts on this year’s show. This year was probably the most different of all of the ones we’ve have attended. Being our fifth year attending, we had some specific things to accomplish this year and we were able to do them all.

We started the week off with the BattleComp party and had a chance to catch up with some great friends we haven’t seen in quite some time. I also got a chance to finally meet the owner of Pipe Hitters Union as well as the guys from MOTUS. Afterwards, we went to a small IG get together in the Artisan bar where we met some people we only knew via social media.

The next day, the show started. Because we didn’t have a booth this year, we were free to set up meetings and visit some of our clients. We had several firearms on display at the Gallowtech / Gunstruction booth. One of our first meetings was with our good friend Mike from Keybar, where we hope be doing work together on new projects this year. That night, we went to the ITS Tactical Meet & Greet at the Cosmopolitan hotel. This party was a great time. They gave out a bunch of patches and swag and we were able to get some drinks with a bunch of our friends in the industry.

The next day, after running some errands in Vegas we hit up the show again and had a chance to see our friends at Samson and AP Customs. I actually spent some time at the Breakthrough Clean booth, where I did a little meet and greet and signed some of my PDN DIY AR15 DVD’s.

We didn’t have a large amount of time because we had to start getting ready for our party… ATFS2015.

This year we continued the tradition to throw a SHOT Show party with FightSoap, presented by Gallowtech. Again we had it in a suite at the MGM Grand Hotel with one small difference…. 200+ people showed up. It was literally standing room only both inside and on the balcony. I had decided that I was going to bartend this year to complement the bartender certification that I am going through and it was probably a bad idea but at least all the drinks were free! Big thanks to the brothers over at Hudson Design & Mfg for helping pull me out of the weeds!

The party was going great until the MGM security shut us down… twice! Apparently we were too loud and had too many people there, so we will have to look for a new location for next year. All in all, it was a great time and we definitely appreciate everyone that came out to make it the best one yet! We are already looking forward to the 2016 party and can’t wait to see you all again!

Thursday was the last day of the show for me as I knew I had to leave Friday morning. We finalized some discussions with Keltec and a few other companies that we had met with at the show. We fit in a good meeting with Steve, the owner of PFC Training for some great business and marketing discussions.

Thursday night was the Gallowtech / Gunstruction party, held off strip at a rental house. I couldn’t confirm this, but it definitely looked like one of those houses they rent out for porn filming. With one last party to go to we had a chance to hang out with friends from Hell-bent Holsters, Black Dove Customs / Tactical Honey, Haus of Guns, Dead Moose Ops, and Black Center Tactical. They had a arcade basketball game there which quickly turned into the competition of the evening. It was a nice laid-back night before we knew we had to leave the next day.

As I said above, this year was a very relaxed year for us. We walked the floor a couple of times and made some great connections, but we really didn’t see a ton of things that sparked our interest that we hadn’t already know about prior to the show. I’m sure there were some things that I missed seeing because we didn’t walk the show end-to-end, and I wish I had gone back to the Hazard4 booth to pick up a new bag, but I think that we were able to accomplish more without having a booth than we were able to last year.

Unfortunately, we missed out on attending PFC Training‘s event on their new B.O.B.B. (Ballistic Off Body Bag), but we anticipate having one very soon to review for you guys.

Thanks for reading and we hope to catch you at the next show!!