2024 was WILD here at the forge. We shipped more orders in December than we did in our entire first year of business in 2023. Simply amazing, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our enthusiastic customers.
It doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon. We’re on track to ship more grips in January and February than we did in all of 2024, which makes me nervous about what Q4 of 2025 might bring.
All this has been amazing for us, a crazy journey, and I hope everyone gets to benefit as we bring new offerings to the public.
A few updates
We identified a significant fitment issue with the Gunfighter grips. After some modifications and tests, we believe we’ve resolved the issue. All Gunfighter stock orders should ship this week. I apologize for the delay, but I hope everyone who ordered a pair is alright with a little delayed gratification in return for proper fitment.
Our ecommerce shop is undergoing some changes. We’ll set most products to ‘out of stock’ to catch up on production. As we manage our schedule, we’ll produce and list limited stock runs in our webstore with inventory controls. When they sell out, they sell out, and people will have to wait for them to be in stock again. The items that come in stock may be regularly scheduled items, or they could be a fun “one off” that someone might have requested and we spontaneously did a run of them.
As noted in our last post, due to a national material shortage, we switched to white material, which we then dyed black. Our black material is expected to arrive tomorrow. If you want some white grips, now would be the time to place an order before we A) set a bunch of items to out of stock, and B) before who knows when we’ll be running white powder again.
There were a few requests on December orders that they were made with the black material, and as soon as we receive the powder, we’ll take those orders off their hold status to be made and fulfilled with the black material.
Goals for 2025
We need to add at least one more commercial SLS machine, possibly more – demand has been incredibly high. I don’t see this slowing down, especially with plans to expand our grip catalog.
Expand grip options in our catalog – Daily requests come in for various grips. Here’s a tentative list of what we DEFINITELY aim to release this year:
- Ruger GP100 and SP101
- Colt line: Viper and Cobra to start with
- Maybe a 3 finger Ruger LCR
- Smith and Wesson K-Frame / N-Frame options. Spegel K/L’s and N’s, with multiple variations, as well as some additions to the Classic Line for Gunfighter options in K/L and N. These will be Round Butt / Square Butt / A few Round to Square Conversion options
New manufacturing facility – Our growth necessitates building a larger facility. We’re expanding from our current limited space to constructing our own expansive manufacturing space. As we add more equipment, power requirements, and production volume, this construction is vital. We have already started the process of adding electricity, which has been going well. Our plan is to be in the new facility by Q3-Q4 of this year.
New finish options and processes – Currently, much of our part finishing is manual, but automation could lead to more consistent, cleaner, and durable products. We’re hoping to implement some of these changes in Q1. As I posted a few months back on our blog, I mentioned our change to this new material was so that one day we could do colors. Watch for some color finishes this year, whether that’s in tans, browns, mix of colors, etc. Who’s to know.
Concluding thoughts
I was talking with a friend who warned about the pitfalls of ‘Growing for Broke’ – where a business expands too rapidly, and profits don’t keep pace with growth. How this can happen is easy to see, and I’m constantly trying to keep a balance, walking a tightrope on a razor’s edge. Our journey into supporting our household solely through this business has been quite the switch. One day I’m a cubicle desk jockey, and the next day I’m supplying RFP’s/RFQ’s to people and companies I would have never dreamed of having the opportunity to talk to. It’s exciting, but at the same time one false step and we’d be in above our eyes.
There have been hard decisions made to get to the point we’re at now, sometimes customers feel those decisions, oftentimes we shoulder the brunt of it, and rightly so. It seems a symptom of the world we currently live in that companies treat customers poorly, release a crap product, limit innovation, and in the end let everyone to suffer. We strive to not be like that.
It’s our hope that when people think of our company, they’ll consider not just our products and innovation, but also reflect, “Man, it’d be great to return to an era where companies genuinely cared, much like Hamre Forge does.” That’s not a goal for 2025, that’s been a goal since we started in 2023, and it will be a goal we carry forward into the future, hopefully for decades to come.