Grand Rapids: an Industry Juggernaut…and Growing.

Grand Rapids, MI

In 2021, I had an idea.  It turned out to be a pretty good one…good enough to patent.  When I brought it to SHOT Show in January of 2023, I realized I had a great idea and it was time to mass produce it.  It turns out, Grand Rapids, Michigan, my own community, is one of the best places in the country to do it.  “Beer City USA” is more than meets the eye…it is one of the most powerful manufacturing, warehousing distribution and fulfilment hubs in the country…and I was about to find all this out.

Before SHOT, we considered only two paths: 1. find a company willing to take the product to market for us–and license them to do so, or 2. produce the product ourselves–find a building, fill it with people and equipment and stamp the product out ourselves.  We never seriously considered option 2.

But wait…aren’t there more ways to do this?  Yes, of course…and we’ll get to that.  For now, these were the only options an aerospace engineer and a combat vet with decades of experience in the DoD came up with.  In other words, we were two greybeards that knew it all and now found ourselves wet behind the ears with a lot to learn.

So, back to January of 2023…SHOT Show blew our minds with a dose of reality.  Companies were certainly interested in our product, but they weren’t going to pay us money for the privilege of taking on all the risk, making all the investments, and doing all the work to get our product to market.  They’re all busy with their own goals.  Thus, we failed to meet our goal…but we had the wrong goal.  So for us, SHOT was really a success because it opened our minds to new solutions.  We can bring this to market…with the help of companies all over the country.

So, after the show, we began our search for manufacturing packaging, assembly, warehousing and fulfilment to get our product from the drawing board to the store shelves.  We were ready to hop on an airplane to tour the rust belt, the east coast and the deep south.  If we were lucky, we could find the resources nearby in Detroit, Chicago or Milwaukee and cut down on travel expenses.  Amid our search, as the snow began to melt and the trees began to bud, we began to realize that everything we need is right here in Grand Rapids…20 minutes away from our front door.

Grand Rapids is indeed more than meets the eye.

These days, Grand Rapids often finds itself ranked in the top ten when compared to cities across the country.  It’s located between Chicago and Detroit and is Michigan’s second-largest city at a population of about 200,000 with Kent County and the surrounding community coming in at well over a million.  Grand Rapids is home to industry leaders in various manufacturing sectors including metals, plastics, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, production technology, automotive, office furniture, and food processing.

With approximately four out of five manufacturers having less than 250 employees, West Michigan manufacturers are lean, innovative, and offer a wide variety of capabilities.  Everything we need for the RedCat to succeed is local and the companies we’ve partnered with are amazing.

So we find ourselves truly blessed to be in Beer City, USA: one of America’s top 10 Best Towns to visit in 2024 (CNN), a top 20 U.S. foodie city (WalletHub), a top 25 U.S. convention city (Global Trade), an Expedia.com “super cool city” for 2017, one of the New York Times’ 52 places to go in 2016, #1 place to visit in the U.S. in 2015 (Groupon) and the top U.S. travel destination for 2014 (Lonely Planet).

Grand Rapids is a great place to call home.

Written by Alex at M22 Tactical

M22 Tactical is a disabled veteran owned business to business wholesaler in Western Michigan that manufactures the RedCat Dry Fire Trainer, a small polymer device that enables realistic dry-fire training and increased safety on the AR Platform at a fraction of the cost to similar products on the market.  The RedCat is proudly made in the USA.