Join Butch Whiting and I as we explore camouflage's evolution, the impact of veterans, and stories that weave brand and audience together. Kryptek is based in American traditions, celebrating the spirit of guns, game, and the great outdoors.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out KRYPTEK for your camo gear needs.
Join Butch Whiting and I as we explore camouflage's evolution, the impact of veterans, and stories that weave brand and audience together. Kryptek is based in American traditions, celebrating the spirit of guns, game, and the great outdoors.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out KRYPTEK for your camo gear needs.
you go to these other rodeos, everyone that's in those stands is pro-gun, they're pro-hunting, they're pro-America, and that's exactly my customer right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, no. I think that when people realize that you're supporting them back, that's going to open up a lot for who Cryptic is and who Cryptic will become. These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch podcast. This episode of the Six Ranch podcast is brought to you by DECT. That's a D-E-C-K-E-D.
Speaker 2:If you don't know what that is, DECT is a drawer system that goes in the bed of a pickup truck or a van and it'll fit just about any American-made pickup truck or van. It's a flat surface on top and then underneath there are two drawers that slide out that you can put your gear in, and it's going to be completely weatherproof, so I've never had snow or rain or anything get in there. There's also a bunch of organizational features like the deco line, and there's boxes that you can put rifles or bows or tools all different sizes. There's some bags and tool kits. There's a bunch of different stuff that you can put in there. But the biggest thing is you can take the stuff that's in your back seat out of your back seat and store it in the drawer system and it's secure.
Speaker 2:You can put a huge payload of a couple thousand pounds on top of this DECT drawer system. There's tie downs on us. You can strap down all your coolers and your four-wheeler and whatever else you've got up there. It's good stuff. This is made out of all recycled material that's 100% manufactured in America, and if you go to DECTcom slash 6 Ranch you'll get free shipping on anything that you order. This show is possible because companies like DECT sponsor it, and I would highly encourage you to support this American-made business and get yourself some good gear. Butch James Bootha's looking good man.
Speaker 1:Thanks, dude. Yeah, we got a great team and it's really starting to gel. Come together the guys that they wear a lot of hats. The show season is almost like a distraction where guys that have other critical roles in the company have to dive in for show season because it takes a small militia. So, anyway, I appreciate the compliments on the Booth. That is important with regards to representing the brand, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's cool Well and you're just, ultimately, you're thinking about how people are going to be interacting with not only your gear the clothing that's out here but your personnel, because, as much as Cryptoq is, a is a gear and clothing company and it's a people company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. That's your identity, is your employees the sole, the sole of the company is? Well, first of all, the culture. When you say the employees, like I like to hire to culture first and foremost, and so we want guys and gals that when they come in, they're going to be, they're going to fit in that culture and they're going to feel good about being what we stand for, which is, to sum it up, is extremely patriotic, but it's pro Constitution, pro Second Amendment, pro firearms, worse, or a holdout with regards to still being privately held.
Speaker 1:And if you look at what I consider our near peer competitors, they're not and they have a private equity umbrella or a major brand over the top of them, right. And if you look at those private equity groups and what, where they put their political dollars, their woke as hell, yeah, and, and they are counterculture and all the shit, and it blows my mind they're in the outdoor industry. Are they invested in these groups? These are great brands, these are good guys, like friends that I have that are competitor brands.
Speaker 1:You know, when these guys come in, cryptoq still is privately owned. We're still pro family, pro military, pro law enforcement, and I want to turn the volume up on that and I feel like that right now there's a pendulum swing with regards to how people are viewing how they spend their dollars and what a brand stands for politically and where they put their their marketing dollars into. We put our marketing dollars into conservation right, versus like being having affiliate anti hunting. I don't even know how how you can be in the hunting industry and have a parent company that's got anti hunting initiatives. It blows my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, so back into the people, that in the culture of it. That's part of the culture, right? Right, you know part of the process when we have guys come on board. Right now we're using Skillbridge, which is this really super awesome program for companies. If you're listening and you have a company, you should look into it. But Skillbridge is fairly new, it's relatively new and it's not easy to get into. It takes probably about eight months to a year to actually get in the system. But then you are in the system.
Speaker 1:You post a need, a job description and a soldier, an airman or a Marine, whoever if they're transitioning out, they can go. And first of all these guys filter by location. That's how that's, first and foremost, where they start. It's like oh, I want to be in Boise, idaho, because that's where I grew up and my family's at in most cases. So then they look at what the job description is and, oh, I've got some skill sets or maybe I'm close to that, and so we've been onboarding some guys through Skillbridge.
Speaker 1:What happens is they come in and the company gets a free test drive, basically three months, four months, five months, depending on years in service, rank, whatever else and the DoD continues to pay them while they're there and you want to talk about like the ultimate interview, right, so that that's a super powerful program for us. Right now, in fact, one of our rock star media guys, chase, who was a P3 Orion mechanic before and he was just playing on that side, you know doing his own videos on YouTube and stuff, he's crushing it, right, and so, anyway, when all that helps culture, very rarely are you going to get a guy that's prior service, that's anti-constitution, right, that's anti-progun, you know. So it's almost like a built-in buffer, but, being veteran founded and veteran owned, we now have over 50% of our team is prior service.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. That's something that I've always appreciated about you, and you know, for me, there's a handful of things that really distinguish Cryptek from the rest of the crowd, and I want to get straight into it, if that's fine with you. Yeah, let's go. Okay, camouflage theory first of all. Right, because if we're talking about camouflage, there's all kinds of ways to talk about it, but ultimately, we're talking about concealment. That's right. We're talking about concealment when something can look at you and you need that thing that's looking at you to not identify what you are. That's right. Talk to me about what it takes to actually build a camouflage pattern and the layers that go into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So first of all, there's your spot on with functionality, and first and foremost, all of our camouflage patterns were built for functionality and that is concealment in the environment you're in. When we first designed our first family of camouflage, it was for three specific regions of the earth, of terraforma. That's the way the military breaks it down, is they look at an environment as an arid environment or desert, a woodland or jungle environment, and those are really the two major classifications. And then the largest portion of terraforma, 70% of it, is considered transitional environments. So that's the way the DOD classifies the globe. What does transitional mean? It means everything between the desert and the jungle, and so our first transitional camouflage was Highlander, and then we now have Obscura, transitional. So it's everything in between a desert environment and a woodland slash, very green environment, jungle environment primarily.
Speaker 1:And so first and foremost is the functionality. You then have the next layer, and I'm still going to talk through the mind of the Department of Defense and militaries. So functionality, concealment, naked eye, acquisition is priority. Then you're going to come down and you're going to step just adjacent and you're going to talk about things like a spree, decor, morale. You're going to talk about recruitment, right, because these uniforms are worn in garrison and they're also worn in combat. Are they worn in where they're intended to provide you an advantage against your enemy? Yep, okay.
Speaker 1:So there's a psychological aspect that immediately starts to play into camouflage, yes, right. Then you start to come even further to the right and you get into fashion, all right. And so this is where you see camouflage that's being used by brands that have no purpose or are reason to be in camouflage, whether it's a mountaineering brand, a ski brand, or it's just a Gucci brand in Los Angeles, right. And so it's this fashion aspect, and in fact, I have seen runways in Europe where all the gowns are in various types of camouflage.
Speaker 1:And so there's a and if you look at women's clothing, you'll see, like the Cheetah prints really popular, but you'll see variants of that where women are very attracted to like these multi-pattern pieces of apparel. And so there's this really incredibly broad spectrum of camouflage, the science of camouflage You'd be foolish to say the science of concealment, because it's so much bigger than that and one of the biggest aspects for the military is identify friend or foe. If you look at Ukraine and Russia right now, they're both wearing multi-cam and identifying themselves with either a yellow armband or a red armband and they're running around and you can't tell if you don't have an armband on who's who. It looks like a lethal game of paintball.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly right, it does. It's chaos, it's total chaos, and it's hard for people to understand how chaotic battlefield environments become and something that may seem as simple as like oh like, you should be able to look at somebody and know if they're the enemy or not. That is oftentimes not the case, right, and I was even in a situation in Afghanistan where a bunch of guys breached the wire at Camp Bastion and they were wearing army uniforms that they bought off the internet.
Speaker 2:So now you have to decide to shoot somebody that is wearing a DoD uniform, but you're doing it based off of their behavior, right, so it gets infinitely complicated.
Speaker 1:Well, I've heard about containers of uniforms being stolen in the Middle East and basically that country going into a tailspin.
Speaker 1:Like holy shit, what are we going to do? Because in a normal day-to-day activity, if the guy's coming to the gate and he's wearing the same uniform, he's going to walk into the outpost and now he can clack himself off or whatever entry point. So that's the problem with multi-cam. Right now Multi-cam, I feel, is basically ran its course and it's become proliferated globally To your point you can go and buy anything on Amazon or olibabacom.
Speaker 1:Protecting that piracy aspect is very difficult because primarily China is going to pirate. If something's working well or going well, china is going to pirate it. I've tried to fight piracy in China. They have a cultural aspect protected by the government that if they tweak the camo pattern 10%, it's a new camo pattern and to the average guy, especially at distance like even 20 meters, you're not going to be able to tell the difference on that tweak right. So when you say layers of camo, there's one way, like we're talking about this, all these vertical layers, but if you talk about the camo itself, there's actually layers in the camouflage. I didn't know which path you we went down. One path, I meant both.
Speaker 2:Digit, yeah. So now, if we're going to talk about trying to take what is basically a two-dimensional thing and give it depth through color, right. That's what the layers of these colors provide is creating depth where there is none.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a combination of the color placement, but more so than not it is the macro pattern and the micro pattern. And then they're in, like, say, our original camouflage. There were seven layers. Our seven screens is how we address it. So when we set up our screens, there's seven different applications of, in this case, wet print or dye that are being applied to the fabric in a fashion that provides a depth to it, a three-dimensional aspect to it, and so wet printing is kind of like the barrier when it comes to military-grade fabrics, because the military wants to have protections that are built into the fabrics under infrared and shortwave infrared. So if you're looking at that guy wearing that uniform with night vision goggles on, basically that's really that spectrum. The newest spectrum now is also thermal, and so that's a whole new fabric solution. That's not necessarily just the camo application. So when the US Army was in UCP, which was the camo that was gray, it looked like a picture of a parking lot like gravel, like jumbled up concrete.
Speaker 1:It had exceptional performance qualities in the infrared and shortwave infrared spectrum under night vision goggles. And a real good way to see this application in hunting is if you have a bare bait and you are any game camera. But I've seen it mostly in bare baits where a customer will come back and say they'll have a picture and they're like, hey, what's going on? If you take a picture through a game camera that has infrared capabilities and you're wearing, let's say, highlander, when that picture, when you see it on your card, it's going to look like you're wearing your Gumbi, the Glowstick, you're wearing just all white. I've also seen pictures it's actually in a film for an artist.
Speaker 1:I had this crazy bizarre I can't remember the name of it right now but it was about, like I think, wolves and stuff.
Speaker 1:But they had a mix of civilian hunting Highlander with military grade product as well. And in that film you see this gal and she's like under thermal, under a thermal scope. She still has her gray scale, black and white camo gators on which were military wet printed, and then she's got the heat transfer paper printed hunting stuff on and it's like what I'm saying. It's like she's wearing a white uniform then with this gray scale camo and so UCP was selected because it was so functional infrared and shortwave infrared but it was absolutely dog shit, especially in Afghanistan. So it's this balance between not only, like I was saying, the functionality, how it's going to work for that environment, and it's also got to got all those layers of, like, the psychology behind the camo. But then you've got the infrared and shortwave infrared spectrums and now you know their thermal capabilities that are on the open market in the civilian space are remarkable. They're way better than any of the shit that we had. I had and I know you have sure tank sites.
Speaker 1:It used to take us 20 minutes to have our target acquisition designation system, the TADS on the Apache cool off. Now it's all electronic thermal, they pop up and it's got a giant market because of the I feel it, because of the pig hunting Night. Pig hunting has become a big thing in the South and so you know those systems are available on the civilian market Like a near peer competitor, like a foreign military can buy shit that you know. 10, 15 years ago you had to have millions and millions of dollars and be a global power to afford to go buy that technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my, my pulsar thermal binoculars are very similar in capability to the $250,000 thermal that was in the tank.
Speaker 1:I think that in some cases that they're very they're better than what we were fighting with for sure at that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but so the layering aspect, the barrier of military grade camo patterns, is really into the printing process and there hasn't been a lot of advancements in that. Then, if you go on the hunting side, all the hunting gear that's at this expo in here right now is all done with heat transfer paper, and heat transfer paper is super easy. You can take a picture of anything you want and you can put it on that paper, and then you basically heat the paper up and it and it bonds into the, the grayish fabric underneath it, yep. So there's challenges with the different types of fabrics, how they take that, that process, and so in some cases you got to tone down the base color. In other cases you got to crank it up. In itself, having all your entire collection look exactly the same is a challenge, huge challenge, and we've we've had ebbs and flows where I've been like really like, oh man, that that is not matched the rest of the collection Right, but you know.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people have had that experience where they're wearing, you know, the same pattern from the same brand, top and bottom, but their pants look totally different, for sure.
Speaker 1:If you get into like merino wool tops or bottoms, that one's a real tough one, yep, and somebody will say like, oh well, I get this also, even if we have a wet. Somebody gets like our, our stalker collection is actually wet printed and the fabrics are and they'll go oh well, this is doesn't match. You know this other stuff and we're like, well, that's its own collection because of the substrate, it's in polycotton twill. So yeah, there's all kinds of challenges that probably the everyday guy doesn't even appreciate or understand. When I see that happen with a competitor, I'm like, oh, I'm glad they're having the same challenges that were happening. You know, it just is what it is. It's hard.
Speaker 2:You know it's an interesting world and that the type of competition that you're up against is is difficult to navigate as a consumer Right? So if somebody's walking through HunExpo what I don't know there's 10 different camouflage companies here.
Speaker 1:There's new ones that pop up every year Right, and I look at it and go, dude, this is tough. Yeah, you guys don't know what you're getting into.
Speaker 2:And it's just a little bit overwhelming for the consumer. So what I want people to start thinking about is not just going up and rubbing their fingers on the fabric for a second, but actually getting in their brain and looking and imagining the place that they hunt in and look at that environment and then take the color of that fabric and put it in the environment. Can you still see it or can you hide it in there somewhere? And if you can hide it somewhere in that environment, in your mind, you're off to a good start. The next thing you need to do is start thinking about what does this garment actually provide for you and protect you from? What does it enable you to do? And whether it is hot or wet or cold or thorny, you've got something for it. Right, I'm going to throw something at you here. Okay, what is the? What is a product that you used to make that you no longer do, that you wish you still did?
Speaker 1:There's a couple actually. Yeah Well, one of them is the anorak the anorak is my number one Dude.
Speaker 2:I miss it. So here's the thing is, that thing was incredible. What a versatile garment.
Speaker 1:Here's the, here's the deal. Number one we were in hobby phase. Yep, and cryptic was in hobby phase for like the last 10 years. Yeah, it was not marketed well, and North America, especially United States, is not as consumed by anoraks as New Zealand and Europe, yeah, and especially Europe. Do you know where the anorak actually came from?
Speaker 2:I think it's Arctic, isn't it? No, no, no.
Speaker 1:So the anorak was developed by the British military paratroopers and it was used so that you could have a barrier between all your OCP, all your protective stuff, like they weren't wearing a lot. But let's say you're harness, your belt, your grenades, all that, and you're rigging for parachuting, and so then it started to get adapted by the American peace. So you would put your shit on like you're fighting on the ground, put your anorak on, then you would put your parachute shit over the top of that, and then it started to gain a lot of popularity. When I think I'd have to look up the name but there was a famous general I think he was a British general started to wear the anorak around every day, and it wasn't just at that time for jumping out of an airplane, and so it started to get a lot of popularity.
Speaker 1:But the piece itself is super functional, especially if you're doing anything on horseback. It's got a super long tail on the back too, and then you know you have to don it like you do a sweatshirt, and then you have to invent and then off You've got the big kangaroo pocket in the front. It's extremely popular in New Zealand and somewhat in Canada for North America, but for the most part what I found was like for the Western hunters where we're at. It was new and there wasn't a lot of explanation and there wasn't like a cultural aspect to it like we have in these other regions.
Speaker 2:So I agree with you, my favorite pieces of gear that you've ever made and you know, for folks listening this, imagine like a quarter zip hoodie that went down to like mid thigh and it was fleece, had micro fleece on the inside, heavier fleece on the outside and it had a windproof and waterproof barrier in the middle.
Speaker 2:I can wear that thing snowmobiling at 10 below zero or I can wear it when I'm hiking around and it's 40 degrees. It is just an incredibly versatile piece of gear. And the reason that I said Arctic is because that cut is very similar to the parkas that you see in you. It's where that are made out of.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a good point too, and if you think about, like, when you see it used by Native American, that cut, you have less sewing, yeah Right. And so there's a lot of efficiency in the design from the beginning all the way through the use of the piece. The ability to vent off is really super simple in an anorak. So I don't know, it's one of those things where I would love to see that come back. I would also have to go about it differently. I'd go into it with a fully, you know, a fully thought out activation and campaign around it. Yeah, you know, back in, when the anorak came out, we didn't have to market, we weren't marketing. I mean, we was all new. Every time I turned around, there was like organic marketing that was happening, you know, whether we were like on the front page of Yahoo Finance or wherever it was just happening. And I have a whole new appreciation for a lot of the what I'll call miracles, and we had big miracles and little miracles as well, but it just didn't have the good storytelling around it.
Speaker 1:You know, and it actually would be a lot easier to resurrect and bring back to market in this day and age Because of guys like you that have experience in it right. And now you've got all these voice pieces, almost like you kind of see to the market and guys are out there running it and they got stories behind it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I would love to see that one come back. Next thing, one of my biggest struggles with Cryptek is the names of products, but it's also something that I love too, right, because I love mythology. I'm a huge fan of it, yeah, but these are the most enduring stories in human history, yeah, and a lot of the names of these products come from that. But it's also a really brief period of education that most people get and it can be a little bit difficult to navigate.
Speaker 1:Well, even my new guys. We've had this conversation around the naming and like, hey, why is this name this? So, first of all, all the pieces, for the most part, have a meaningful name. Let's take the Altitude Collection and talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a fantastic example. So the Altitude Collection.
Speaker 1:Every piece in the Altitude Collection was named after mountain battles in Afghanistan that I was a part of. So you have Takurgar, so that's Roberts Ridge right, that's Operation Anaconda. Takurgar is an actual mountain. We split that and called one Takurgar and the other one Gar Yep. So you have obviously the Torah, bora, yep, torah and the Bora Right, and so one piece is called the Torah, the other one's called the Bora Right, and it's super meaningful for me. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I actually, as an Apache pilot, air Assaulted in the Torah Bora and I was on the ground for two weeks. I didn't know that. I'll have to tell you that whole. Come back, let's come back and revisit the reason why all that was incredibly meaningful. Those were all places that I was intimately involved in. We need to tell those stories. Well, you're right Now that we're more sophisticated and understand that. That's the value right, when people understand the story behind not only the brand but everything else.
Speaker 1:If you slip into the other names, all those other names are warrior related names. So, for example, koldo, rain jacket and pant. Koldo is Basque, which in our neck of the woods, is a very popular Spanish group that became ranchers and primarily heavy and cheap, but a real strong Basque history in our area. So Koldo means warrior in Basque. So if you look at any of those names, like how'd they come up with this? What does this mean?
Speaker 1:If you put a quick Google in, you're going to find, well, that means warrior in this or that means something that is warrior ethos related. Are we going to continue to do that process? I'm not sure right now, because naming is incredibly important and I've got a great new group of very educated individuals that in some cases they might have a different angle on something, but historically that is where the naming convention came up and I've seen some hilarious memes where there's this guy. There's one meme where this is how cryptic names are products and this guy's got like this hand thing that he's made and you push the lever and it's just beating the keyboard like this, Just trying to buy a vowel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like tish, tish, tish, tish and it's like how cryptic names its products Tish, tish, tish, tish. But even back into the name, cryptic it's proper, right. So I spent a shit ton of money and a lot of time trying to find a name that was not anchored in the outdoor industry or even by an adjacent industry that was meaningful, and so you know, we had to basically make up that name, right, and it was a play on the English word cryptic. And then taking, you know, cryptos and technos and basically coming up with a play on everything, and it was something that wasn't registered. So what you know, listeners and most people don't realize is that you go and get your registration and your trademarks in these different classes like class 25 is apparel, class 16 is packs, you know, class 14 is whatever, whatever, and you have to go in there and basically you can't like there's, we protect that right now. So somebody that's here and says, oh, I'm going to go name a new brand, I'm going to own it and I'm going to do something with it and I'm going to call it cryptic, and well, it'll get shot down, right, and it shouldn't get through the system, yeah. And so that's the reason why we did the original name with hidden technologies so that we could get past a barrier. But yeah, all the pieces are super meaningful.
Speaker 1:And to go back to the story, I'll tell you on why an Apache pilot was in Torra Bora. Okay, so I was the attack aviation liaison officer LNO to Task Force Rockison, which was the third brigade out of the 101st. All right, so I was Colonel Rosinski's Apache right hand man, meaning like I was his attack aviation guy, right? So when we went into Kandahar they formed this task force, there was a battalion out of Canada. They were called the three PPC, li, which stands for the third princess Patricia's light infantry. No shit, that was attached to us.
Speaker 2:You can Google, yeah, no, I believe you.
Speaker 1:So the three PPC Li, we were in Kandahar. I didn't really know why they got selected to go, but I figured out, you know, as we transitioned through. They had a platoon of spelunkers in one of their companies and these guys went all over the world and like South American shit on, I guess TDI and like basically got paid to go cave spelunking Interesting, it was super crazy, right. Yeah, the whole plan was that the three PPC Li, along with, you know, the rest of the task force, but primarily them was going to go into Torobora and go exploit caves that had been j-dammed by the Northern Alliance and our horse soldiers early on in the war.
Speaker 1:So this is circa 2003?. This is circa like right after 9-11. Oh, really, yeah. Like I mean, I went into Afghanistan in December. I was on the Advan, there was 10 of us from 101st and the Marines had just seized Kandahar. Like this is circa first out of the gate. Ok, so one night at Kandahar I'm sitting in my hooch and all of a sudden there is this massive explosion. It rocks us, shit was falling. I had my hooch set up inside of this hangar on Kandahar that had been spectra gun shipped up and so metal and shit's falling. But it was violent and what had happened was the 3PPCLI was out doing a night live fire exercise on Kandahar and they were shooting a bunch of derelict Soviet equipment and those tracer rounds were skipping up in the air and a US guard pilot was flying over and thought he was taking ground fire.
Speaker 1:And he dropped a 500-pound JDAM into Kandahar Sure On to the night live fire exercise.
Speaker 2:Wow, with no clearance, no JTACs, no nothing, he just panicked and popped it he just popped a freaking 500-pound JDAM in.
Speaker 1:So I was like 1,000 meters away, dude, it didn't screw me up, but it screwed a bunch of the Canadians up. But you could imagine, from what my understanding was, the way it was briefed, it hit into a wadi and then the wadi kind of came out like this and there was a shelf and those Canadians were up on the shelf doing the night live fire exercise.
Speaker 1:So I think it killed four that were closest and then it messed all the rest of them up. They're bleeding out of their assholes and it was bad. So is they're getting ready to go into Torobora. This was still like a month or maybe 45 days out.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting in this briefing in the old hangar at Kandahar and everyone's in there and Colonel Wazinski turns to my battalion commander and says I'm going to send Butch into Torobora with the Canadians because they had never done any training with the Apache attack helicopters. So in the US Army we do what's called a close combat attack, a CCA, and so we'll train with the unit and we're talking to an E5. And he's not a JTAC, Unlike the Air Force. You have to have that middle guy in the middle that's attached to the unit and there were JTACs on the ground too. But the Apaches bottom line is I communicated with the Apaches.
Speaker 1:I was there to be the liaison for the 3PP CLI and so I spent two weeks on the ground with there. I had more batteries. I really messed up and I took in twice my UBL and figured out really quick why I only need to have so much ammo, because it was heavy as shit, Plus all my batteries, my radio, all that stuff. So you come back into the naming of the apparel. There's a real strong backstory to the naming of that altitude collection.
Speaker 2:And I love that. But that story needs to be attached to it. That's part of your identity, that's part of who you are is telling that story so that people understand that when you're naming this garment, that it is synonymous with the demands that people would go through in that type of environment and it's easier now than it was back then.
Speaker 1:And so when Instagram started to become a thing, I still didn't embrace it, and I actually I mean in all transparency. Jason Harrison was my most fierce competitor from Kuyu and he embraced Instagram right out of the gate and he was really good at storytelling. He could take a shred of the truth about something and turn it into a elaborate product story. Well, I was at the mentality at that time of like, hey look, I've fought our nation's battles, I've got a chest full of medals, I don't need to stand up and toot my horn, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Well, in hindsight, that was a huge mistake and I should have jumped on that bandwagon and been emulating and telling the stories right Like you're saying. But I personally, it was just not like who I was wired to be.
Speaker 2:I wasn't one of those guys. I get that.
Speaker 1:But I see now it's much easier to get your story out than ever before. Back when we started Cryptic, it was Eastman's hunting journal, peterson's hunting outdoor life. It was print media primarily, and then YouTube was a thing and it was cranking. But DVDs were the really big thing, like having your hunts on a DVD at Sportsman's Warehouse by Stony Wolf. That's how people were getting told the stories, right.
Speaker 1:So the bottom line is I have a completely different appreciation. I think that Montana Knife Company has done an exceptional job of embracing right out of the gate and not only talking and telling stories about their product, but also just their brand in general, and I think Josh Smith is doing a crazy, awesome job. And so I've got a completely different mentality and that's part of what I call Cryptic 3.0 in this life cycle, and so it'll be a lot easier to tell the stories that you say well, you need to get it out, you need to tell them, tell people. Well, it's like now we have the platform, it doesn't cost anything, it just takes some time, it takes some savvy guys that understand this stuff and that landscape changes constantly and you do face challenges like getting Shadow Band and stuff like that, but there's never been a time where it's been easier for a marketing platform than now, yeah, so.
Speaker 2:No, it's a fascinating world. I mean in the last 30 days, in talking about wildlife conservation, guns and ranching, my Instagram accounts reached 90 million people. That's incredible. What a time to be alive. Anything like that is conceivable.
Speaker 1:Well, you're also a great example of that. I mean, I love your story because it's so similar to mine with the ranching aspect, and I love everything about that. But some of the times when you're grabbing content, it's just repurposing something and throwing it out to your audience and in many cases, like what the hell is going on, you find these little gems. Like I still don't know what was ever the deal with the 500 bears that are running around and just blew my mind.
Speaker 2:That's in Spain. Evidently there's a grizzly bear park in Spain.
Speaker 1:That's not a park, dude.
Speaker 2:Jurassic park.
Speaker 1:But those little snippets where you open it up to a new audience. And that's where we're at now in our life cycle. I think that we're going to become and we are becoming much more, I guess, in tune and a lot of our newer customers. That's how they're getting their information. It's not my era where I got my information from a print ad reading a magazine. It's just, you have to stay dynamic to maintain currency, but you also need to harness it. In many cases, let's go back when we're sitting there and think about what are we going to do for our marketing campaigns for 2024? Well, and you'd probably say well, I would recommend you go back and tell your naming stories, how you came up with them, and nothing's going to be more authentic than the altitude and the names that go along with that. One for sure.
Speaker 2:Sure, but you know, oh, dude the Poseidon. Ok, like, tell the story of Poseidon and talk about that a little bit and be like, yeah, and that's what we had in mind when we made this rain jacket.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. There's incredible stories behind all of this stuff and I look forward to them being told and I look forward to helping with it. Now you brought up ranching Earlier. You talked about the DNA of the company and what you stand for and what your values are. This is something that I think you've also undervalued is you are the most rancher and agriculture friendly camouflage company that there is, and it's not even close, right? So if there's a cowboy out there or a rancher out there or a farmer out there who also hunts and they're not buying cryptic, then ultimately they're sending money towards somebody who opposes them rather than somebody who genuinely supports them. You come from a ranching family and you know your daughter's into rodeo. It's a huge part of your life and who you are Like. If it weren't for the values that come from ranching, you would be a different person.
Speaker 1:Well, it's, a Western lifestyle is completely ingrained into my soul.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And my family homesteaded in the 1880s in southern Idaho. That family ranch is still in existence. My wife's family homesteaded in the Boise Valley. They were more farmers than they were in the Raisin cattle and whatnot. But I'm a sixth or no fifth generation and my wife's fourth generation, which makes my daughter sixth generation. Yeah, and to your point, I've been to more rodeos in the last two years and should be allowed by somebody that's in the outdoor hunting industry.
Speaker 1:It's been one of those things that is consuming and it's a passionate part of our life and it's so important right now to your point, like that culture and communities under attack constantly, this whole animal husbandry nonsense that Colorado was facing here recently. It's really super similar to anti-hunting, Except now you've got ranchers being attacked almost by the same groups that are also attacking the hunting groups. So anyway, I love the aspect that you're still doing that lifestyle day in and day out. You know, when I was growing up, my grandfather on the ranch side busted an ice one morning I don't know how cold it was, but it was damn cold and under, like I think, we had flashlights, not headlamps, and he basically said you know, butch, you need to consider going and doing something different in your life.
Speaker 1:And my grandfather on my dad's side was a first-art in the 82nd Airborne and he beat the military into my head from day one, and so going into the military was an easy transition for me, but I still, you know, would spend all my summers back on my family's ranch, all the way really, until I started college, and of course hunting seasons were sacred. Like two weeks out of October, that's all we were doing and mule deer hunting. But you know, at the end of the day I now daydream about hey, some day when cryptic's really big, I'm going to go get my own ranch and I'll be back. And I could have just stayed right there where I was at and be where I want to go, you know. But yeah, I love the Western lifestyle. I love everything about it and, as you stated, my daughter's very much into it and still is, and she will be for her entire life. You know that's going to be who she is for the rest of her life.
Speaker 2:I do think that and to an extent that's something that I've failed you on is helping people understand that that's a big part of what this company is Like. You are strong, staunch supporters of Western heritage, of ranching, of cowboying, of agriculture, and you understand that that is a critical component to wildlife ecology 100%.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah Well, that's another story we can tell. I mean, when Kylie was the national high school rodeo queen, it probably would have been a good platform had I been at a different place where I've got the creatives that I do now to tell that as part of the brand story.
Speaker 2:So you know I don't know if you remember it and I've never told this to you, but I've told it to a lot of other people when I came in to initially interview with you, I had this plan in my mind of how I was going to do it Right and I was like, okay, this is like a military slash hunting company. You know, I'm a decorated veteran. I've got lots of good hunting accomplishments. These are my strengths. I'm going in here with and almost immediately you said I don't care about that. And I was like, oh no, like this is going bad right off the bat. And I don't know if you remember this, but I do. You said you are a rancher with a degree in riding and that's what I need. And that's the only time in my life that somebody's ever valued those things and it was so heartwarming to me, it meant so much. I think about it all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, for that reason, in addition to many, many others, that's what has really carried like my passion for promoting and helping you and wearing this stuff. I wear CryptoX 330 days a year at least you know Like.
Speaker 2:This is what I live in. You know, when I'm working on the ranch or if I'm traveling or doing anything in the outdoors, in one way or another, I'm probably wearing CryptoX, and it's not just because I like it, it's because it serves a function Well in all transparency, I have a desire to push a lot of our product into.
Speaker 1:I'd call you know, farm ranch western, and a good example on that would be our current fishing line. Right, it's got great hot weather pieces. There's gonna be lots of improvements in this collection, but it's also got some pretty obnoxious colorways. But if they were done in a fashion to where I could take the exact same piece let's say it's a bamboo hoodie and it's just a great hot weather piece and I market it to, hey, it's great for fishing, it's great for hunting, it's great for farming, it's great for when you're out working your horses, it's great. You know, it's how you market towards the end use and it's done in a fashion to where guys are going to use it for all applications, right, and I think for me that's kind of like there's such an easy transition into some of these areas that I'm super passionate about.
Speaker 1:That's really who we are as a family and have been for literally hundreds of years, right, and so, and you're gonna see that happen, like in the next I would say next, probably three, four years you're gonna be able to identify oh well, this is what Butch was talking about. This is, oh, this might be the exact same piece, but it's being marketed towards this demographic and I've had some marketing opportunities that I still. I won't even say what they are on the air while you're recording, because I'll tell you when we're off. I'm looking at going back and re-engaging on those because, especially in the rodeo world, you know everyone in the stands is an outdoorsman. That's the one sport you can go to and it's almost. Maybe NFR is a little different because you got, like you know, movie stars.
Speaker 2:It's a little fashionista.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a big production, but you go to these other rodeos. Everyone that's in those stands is pro-gun, they're pro-hunting, they're pro-America, and that's exactly my customer right. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I think that when people realize that you're supporting them back, that that's gonna open up a lot for who Cryptik is and who Cryptik will become. You know, two days from now, I'm gonna be wearing those obnoxious colored fishing shirts. Spear fishing in Florida.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have an application there right.
Speaker 2:Two days ago I was wearing an anorak doing chores on the six ranch right With snow blowing in my face. Yeah, and I don't know. I really appreciate that depth. Another thing that I really truly appreciate about Cryptik I'm not just blowing smoke at you here, but this is something that I appreciate from the standpoint of the customer. You have gear that they can afford, you have different tiers of cost, and I am so conscious of how much money people are spending Like this audience is a blue collar audience.
Speaker 2:The people that listen to the show are hammering something out on a forge right now they're fixing a diesel engine, like they're doing real work while they're listening to us, and I want them to spend their money in the smartest way that they possibly can and, if they can get a product that will do the job and still have money left over for their family, I want that, and you've created something where there's all these different tiers where they can get into different levels of gear, and all of it is good and all of it functions, and that's something that I really care about. Coming from a place of like, it took me probably 20 years before I had like matching camouflage on top and bottom right.
Speaker 1:Dude, I'm telling you, when I was growing up, I had two goals. One of them was I was going to get some camouflage from Cabela's, yep. And number two I wanted a weather B rifle. Ha ha ha. That's awesome, I know, but I get your point, though is like that barrier depending on where you're at and whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1:Cryptic has collections that can be afforded if you're filthy ass, rich, inherited a bunch of money and you don't care about anything. We've got super high end crazy like I would never buy a $600 jacket type thing down to very affordable, very good collections that make a lot of sense, that are more utilitarian Yep. And so it's super important to where you have functionality, durability, good construction, a brand that stands behind the product. If you have a problem with it, if it fails, we're going to replace it Yep. And also it's best in class, right?
Speaker 1:So, like our polycott and twill is probably not the first and foremost to go into the back country, do a 14 day excursion type hunt. It's absolutely great if you're hunting in the South. If you're hunting in the Southeast, if you want a great product that's going to hold up, but if it gets wet, it's not going to dry fast, so there's a different application for all these different regions just within the United States, Let alone if we start talking about Africa, new Zealand. It's all about how you're using it, what your intended end state is. So those are the different types of ways we've approached the collections in general and in some cases, some of them got a lot of marketing and some of them haven't gotten a lot of marketing.
Speaker 2:There is a product, a new product that I want to highlight while we're here, and that is your new cold weather system. Yeah, so if anybody's ever been good and cold and I mean cold in a way that you're a little bit scared about it what would you give to be warm? And typically, the answer is anything, and that cold weather system is really impressive to me.
Speaker 1:Talk me through it a little bit. First of all, most premium fabrics available. It's Scholar out of Switzerland. They have absolutely incredible fabrics that they're far superior to some of the other fabrics that are on the market.
Speaker 2:They're thermodynamic, they're very, very tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very durable. Durability meets performance. You've got the absolute best insulation that's available on the market, and that's one of those pieces that is very expensive. I think there's a show special here, but that top and bottom is $1,400. And it's going to be for somebody that is really going to appreciate how well it performs in a very, very, very cold environment. So we're not going to sell tens of thousands of those, but we are going to sell the guys that are going into environments that they are just saying like, hey, how much is it worth? Now that I am not freezing my ass off, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, my Scholar jacket I've had for five years now, I think, and I can't tell you how many user days I have with it, and it's not just hunting, it's working and doing every other thing. A lot of times it's in thorns. And to have a jacket survive for that many years in actual labor and thorny environments and rocky environments, and it still keeps me dry, it's phenomenal, dude.
Speaker 1:I was on a hunt in Colorado and my good buddy, justin Moore, was filming from Danger Soup. It was with Nozzler and we got into one of those. It was a late September, like crazy thunderstorms that you get every now and then a torrential downpour like you know, a half an inch and like 15 minute type stuff, and he did not have his rain gear in his pack or on him. Everybody else had their rain gear. We popped it all out and we put it on and we basically hunkered down underneath the best cover we could find. He was wearing his softshell taquer pant and jacket. He was absolutely bone dry and he thought he had his rain gear on and I was like, dude, I can't. I was surprised by it. I was like holy shit. He got up. It immediately was dry.
Speaker 1:The DWR treatment that Scholler put on that fabric. It was incredible and you know those types of experiences. When you see how those super premium fabrics and treatments perform in environments, you get a new appreciation. Now there's this whole crazy podcast in itself about these DWR treatments and what's going to be allowed in the US and what's not going to be allowed. It completely impacts everybody in the that's doing apparel Really. But you know what? Basically California's let the charge. Other states, new York, are starting to adapt. It's going to become impossible to bring certain treatment on fabrics in. It's put the whole entire fabric industry into a tailspin. Why can't they mind their?
Speaker 1:own business Well you know it's like it causes cancer if you carve it in little pieces and eat it. So, so don't do that. Maybe Prop 65 is that. That's exactly what that's all based on. Prop 65 in California is you know anything that could potentially cause cancer? You recognize prop 65 item. You got to label it. I mean the rules and regulations that the federal government puts on everybody. But you know, in certain places industries Get a friggin' hobby.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know, dude, I'm not going to eat my rain jacket Like, leave me alone, you'd have to be pretty hungry. You'd have to be pretty hungry.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's the reason why Buckskin was so famous back in the day. I think you could take a. You know, eat a couple of Swallows of good old Buckskin if you needed to to get you through.
Speaker 2:Eat your moccasins. So the John Jacob Astor Expedition, one of the most underrated pieces of history, underrated pieces of American Western history for sure. When they came across they discovered what would be the Oregon Trail. Right, if it weren't for that expedition, then the West Coast does not end up part of America. It's either British or French or Russian, yeah, but they tried to go down Hell's Canyon, oh God Right, and they ended up on either side of the canyon. And I remember in the book Astoria, where they're talking about these guys getting so starved that they ate their moccasins Like that's hard, that's hard up.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's next level, Next level. So you never find out where that giant ass bear. Did you get any more stories on that bear that was like shot in that area. I think it's a near white bird or someplace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have not yet. What I'm currently working on on the bear front is I believe these North Carolina bears are a subspecies. When I compare their skulls to the Idaho and Oregon bears, the morphology is radically different, like their construction is not the same. The texture of the skulls is different. I think that what we're dealing with in those two or three counties in Eastern North Carolina where these 700 to 900 pound bears are coming from is in fact, a subspecies. So that's where my focus is on bears right now.
Speaker 1:That's your focus, not back on that crazy ass. Old photo you found on that wagon was like 10 feet or 20 feet tall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was in the Grand Ronde, but that was a brown bear. That was a salmon eating brown bear. It had to have been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, I've never been hungry enough to eat my moccasins. I have been very hungry on hunts, though, and some expeditionary type hunts where you're trying to make your food last. But, yeah, these constraints on the new fabrics and all this stuff coming down the pipeline. I know that some of these brands that are very woke and they also have really deep, deep financial spines, have been basically trying to come out with some solutions, but ultimately, if there isn't and it doesn't happen, you're going to see one or two things happen.
Speaker 1:One either the performance of what we're used to now is going to decline. That's primarily going to be in the breathability and the waterproofness, so you hear like a 10, 10 or a 10, 20. In some cases, there's been major industry battles when you've had a brand that comes out and says my rain gear is 40, 40, meaning it'll breathe 40%. What they do is they put a cylinder on the fabric and they fill it with up to 40 centimeters or cubic centimeters of fluid, and then they measure how long it takes for that to go through the fabric, and then the reversibility is the same thing, with moisture being drawn out. If these rules get implemented, you're going to see a lot of these super hyper performance fabrics that go to the wayside, with the DWR treatments also included, or it's going to drive new technologies that meet the requirements. That is like a new innovation. So one of the two?
Speaker 2:Well, we'll just have to have some hidden technologies.
Speaker 1:That's right, super hidden.
Speaker 2:Where can people find out more about Crypteq?
Speaker 1:wwwcrypteqcom. K-r-y-p-t-e-k.
Speaker 2:Crypteq, and if you are in the Boise area, can people stop by and see stuff and touch it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they do all the time. We have a showroom and I get like there's a lot of really super interesting walk-ins, primarily military guys that are coming out to do training out of Gowanfield, a lot of JTACs, a lot of guys that are doing stuff with the Air Force. There's a big ASOS out there and they will come out of their way and they'll come find the headquarters and they'll just walk in. We get a lot of people that just say, hey, we're driving through Boise, we looked you up, we just wanted to come in and say hi, and also they want to take some pictures of our office and things like that. But anyone is always welcome.
Speaker 2:You've always taken super good care of my guides when they come in there too, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to tell you, dude, that's the backbone of the hunting industry, is those boys? Yeah, they're grinding, and nine times out of 10, like you're talking about, they're usually the ones that don't have any money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, and they're also the ones who will spend $600 on the rain jacket when they have $630 in their bank account.
Speaker 1:Appreciate good gear.
Speaker 2:That's for sure. Well, butch, I appreciate you. We need to get back to the show. Thank you so much for your time and I'm excited to see what is next for Cryptek, and I just really appreciate you and your time.
Speaker 1:James, I appreciate you and everything you stand for, and I am looking forward to just a strong relationship for the rest of our lives. Amen, amen, thanks, sir, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who has sent emails, who has sent messages. Your support is incredible and I also love running into it, trade shows and events just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch podcast was created by John Chattelin and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.