Shop Talk with Jr. & Kael
Explore three questions about the gun safe industry with two industry experts.
Welcome to the first episode of Safe Space, a semi-regular weekly video-podcast with the best world class delivery and installation experts. Since 1988, NW Safe has been selling and delivering safes in the greater Pacific Northwest. Our staff has more than 100 years of combined experience in the gun safe world as a multi-generational family-owned business.
In this video podcast we’ll be tackling some of the industry’s most controversial topics, sharing our expertise, and having some fun (as we like to do around here).
Have a question about safes, vault doors, the state of the industry or even our favorite local burger spot? Drop it in the form below and we’ll do our best to incorporate it in an upcoming post.
Episode 1 Transcript — Tariffs & Gun Safe Storage
From tariffs to unique things folks store in a gun safe, David Jr. Ballestrasse and Kael Johnson share their insights.
Question: How do you see tariffs impact on the gun safe industry?
David Jr.: So from everything we know right now, at least with Mexico products, they're going to be exempt. We're not going to see a big impact there. As far as the industry, that's not a big deal because the majority of your safes are not being imported from Mexico.
They're actually being imported from China. So if we’re kind of comparing 2016 — I would say the first Trump term — the impact on the safe industry was not huge. Because what happened was the Chinese government actually came in and, I don't know the details of this, but basically they drove cost down to where it helped offset the tariffs.
So we didn't see the huge increase that we were expecting on the import product.
Kael: And luckily our business model, we don't carry that many imported safes from China. We have a couple few to compete with the box stores, but our business model is centered around primarily US built stuff.
I don't wanna say that we're completely removed from the tariffs and then even our Mexico built stuff — it's built with 100% US steel. So that’s how they're gonna get around that.
I think all in all, do we have to be aware of it? Certainly. Is it gonna affect our business or the industry as a whole? I guess time will tell this go around.
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Question: What is the most unique thing people store in a gun safe?
Kael: Oh boy. First thing that came to mind we probably can't talk about on this deal. We've seen quite a few things over the years.
For me something that that happened years ago, a customer came in and he is a member of one of the world's most elite orchestras. He had the most expensive….and of course I don't remember what this musical instrument is called, but it was like this piece of equipment was over $100,000.
He was buying a safe for this specific musical instrument. I just I couldn't wrap my head around that. So that was really unique for me. And then since then, violins. Really expensive. Flutes. We've helped people guitars. A lot of instruments.
David Jr.: First thing that comes to my mind there is a family Bible that had been passed down for over 500 years. That's one of the most unique things that we've had a customer come in and and needed help securing
Every single type of collection you can imagine like Kael was saying from instruments to baseball cards.
Kael: Exactly. Memorabilia. Yeah anything of sentimental and monetary value.
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Question: What's one of the craziest or most surprising reasons someone has bought a gun safe?
David Jr.: Well generally most of these the answer is something that we're generally not supposed to repeat and forget. So yeah, maybe we do a good job at put in the the memory hole.
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Kael: The first time that we sold a TRTL rated safe — one of the highest security rated safes — was right when Bitcoin kind of came onto the scene. I didn't even know what that was.
So you've got this this new form of currency and someone's calling to store a really small item that's yeah that's worth a whole bunch of money in one of the highest security safes available. That was, gosh, it had to be close to a decade ago.
That was one of the most surprising things that I've ever come across. This person needed a really high security safe for something that was virtually new.
Memorabilia has come back a lot and you're starting to see the value of sports memorabilia, especially, kind of go up. And you're seeing that now there's these online businesses who are acting as brokers of this memorabilia.
They have to have really high security safes to store this stuff, kind of in a hub. So that was kind of surprising in the last decade or so.
David Jr.: Yeah, it's not that the maybe the contents are so unique, but the value of them is. Gold isn't crazy but we help people secure crazy amounts of gold. Precious metals is a big big one. And wallets bitcoin wallets.