As firearms business meets tech industry, new roles emerge for IT team
Feb. 26, 2025
This paid piece is sponsored by Silencer Central.
It wasn’t that long ago that the IT department at Sioux Falls-based Silencer Central essentially was a one-man show.
Then it became a two-person team, then a four-person one.
Danny Geraets joined the business at that time – September 2023 – and now the senior director of IT operations leads a 14-person team as Silencer Central rapidly evolves its tech capabilities and builds its industry niche.
“It’s an interesting story of how the team has grown,” Geraets said. “Not that long ago, the company was all retail and did business primarily at events.”
That quickly flipped during the pandemic as events in the industry were canceled and founder Brandon Maddox pivoted to a web presence.
“Early on, they relied a lot on contractors for the tech side, but then came e-forms in 2022, and that allowed us to electronically submit customers’ forms for approval,” Geraets said. “We like to say we make the process easy – and that includes being able to do it in your living room.”
Geraets got into working with computers in college at USD as a way to pay the bills while he pursued a degree in biology and an MBA. His wife was a year behind in him college and went into nursing at Sanford Health, where he initially started as a manager of supply chain and financials within the IT department.
“I went through several integrations with their enterprise resource planning and added more teams and eventually worked with applications that ranged from sleep software to the badge machine to get in the door for security,” he said.
The role introduced him to Brandon May, who would go on to become a co-worker at Silencer Central. They reconnected in 2023 when Geraets, then working on his own as a contractor, came in to install software at Silencer Central.
“Then, they opened up a full-time position as a director, which I was hired for,” he said. “Now, I manage a lot of our vendor relationships, our development team, application or end user support, cybersecurity and product development, including project management and quality assurance.”
He also has helped position Silencer Central to support e-commerce operations for partners such as guns.com and Sportsman’s Warehouse.
“Their suppressor orders come in through us, and we fulfill on their behalf, going through federal requirements and supported by our customer service team,” Geraets said.
“We also do manufacturing fulfillments, where other silencer manufactures leverage our solution and services to deliver their silencers.”
It all takes a robust tech infrastructure, and a team that can adapt.
“The decision-making here is quick, and we’re agile. That stood out my first month,” Geraets said. “The nimbleness is unique. It’s not like you request something in the budget and have to go through several cycles to get approval. If I can identify a benefit here and make a case for it, we’re off and running.”
He recently added two developers to his team and expects to grow in analytics and cybersecurity later in the year.
“We have people who think you have to own a gun to work here, and that’s not the case, he added. “They’re not all gun collectors. What we are is a group of problem-solvers. We’re ambitious. We’re recognize sometimes there’s not a blueprint because we’re disrupting the industry along the way.”
Geraets, however, does enjoy hunting and has discovered what an improved experience it is using a suppressor. He now owns five of them and has taken them with his two sons hunting.
“They both use silencers now,” he said. “My 9-year-old used our new Meateater silencer to shoot his first deer, and he didn’t flinch. He shot it accurately and didn’t experience the recoil, so it’s been fun to do that.”
He’s also energized by how Silencer Central is making its operation even stronger. A new warehouse under construction on the Sioux Falls campus will incorporate “a lot of cool new technology,” he said. “We’re working through some integrations, and it will be really neat to see how it works together with our systems. It’s going to make us much more efficient.”
Last fall, the company put in a new warehouse management system and already is seeing the benefits.
“We have people picking product using handhelds, and they used to get up to maybe 200 a day. Then it was 400. And then recently we did 2,000 in a day,” he said. “That’s how fast this company is expanding and improving, and it’s a lot of fun to be a part of it.”
