Aug. 16, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Silencer Central.

Every day at Silencer Central begins the same.

It might last only 10 minutes, but every day 8:30 a.m., the team gathers for an all-staff conversation.

“Every person who experiences it says it’s so powerful,” CEO Brandon Maddox said. “It creates accountability. It gets everyone to the office on time. They say what they did the day before, what they’re working on today, and we share things.”

In the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic – March 22, 2020  to be exact – the conversation was different.

With trade shows shut down – the company’s primary way of growing the business – and uncertainty surrounding its ability to continue manufacturing, Maddox gathered his 16-person team.

“I told them I would be 100 percent committed to keeping everyone in the room for the next two years – that’s what my bank said I could afford to do with zero new revenue coming in – but I needed them to promise that they were 100 percent on board with doing something for the next two years that might be different than we did prior.”

That “something” was a strong shift to an online model for selling its silencers, or firearm sound suppressors.

Two years later, the morning meeting that once held 16 people now totals more than 100. There are more than 200 employees companywide. And Silencer Central was just named one of the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing businesses in the nation.

The company ranks No. 1,309, the fastest-growing in Sioux Falls, and No. 101 overall for companies selling consumer products.

This is how it happened.

Timely approach

As it worked out, Maddox had set his business on a course that would pay off in a big way beginning in 2019.

He went from being licensed in 12 states to being licensed in all 42 states where silencers are legal. Then, with events shut down but the ability to conduct business in hand, Silencer Central essentially created a contactless process for firearms owners to purchase silencers.

Customers could go online or call and be walked through the necessary paperwork digitally, receiving interest-free payments from Silencer Central and free shipping to their home.

“We even had a process to do fingerprinting at home with a video to train you because so many locations weren’t accessible for customers during the pandemic,” Maddox said.

It helped that local elected officials allowed the company to continue to operate, he added.

“It’s a big deal when you’re shipping to 42 stores across the country,” he said. “Our ability to stay open was a big part of the puzzle in allowing us to grow. And it was perfect timing because three months before COVID we had just put the model in place, so we put it on turbo.”

But even though the platform existed, Silencer Central still had to get the word out about what it could offer. And that wasn’t simple, either.

“One of the reason people don’t buy from us is phobia about the process,” Maddox said. “You can read about it, and it sounds horrible, which is why trade shows work so well. There’s interaction, and we can explain how we make the process easy. Sometimes, it’s hard to have that conversation through a print or radio ad.”

It’s also impossible to reach people through the main digital marketing channels most companies use.

“We’re really hamstrung. People are shocked when they hear we can’t advertise on Google or Facebook because we’re the firearms industry,” Maddox said. “We can’t use PayPal. I can’t even post an open position on those platforms.”

In addition to word of mouth – once silencer owners begin using one, they tend to buy more and tell their friends – Silencer Central started partnering with industry influencers to help tell the story.

For instance, prominent female hunter and television host Melissa Bachman regularly endorses the products.

“She can talk about our products and how she uses them and come to events and represent us,” Maddox said. “Without influencers and thought leaders like her talking about us on social media, we’d be dead in the water.”

Instead, Silencer is very much thriving. That should only get better as the federal government fully shifts to online approval of the paperwork required to purchase a silencer, eliminating a backlog of pending applications.

“When I sell a suppressor, I can’t recognize the revenue until the customer takes possession, and that has been slow because they got so behind during the pandemic,” Maddox said.

“Once all the paper forms are out of the pipeline and efforts are entirely focused on e-forms, they’re telling us they think approval could be a 45-day turnaround, which will be great.”

What’s next

Silencer Central recently moved into a new, totally renovated headquarters at 4901 N. Fourth Ave. totally focused on the employee experience and designed to feel like home.

“Just the number of people in this building is over 100, and we have 42 locations where employees are based, and 40 part-time people, so it’s 200-plus right now if you think about everything,” Maddox said. “It’s good we have a really nice building, and that helps recruit people.”

With new team members constantly joining Silencer, Maddox is mindful of building upon the culture that helped support all his growth.

That weaves through the morning meetings that begin each day as conversations reflect the company’s core values.

“We’re too big now for everyone to give an update, but we do it by department, and we talk about things like integrity, and we recognize an employee every week who reflects our values with a gift card,” Maddox said.

The team also is back to working the trade shows that for years were the mainstay of the business, including five booths at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and up to 100 total shows annually.

A new product coming out later this year will be specific to the back-country hunter and offer a lighter weight, highly effective suppressor.

“There’s education left to be done. If you ask people what they hate about shooting, they said the sound and the recoil. And if we say we can mitigate the sound to where you don’t need earplugs and get rid of the recoil, people don’t realize what a huge benefit it is until they experience it,” Maddox said.

“Once they experience it, they love it, and they tell other people. So I think there’s big opportunity.”

Making the Inc. 5000 list is just one more validation the company is on the right track, he said.

“We’re fortunate that several companies on the list use the same bank we do, so we’ve gotten to know them and learn from them, and we know what it takes to land on that list,” Maddox said. “We just congratulate all those in South Dakota who were recognized and feel honored to be in the company of so many South Dakota entrepreneurs.”

Want to learn more about joining the growing Silencer Central team? Click here.