GunSpace

GunSpace is a social media network & event management and industry connection for the $60B firearms community. Firearm manufacturers, trainers, and firearms stores can not advertise on conventional social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. There are 10s of millions of gun enthusiasts and 10s of thousands of manufacturers and gun shops on social media who cannot advertise, sell, or buy through any current media. We will pull those firearms enthusiasts to our platform, allowing us to sell high-value, enthusiast-focused advertising and paid subscriptions to manufacturers, gunshops, and trainers. GunSpace will be the only firearm-specific IOS and Android app on the market.

I want to preface that there is nothing illegal about selling online, and all firearms transfers must be done through a licensed dealer. It is a dealer to dealer sale, the customer pays for it at one dealer, and it's shipped to another dealer, then the customer gets a required FBI background check. It's safer because you have the buyer's IDs at both the purchase and at the transfer.

Enthusiasts love to show off their firearms. GunSpace is an Instagram-like platform with a feed that the user can filter to follow friends or follow geographical state or cities within the state. GunSpace users will have their vault to put images of any firearm they own, and those firearms are associated with badges which can be filtered by type of firearm interests. Users can create clubs within the app for special interests, such as collectors groups. We will keep top individual content creators and influencers on the app with financial incentives, unlike current social media that expect content for free and then sells adds the backs of the creators. Posted firearms in the vault can be then be pushed to Instagram as a post for free advertising of GunSpace. 

GunSpace will have a monthly subscription fee for commercial users. $499.00 for Manufacturers and 199.00 for gun shops and trainers. Commercial users can also buy the splash page for $5k per month and limited ads in the users' feed. For  $19.99, customers can buy the premium features such as longer video uploads and special deals from manufacturers. Commercial users will have a vault in which they can showcase their product line. Gun shops and trainers can link through to their website for sales. GunSpace also has features such as event management, where attendees can pay promoters directly through the app. Event management will allow manufacturers, gunshop owners, promoters, and trainers to schedule demo days, sales, matches, and training through the app. Having an industry-focused app will allow paid users to derive sales from the exact people they are trying to reach, even focusing on specific firearm interests saving considerable marketing costs. 

As of 5-20-21 GunSpace has reached the following milestones. Gunspaceapp.com website is up and running but still needs some polishing. The app itself is completed and is in late-stage debugging and will launch on IOS and Android stores by 6-1-21. Our marketing effort should net 10 thousand users in the first three months and 50 thousand users in 6 months. We believe we can be in the pockets of 500K  app users within two years, putting the app at a higher circulation than Guns and Ammo, the largest print firearm magazine. Firearm owners are looking for space where they are not outcasts for sharing what they love. We should see some of the same attraction to GunSpace that Parlor had when social media throttled back conservative speech.

Why do I need your money? Marketing and subscription sales. I have already invested 22k in the app and 2k in the website and trademark. It is near completion, and its development is paid in full. Our marketing plan is to use focused advertisement of the app on Instagram and Facebook firearms enthusiasts and groups. I have an industry influencer with 20K followers who knows many other influencers who can get their followers to use the app; I want to hire him to network.  We will also need to get some other top firearm influencers to jump on the platform to replicate his efforts and bring momentum to the platform. It will take about 50 thousand app users to get serious attention from the most prominent manufacturers. Another need for the money is to scale bandwidth on the platform to keep it from being slow. 

About me, I have owned a firearm store for the last ten years. Marketing is extremely hard for our industry. At Shot Show, our industry trade show, I have sat through and heard the same complaints about social media, and getting your account locked for simple things like showing how to break a gun down for cleaning. You are at the mercy of any social warrior that crosses your path. As a dealer, you can not buy paid advertising through any of the other platforms. There is a huge pent-up demand to get off other social media platforms that are anti-gun and anti-hunting. 

My exit plan is to build this platform into a very profitable and valuable app with hundreds of thousands of users. I then plan on selling it to a large sports media group like the Outdoor Sportsmans Group. Recoil magazine does 4.5M in revenue with 250K circulation, so I believe the exit can be an 8 figure sale when we reach ~500k users.  

The GunSpace app can also be easily translated for other restricted industries such as cigars, cannabis, beer, wine, and liquor. Additionally, it can be lightly modified for multiple focused interest apps.

Thanks for reading,  Mike Paige