Lightbulb Moments

This week we launched some new enhancements and text changes that seem to have caused a few people have lightbulb moments like this one:

"I finally understand what you guys are trying to do!"

Nice! Here's what lead to that...

Ammunition Assets

On Wednesday, we rolled out more site enhancements including a major overhaul of the language we're using.

The main change was replacing the word "crate" with "asset account"... this really opened a lot of people's eyes to where we are going with ammunition. (Side note: we're still cleaning up automated emails so you will be seeing "crate" for a while until we catch everything and update it!)

This concept/text change came out of our AMMOSQUARED 3.0 planning I mentioned in my blog post last week "Never Standing Still".

From the very beginning of the company, we've struggled with some of the words we use to call things. Since we're trailblazing there isn't exactly a playbook we can follow.

The word "crate" came about when we launched our 2.0 site and was meant as a collection of customer ammo. Other rejected candidates at the time included: "locker", "vault", "armory"... stuff like that. We decided to use the word "subscription" to indicate the reoccurring portion of our customers' accounts and "crate" for the container where that ammo is located on the site.

Unfortunately "crate" was a double edged sword. On the one hand, it was good at conveying the fact that you had a collection of ammo accumulating in your account. On the other hand, it led a lot of people to believe two false premises: 1) that each customer had an actual crate of ammo in their name in our warehouse (not so - it is all pooled until shipped), and 2) that crates were finished when they shipped out and you needed to build a new one each time (also not so, the subscription was part of the crate and was perpetual).

As we looked ahead and decided what the future of AMMOSQUARED 3.0 is going to look like, we determined we wanted customers to have a more bank account type of experience. Each caliber and grade of ammunition will become an "asset" that can be bought, sold, exchanged for other calibers (assets), and sent to others.

So if the ammunition itself is the asset, then the container that holds the ammunition is an "asset account". Makes sense to us, so we made that change on the site on Wednesday. It started opening peoples' eyes right away.

Ammunition is a tangible asset like gold. It can be accumulated in an account and then shipped or sold in the future for more than what you paid for it... which actually brings me to the second lightbulb moment...

Another Lightbulb Moment

First some background about another update we just rolled out.

We updated the look of the Assets section to include menu options below each caliber. Now you can easily see the Buy, Sell, Exchange, Send or Move buttons. ("Exchange" is only visible if you have multiple calibers, and "Move" is only visible if you have multiple asset accounts). These were always on the page but people missed them under a 3 dot menu on the far right. Here is the Assets page now:

If you look below each caliber you'll see the quantity in rounds and value, then below that, the buttons mentioned above, and if you look along the right side, you'll see we added the Current Price and Average Price Paid for each ammunition asset.

I recently had an email exchange with a customer that needed some cash for personal reasons. During the exchange, I grabbed a screenshot of his account and sent him instructions on where to find the the new sell button. I made a comment that now he can also easily see which calibers he can sell to make a profit using the Current Price and Average Paid data listed beside each caliber.

Ding Ding Ding!

Of course. If I were going to sell ammo back for purely financial reasons and not for platform changes, like switching from 308 to 6.5 Creedmoor for example, it would make sense to sell the calibers I have a profit in first. With this enhancement, we just made that easier.

[Also for those of you thinking what I think you're thinking, no we don't report taxable gains and losses. Since we're not a financial product, I don't see why we should open that can of worms. Heck, if you sold an AR15 during the recent 2020-21 chaos and made a few bucks would you report the profit and pay taxes? If you want to, that is up to you. Same situation here. Maybe someday if we get as big as the Crypto market then the situation will change but remember it was only a couple of years ago reporting Crypto gains and losses was made a requirement. Also keep in mind I'm not a tax advisor or attorney... yada yada.]

Anyway, so with all that disclaimer out of the way, I can say that our team is building AMMOSQUARED the way we would want to use it - as individuals. One of the many ways we are interested in using the platform is to buy low and sell high. So if you are like us, you can stock up today and be ready when the next ammo shortage wave hits. At the very least you'll face options and not empty shelves. You can get a delivery of your physical ammunition, sell it all and cash in, or a little bit of both.

Either way, with the updated interface and text changes we made it a whole lot clearer what the future holds for AmmoSquared!