So it turns out - its been a little while since I wrote a Blog post. In fact its been almost exactly a year. Don't worry ROOK Tactical is still alive and kicking we just had other items of focus this year (mostly to ensure ROOK could stay in business). I will explain more below. Buckle up kids this will be a longish one, old school style. There's a giveaway at the bottom of the page so make sure you read it all.
First the good stuff we are going to go ahead and have a SALE for SHOT Show week even though we do not really have anything in stock rails wise, which I will explain more again below. So going to take 30% off most of the store with a 40% off pin kits and Guide Rods, we have quite a bit of excess inventory in those departments. We also have some AR-15 full lower kits with everything needed even the larger booger switch hole adapter - they are normally a pretty good deal, but let's put them at $40.00 which is well below cost for a really nice kit. Made in the USA.
There are some blemish compact front rails that you will find in the PAWN Shop - they are TiN coated, but will more than likely need a little re-working to fit (some may actually be okay we just quarantined the entire batch - do you feel like gambling?). Still they are cheap so you get what you get. As the rules say we will not be assisting in any way with these. If you buy them the understanding is they will need some work to make fit - IT'S ON YOU. They look like the standard ones just GOLD colored. I don't even have PROPER pictures you will just have to "Trust me Bro".
PLEASE READ: The kicker is that while we attend SHOT Show in Vegas we will not be shipping anything so anything purchased after this blog post is released today will NOT ship until the 27th of January at the earliest. Read that again before you e-mail me asking where your package is! JANUARY 27TH!
Okay so now for the juicy stuff. I think everybody can relate that 2024 was TOUGH. The death of Polymer80 was a huge hit to the community, and a huge hit to ROOK Tactical. Our initial thought was to wind down the production of front and rear rails and either start working on new products or essentially pivot into something else? Start a new business?. We kind of did both?
Sales were suffering pretty significantly, we had some competitors come into the marketplace and things overall were looking pretty bleak. Thankfully our savior became distribution - we partnered with Gun Builders Depot and they have been a blessing. Its part of the reason we barely have rails in stock anymore as the majority of our focus has been on supplying them. Their patience when we run behind and willingness to stock ROOK parts meant we actually GREW in overall sales in 2024 albeit at a lower profitability. Which has been fantastic nonetheless. Growth is growth, and we heard many horror stories, and witnessed several businesses in this space either get bought up and merged into other companies, start cutting budgets significantly or even shut down completely. So we consider ourselves very lucky. That was ONE pivot that saved us.
The second pivot was something that I had been working on in the background for a little while and while I can't talk too much about it, I now own a separate company that focuses on government contracting manufacturing - that is the primary reason I do not have much time to write blogs anymore. The new venture has already started to grow, and see success in the sector, and we are now officially "Supplying Warfighters" in things mostly unrelated to firearms which honestly is quite amazing to us and an honor to do. Long term goal is parts for Rocket ships.
Its been a tremendous amount of work getting to this point I was back in startup mode for a while with 16-18 hour days not uncommon like when I first started ROOK, but the potential moving forward we feel is huge. Even with the advent of DOGE - we in fact welcome this as we have found a lot of inefficiency and room for improvement - we still think the possibilities moving forward combined with the resurgence of American manufacturing overall will set us up for success in the years to come.
All this to say ROOK Tactical is not going anywhere - for now - and while we may not have rails in stock we highly recommend checking in with Gun Builders Depot :
If you cannot find them at ROOK Tactical, go there they seem to have them more than us now. Hilarious I know.
As always we are working to improve production, and timelines and have made some headway there, but it has been a real balancing act of cost and inventory this year, in order to not overextend ourselves and essentially bankrupt the company. While the demand is still "there" we think due to people building old frames they had on the shelf, and also the advent and success of 3-D printing, it is definitely not what it was in the heyday. So we made sensible choices and hedged our bets, pivoting to another industry that at least for now seems to be a little more stable. The reality of the situation is it has been almost 2 years since I collected a "paycheck" from an actual job and I am thankful to all our customers that make that possible. We have always tried to be customer focused, and do not think we have suffered many complaints over the years - of course there are always going to be some issues that just cannot be fixed - but we thank you for choosing ROOK Tactical and promise we are not going anywhere.
Lastly I have a bit of a confession to make, last year a good friend to the company lets just call her SWAGMSASTER K attended SHOT Show with us and gathered up so many items to do a giveaway it belied belief. She deserves so much credit for her hard work (she really does live for this stuff though!), and I know I disappointed her by not actually having the giveaway in a timely manner - so there seems like no better time than now for a Giveaway the day before I see her again for the first time in a year to maybe avoid a little wrath. It's just going to be different - are you a customer that has purchased something from us in the past year? You're automatically entered - that's it. Now it would be nice if you followed us over at:
But we are not making it a requirement in any way to make it fair for a few people in the past that have pointed out, not everybody has social media - however if you do win and you ARE a follower you may get a little extra sumtin sumtin in your backpack wink wink...
What are we giving away you may ask? Well I could list it all but you would be here for another hour - essentially its two backpacks filled with all the SWAG that SWAGMASTER K picked up at least years SHOT Show. They are filled with as much crap as I can pack into them - T-shirts, Hats, Mugs, Patches, More T-Shirts, I think there's a full on Gun Belt in one of them. Some of the patches alone in these backpacks from SHOT Show go on EBay for for $40 or more it really is a treasure chest of sorts...
.All in all I would guesstimate the worth of these filled backpacks which are Tactical Armament backpacks at$300 - throw in some ROOK Rails and Pins and you are looking at a $500 value or thereabouts. We will pick one random MALE customer and one random FEMALE customer as winners after we get back from SHOT Show - again the ONLY requirement is that you have made a purchase in the last year.
That's all folks! sale is live now but remember no shipping until JANUARY 27TH!
Cheers,
ROOK
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