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Life Lessons
Josh Ungier, president and CEO, Pyramyd Air
» The key to managing people
» Guns can be a sensitive subject for some, but so is sex.
» Imagine our society without guns. No John Wayne. No Bonanza. No Star Trek. No Sportsman Channel. No Statue of Liberty. Nothing to defend freedom with unless you can do it with baseball bats. How long do you think our bucolic life would last? A week, maybe two or three.
» Guns are tools that work long distance. They’re suppose to be used for specific purposes. It could be hunting, target shooting or self-defense. Tools are just like forks, hammers, chainsaws or bulldozers. All tools are supposed to be used appropriately. All tools, when used improperly, are deadly.
» That, unfortunately, doesn’t stop us from misusing them. Education is the ultimate tool in our possession to teach and prevent tragedies. You teach a child how to use a fork and knife, the same goes for the gun.
» Without education, we, as a society, will all perish. Education is sacred. Education is everything.
» I was taught to use my mind from an early age. My father taught me to play chess when I was 4. He educated me before I went to school.
» A temporary lack of product won’t destroy your business; a temporary lack of honesty will. is understanding you’re one of these people. |
Josh Ungier is shooting for the moon. Not literally, of course, but the president and CEO of air gun distributor Pyramyd Air is aiming high for his business. Sofar, he’s been on target.
“I always liked guns,” says Ungier, who was born and raised in Russia. “It teaches you to relax and concentrate at the task at hand.”
Ungier loves the complexity of it all, right down to the smallest details: the deviation of a pellet’s flight, the effects of wind and
humidity.
“There are many other factors that preclude good shooting, and those factors, like anything else, must be learned,” he says. “That’s where the fun starts.”
Ungier’s learned a lot since founding the company — which sells air guns, air gun ammunition and other accessories — in the mid-1990s. He began by working with a Russian distribution partner, but the relationship didn’t last. So with the financial backing of his eye surgeon wife, Mirfee, he went into his Pepper Pike
basement and started his own company.
That first year, it generated $20,000. “It was my passion,” he says. “I was the store.”
That passion helped build demand. Fifteen years ago, air guns weren’t mainstream. No one knew air gun brand names like they did with firearms-makers such as Winchester or Smith & Wesson.
In fact, a void existed between consumers and air gun manufacturers who found it too expensive to market directly to their customers, says Patrick Coughlin, Pyramyd’s COO. So in 1999, Ungier worked with multiple Web developers to create the company’s Web site (pyramydair.com) to complement the 300,000
catalogs it prints each year. Since then, business has been more than steady.
During the past four years, Pyramyd had experienced 30 percent growth, and last year sales hit $18 million. And among the nine new employees hired in 2009, Pyramyd added a gunsmith to test for defects, answer tech questions and help repair old air guns, which sometimes includes manufacturing parts no longer available.
Pyramyd recently doubled the size of its offices with a move to Warrensville Heights. But even that wasn’t enough. Pyramyd is planning an additional 16,800 square feet of warehouse space.
Part of Pyramyd’s growth can be attributed to what it offers: a vast inventory that includes the industry’s best, such as German-made H&N pellets, which have been used by competitive shooters to win more than two-thirds of all Olympic shooting medals, and air gun names such as Beeman, Crosman, AirForce, Gamo and Umarex.
Pyramyd also has its own brand of air guns that it plans to distribute soon through outdoor sporting goods chains such as Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops. It’s also expanding its product offerings to outdoor gear such as tents and sleeping bags.
Customers placed 22,000 orders this past December, 5,000 more than the year before. Ninety percent of Pyramyd’s business is in the U.S. and ranges from Olympic-quality shooters to law enforcement, which uses powerful precharged air rifles to shoot out lights in buildings without harming their occupants, to a priest in a Louisiana parish who got tired of birds soiling his church bells.
“We’re aggressive in getting the word out about air guns and getting in new products,” Coughlin says. Pyramyd’s Web site features video air gun reviews by Paul Capello and a blog and podcasts by Texan and air gun “zealot” Tom Gaylord.
“We work to educate people,” Coughlin says. “We just don’t take orders.”
Looking back on the company’s humble beginnings, Ungier is blunt about its success to date. “It’s taken determination, sweat, sleepless nights and lots of balls,” he says.