The Versatility of Versacarry: How Cutting-Edge Holster Company Versacarry Made Their Home in Bryan

Article By: Jonathan Guajardo, Editor-in-Chief | BCS Chronicle

What You Need To Know:

• After a fire engulfed CEO Justin Sitz’s home in 2010, he would turn his passion for firearms into profitable holster-manufacturing business, Versacarry.

• Versacarry sells leather holsters, carry belts, and their patented ZeroBulk™ holster, which uses the handgun’s barrel to hold the weapon in place.

• Versacarry still maintains a walk-in storefront at 1003 N Earl Rudder Fwy in Bryan for local customers who are interested in trying out some of their products in-person.

For most gun enthusiasts, the word fire evokes thoughts of trigger pulls and shooting range bays. However, for Justin Sitz, the CEO and founder of Bryan-based holster company Versacarry, the word also sparks memories of a tragedy that would ignite one of his most successful enterprises. Originally from Temple, Sitz moved to College Station to study business at Blinn Junior College with dreams of one day attending the Mays School of Business at Texas A&M University. Unfortunately, these dreams were to be stomped out early due to an initial meeting with a counselor who would tell the youthful Sitz that this goal would be nearly impossible due to his current Blinn GPA.

Despite this initial setback, Sitz decided to forego reapplying to Mays Business School and instead set out on his own entrepreneurial journey, opening up several successful ventures in the Bryan-College Station area. However, all of this progress would soon go up in flames when, in June of 2010, Stiz’s home just outside of College Station would burn down in a freak accident, destroying the structure as well as all of his possessions inside. Included in the charred remains of his former home was his lofty gun collection and all of the holsters that he’d acquired over the years. Where some may have seen this a purely tragic event, Sitz instead saw an opportunity to start a business in an entirely new sector: firearms.

After he recouped the money for his lost possessions from the insurance, he decided to start a new business in lieu of investing in a new house. An avid firearms enthusiast, the first purchase that Justin decided to make after the fire was a small pistol for everyday carry. As any concealed carrier knows, the next most important purchase after a firearm is a good, reliable, concealable holster. This is where Sitz had a revelation that would change the way he thought about holsters forever.

“The one common denominator across all firearms no matter what changes from year-to-year, as far as the external, is the internal barrel diameter is always the same,” said Sitz. “And so I came up with a design that carried the firearm based on the internal barrel diameter.” This design would eventually turn into the Zerobulk™ holster, which Sitz patented and still sells today on the Versacarry website.

“I started in a little garden shed,” described Sitz of his humble beginnings in holster manufacturing. “If I spent eight hours out there, I could make twelve units a day.”

Having found a way to manufacture small quantities of his product, he began personally marketing his new holster, taking a chance by reaching out to hundreds of gun publications to get them to review his product. “It wasn’t a gamble…to me it was a sure thing,” said Sitz, describing his confidence in his new product.

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Eventually, his friend and well-known firearms industry writer, Richard Mann, did a test-run of his new holster and found himself pleasantly surprised by the versatility and concealability of Sitz’s new product. After doing a sit-down interview with Mann which was published in a well-known firearms publication, Sitz said his business finally began to see some traction, and eventually led to him hiring three more employees to keep up with demand and later expanding his business to include leather carry belts.

“No holster out there is worth a damn if you don’t have a good belt,” described Sitz on his company’s venture into leather goods. “It’s your foundation. We can build the best house with the best building, but if the foundation is junk, everything else is junk.”

Having learned some skills in belt-making from an apprenticeship with a Canadian leather goods artisan, Sitz set out on his journey to create a sturdy carry belt he could sell alongside his holsters. Locally processing his materials using all U.S.-based distributors, Versacarry still utilizes many of the techniques Sitz acquired in Canada to manufacture their line of study leather carry belts.

After having tackled belt-making, Sitz set off to address another section of the market. With customers frequently requesting leather holster options from his company, he began attempting to design one that would satisfy his customers’ needs as well as remain comfortable and concealable. “I had extra material and so I was like, ‘You know what? I think I’ll make some leather holsters…and so then I started making leather holsters,” described Sitz. This experimentation into leather goods ended up paying off and now Versacarry sells a variety of leather holsters to suit most common firearms on the market.

While their online sales presence continues to grow everyday thanks to the dedicated work of their marketing, customer service, and social media teams, Versacarry still maintains a walk-in storefront at 1003 N Earl Rudder Fwy in Bryan for local customers who are interested in trying out some of their products and making their purchases in-person. “If someone wants to come in, the guys and girls at the front will take care of them and we’ll help them out,” said Sitz.

Although quickly becoming a household name in modern firearms concealment, Versacarry doesn’t seem content to rest on their laurels and stick with their current line of products. “We strive right now, every year, to have six new product lines that we add every year to it,” said Sitz. “When I started I had three products. Last time I looked, there’s about 850.”

At the end of the day, as Sitz attested to, the key component of Versacarry’s success has been their versatility and openness to change. Sitz summed up his entrepreneurial journey in one quote: “You really don’t know exactly where your path is going to take you along the way and what you think your path is today is not what your business is going to be tomorrow.”