After Hitting Wall Entrepreneur Builds Door Fire Funder Fills Vacuum in $48 Billion Outdoor Sports Industry

An innovative entrepreneur who became frustrated with the lack of capital-raising resources for one of his company’s proprietary products has turned adversity into opportunity and launched his own “Fire Funder” crowd-funding platform geared toward the $48-billion-per-year outdoor sports industry.
Sam Lambert previously gained recognition as the Bend Venture Conference 2013 Concept Stage winner for Ochoco Arms (OA), the Prineville-based firm he founded which channeled his hunting and shooting recreational passion into the invention of a patented laser sight to improve shotgun accuracy.
Lambert created Ochoco Arms with the aim of developing ideas — primarily in the home defense, tactical and sportsmen’s markets – into intellectual property, and came up with flagship project the “OA Hotzone” multi-laser sighting system, which features a plurality of angled lasers set to project a pattern that illustrates a target’s affected impact or “hot” zone.
But when he sought to raise funds to take that product to the next level via established internet sites specializing in crowd-funding (the modern-day practice of funding new products and technologies by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people) he found his way barred.
Lambert said, “Hotzone was three years in development, initial manufacture and marketing and when we looked for potential crowd-funding to kick start wider production and got no answer from 300 sites we realized there really wasn’t such an outlet for the firearms industry, or even the wider sporting, hunting, outdoor products markets.
“I’m not the type of person that likes to be told ‘no’ and when I hit this wall I decided instead to build a door.
“This led to the creation of firefunder.com, which provides a website for users to propose project concepts, and to aggregate collective marketplace input and funds for the project concepts, and for market research services via a global network.”
Fire Funder just underwent a “soft” launch, including exposure at the recent Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas – the largest annual trade show in the industry, drawing some 65,000 attendees — where Lambert said the venture was very well received.
He added, “When I realized there was not a viable crowd-funding solution, for one, for the firearms industry I saw that other companies were facing the same situation and started looking at putting together our own platform.
“Feedback from the SHOT Show illustrated that we had discovered a huge vacuum in the industry and a lot of other companies were in the same boat in terms of looking for solutions.
“Further discussions in the wider industry led to the generation of other ideas including having strong analytics with research capability to allow for market testing, and exploration of concepts at reduced risk.”
Current campaigns being promoted via firefunder.com include a quick change gun-cleaning system, a “shoot-through” gun bore cleaner and a unique hand-crafted ammunition venture. Others being worked on are a walking stick, or staff, that can perform a number of different functions and innovative new bag and apparel lines.
Lambert, who has a strong entrepreneurial family background including his father starting Mid Oregon Personnel in 1984, added: “Often the biggest challenge beyond the start-up stage, where a company may have everything primed and ready including a site, tooling and readiness to manufacture, is the need for capital to take up and go further.
“This is where Fire Funder can help, and it also gives individuals an opportunity to help steer the direction of the industry and gives consumer a stronger say.
“We also have a stable of experts available to, for example, discuss opportunities regarding OEM (OEM’s, or Original Equipment Manufacturers, are manufacturers who re-sell another company’s product under their own name and branding) and gauge the success rate for their campaign.
“Another big part of this venture is to help our nonprofit partners. We are giving up to ten percent of our gross profits to nonprofit organizations and contributors wanting to make a difference can choose which nonprofit they would like to see financial assistance go to.
“Causes selected reflect our core principles ranging from species conservation — it is essential to have a healthy and well-managed environment — to children’s education.
“Fire Funder is a reward-based platform where people can support at different levels and help a number of smaller companies, like OA, where innovation often originates.
“We are also setting up a referral system directing new ventures to resources such as writing and photography to help with early stage components — start-up entrepreneurs often don’t realize the extent of what is needed to run a business — and we have tried to emulate what we see as best elements of what is occurring in the crowd-funding platform sector.
“We are getting the word out via multiple avenues, including trade shows, media exposure and nationally syndicated broadcast shows. We are excited to see where this leads.”
firefunder.com, 307-275-7221