By the time you read this, STI International, Inc. will have completed its first year as an Employee Owned company. Unless I'm mistaken, the first employee owned Firearms Company of consequence in this country. How's it workin'?

I forgot that we would be closed the last week of the year when I forecast the business increase for this year. We actually closed up 14.3% . Since I normally throw in some statistics at years end, here's some to think about. Single stacks are now 41% of complete guns. Caliber breakdown for single stacks is: 9mm = 31%, .38S = 5%, .40S&W = 7%, .45ACP = 57%. Any surprises there? Staggered column guns break down as follows: 9mm = 20%, .38S = 15%, .40S&W = 49%, .45ACP = 16%. No surprises there either, huh?

Let's try for some surprises here: Domestic business = 56.56%. Export = 43.44%. This is of commercial business only. Brownells edged Dawson Precision as "Top Domestic Distributor". Europe was a "horse race" between Buchsenmacherei Prommersberger in Germany and Bignami S.P.A. in Italy for "Top Foreign Distributor", world wide. "Most Improved" Domestic Distributor = Dawson Precision by just a fraction. "Most Improved" Foreign Distributor (world wide) is N.V. Coppens Wapenhandel in Belgium by a great margin. Europe has wrested "Best Foreign Market" honors from Austral/Asia, but A/A is surging. I think it'll be a great race in 2006. The race for "Most Improved" Domestic Dealer in 2005 was a runaway! "Thunder Mountain Custom Rifles" in Arizona took the gold medal. TMCR also attained Distributor status this year. If any of you have any additional questions on how things stacked up or where you fell in, just drop me an email.

The new catalog is complete and looking very good. One of the things that you will not see in there that you probably expect to see is the "Trojan SS". It will, obviously, be on the website and, possibly, in a few ads but since it is intended to be a "Limited" size production run it makes no sense to put it in a long term catalog.

We have a "hiccup" on the "Legacy"! Not a problem on the gun itself, just the tritium night sights. Our "Tactical Adjustable Sight" that we are so proud of sits too low as a unit to allow the proper location of the tritium modules. When we adjust that height and modify the front sight for a decent "point of impact", the front sight is too tall to be practical in a tactical gun. Until we resolve this condition, no "Tactical Adjustable Sights" that glow in the dark.

It seems that Ed Brown has added his name to the list of folks emulating our STIppling effect on the single stack grip. I believe that makes three admirers now. We're flattered. We like the transition he made to STIpple the mainspring housing too. The effect looks pretty good but we're gonna' have to do one and shoot it before we're confident that it is as effective there as it is on the front strap.

Next week we'll be in SHOT Show, Booth #5887. Find us, it'll be worth your while. Attendees on our side of the counter will be Pauletta, Don, Lori, John, Chris, Mike, Ed, and myself.

The same story holds true for IWA. If you're going to be there and want a "sit-down", please let Pauletta or Lori know as soon as possible. We're still looking for ways to make our website better and ways to help our mutual end customers locate you guys easier. If you've got any ideas, please let us know.

We do not plan to do a "minimum order increase" this year as we have done in the past. Not because we think we shouldn't, we just don't feel that we have coordinated well enough with you guys to make it happen properly. I guess that it's possible that we could do something about mid-year, but January of 2007 is more likely. Minimum order level remains at $500.00 for the time being.

Sell a bunch. Have fun. Do good. Not necessarily in that order!