big sky country home for s&s plus llc - Tamarack Sporting Enterprises

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BUSINESSPROFILE
A REPORT BY DANA FARRELL
BIG SKY
HOME FOR S&S PLUS LLC
COUNTRY
MAIN: MARY JO BIRKA’S GUERINI
STOCKED BY S&S PLUS.
RIGHT: MIKE LUPOLD. S&S PLUS
TRAVELS WITH A MOBILE WORKSHOP.
Polson, Montana – home of S&S Plus LLC
custom gunstocks – sits in the northwest
portion of the State, on the southern end of
beautiful Flathead Lake, hundreds of miles from the
nearest big city. Approximately 300 miles from Boise,
Idaho, and closer to 400 miles to Seattle, they’re far
from any large population center, but that hasn’t
stopped owners Jon Raymond and Mike Lupold from
making a great success of their business.
Having carved out a healthy niche in the custom
stock world, they employ four full time staff in spite of
the remoteness of their home shop and distance from
any sizeable customer base. However, they are just a
stone’s throw away from Big Sky Sporting Clays and
so reap the benefit of their proximity to this high
quality shooting ground. With their shop sitting a
mere 800 yards from the clubhouse, S&S is able to
dovetail their stock making services with those of the
gun club and vice-versa – allowing customers the
convenience of being able to shoot their gun during

BUSINESSPROFILE 1
the stock making process,
promoting a high comfort level
and ultimately ensuring a
successful gun fit.
“Being in Montana isn’t super
conducive to people knocking on
the door every day,” says Lupold.
“As much as I love it here, I’ve
touched on the possibility of
relocatiing the business with my
partner. It might be better for
business, but neither of us really
wants to leave. It’s beautiful
country, but living here requires
us to travel more and we never
want to lose sight of quality and the
personal relationships that we
build with our clients. We’re
currently enjoying a slight but
steady growth each year, a
reflection of what our shooting
industry’s actually doing. It’s
holding its own – I think!”
S&S Plus has an
interesting and
somewhat unique
business model.
Comfort
I first met co-owners Raymond and
Lupold on Vendor’s Row at the
2011 Seminole Cup at Quail Creek
Plantation in Okeechobee,
Florida. Hard at work in their
mobile workshop, Lupold was
reconfiguring the grip on Louisiana
shooter David Kees’ Beretta
autoloader half-way through the
Main Event. Raymond was
concentrating on another project at
his bench. As Lupold explained
that day, comfort of grip is crucial.
“Having the hand in the correct
position – in a relaxed manner –
allows you to make a fluid, smooth
move to the target. When you can’t
feel anything in the grip that you
would like changed, we take a little
off and put some Bondo on it and
have them grab the gun and cast
RIGHT: CO-OWNER
JON RAYMOND IS
A MASTER
STOCKMAKER.
BELOW: LOUISIANA
SHOOTER DAVID
KEES HAD HIS
BERETTA STOCK
MODIFIED AT THE
SEMINOLE CUP.
their hand in the shooting position.
It becomes like that old pair of
shoes you just won’t throw away –
we’re all about comfort and
relaxation.” (With that improved
grip, Kees went on to take AA5 in
the Seminole Cup Main Event – and
recently punched into Master class.)
Business Model
S&S has an interesting and
somewhat unique business model.
Because their home shop is so
geographically removed from their
customer base, many shooters
interface with them as they travel
the shoot circuit, hooking up with
them at one of the big events they
set up at each year. With a nominal
living space, a shop and showroom
in their trailer, they usually travel
with around 60-80 stock blanks on
hand from which to inspire and
tantalize their customers. They
have maybe twice again that
number at home and if they don’t
have exactly what the customer is
looking for on hand, they can
provide more options via the web
to help find that perfect piece of
wood. Photos of their inventory
can be found on their web site and
when a certain piece piques the
interest of a customer, additional
pictures can be taken and sent via
email, until a customer is sure
they’ve found that perfect piece of
wood.
Raymond and Lupold contrast
and complement each other’s
strong points, providing a sort of
ying/yang balance to their
company. Lupold is more on the
front end, doing most of the sales
and finish work, while Raymond, in
Lupold’s words, “is truly
the stock maker. It
takes a certain
personality to treat an
870 the same as a Super
Scroll Krieghoff. It takes
an artistic ability to take
a stock that fits a certain
individual and still try to
keep it looking
aesthetically correct,” he
says. They employ a
manual pantograph
duplicator and strive for
all four full time employees
to be well-rounded. A fifth
person, Pam Wheeler,
does their checkering – she’s been
at it for about 25 years and has
trained “upwards of 20 people,
most of whom are still in the
business,” according to Lupold.
Start to Finish
The entire stock making process
usually takes a couple of months
from start to finish – from initial
fitting, to pattern stock, to the end
product. “We’ve got shoots to go
CLAYSHOOTINGUSA

BUSINESSPROFILE 1
to, so we work off a schedule. You
send me your gun, we start on it
and a week later I can send the gun
back to you – but for the next 8 to
10 weeks you shoot it with a
pattern stock.” Once the actual
finish stock is installed, they like to
double check the fit. “Jon goes
through every one of them, just
making sure it’s not tight
somewhere,” says Lupold.
These days they make around
eight to ten road trips per year, in
contrast to the twenty plus and
49,000 miles they logged the first
year they launched the business.
Performing fittings and crafting
sacrificial pattern stocks while on
the road, they do the actual final
stock making at home in Polson.
Lupold says, if necessary, he can
accomplish a lot in the way of a
fitting if a customer has three or
four hours free at a tournament,
but leaves the finish work for when
he gets home.
Although they have sometimes
worked from a spec sheet of
dimensions taken by other stock
fitters, Lupold says doing the
fittings themselves and working
with sacrificial pattern stocks is the
approach they prefer – and so
carry a big plastic bin full of used
butt stocks for this purpose. “This
is the perfect way to fit people. We
have stocks of hopefully every
flavor – they just get cut up and
ground up into any dimension.”
Referring to using a sacrificial
stock, Lupold says, “Ultimately, the
great thing about it is that the
shooter’s shooting their own gun –
not a try-gun. We don’t build the
stocks off-site, but what we do is
put our pattern stock on their gun
and basically fit them right there. It
may not be pretty but it’s very
functional. They can shoot their
own gun and know what it’s going
to feel like when they get their final
stock made. It helps with
scheduling and allows the shooter
to get going with their
(sometimes) drastically different
feeling gun.”
Home Field
Advantage
After a client has shot the
temporary stock for a while, they
often make the trip to Polson to
fine tune the fit and finalize the
order. Although far from any really
large cities, Polson is only a one
hour drive from full service
airports in both Kalispell and
Missoula, making for an easy and
scenic trip. Once in the relaxing
atmosphere of northwest
Montana, customers can shoot
their gun at Big Sky under the
watchful eye of Lupold, a Level 2
NSCA Instructor, and make any
necessary final adjustments before
the final stock is crafted.
Fitting someone whose mount
is not consistent is tough – and
that’s where upper class shooters
typically make the stock fitter’s job
easier. “If you’re not mounting the
same, it’s going to change some of
the specifications needed,”
according to Lupold. As a Master
customers can shoot their gun at
Big Sky under the watchful eye of
Lupold, a Level 2 NSCA Instructor,
and make any necessary final
adjustments before the final
stock is crafted.
class shooter and Level 2
instructor, Lupold can recognize
an inconsistent mount and has the
knowledge to help beginning and
intermediate shooters work
through their problems, ultimately
improving their scores. They will
discuss mount, stance and
technique, and Lupold will watch
targets being shot – not for
difficulty level, but for centering. “I
want them to shoot a straight-away
target – and I want to see that
they’re dead-centering that target.
“The nice thing when people
can travel here is we have no
rush,” says Lupold. “It’s difficult at
major tournaments (or any event)
due to time restraints – and we
don’t like to rush what we do. It’s
not an in-and-out, take their money
and run type of scenario to us.”
Michiganders Mary Jo Birka
and husband Mark have made the
trip to Polson more than once and
say what impresses them most
about S&S, besides the quality of
work, is the attention to detail and
the amount of time they’re willing
to invest in a project to get it just
right. If word of mouth truly is the
best form of advertising, satisfied
customers like the Birkas are
worth their weight in gold.
ABOVE:THEY TRAVEL WITH A BIN OF
USED WOOD TO BE USED AS PATTERN
STOCKS. RIGHT: A SHOOTER TRYING
HIS NEW STOCK AT BIG SKY
SPORTING CLAYS.
CLAYSHOOTINGUSA

BUSINESSPROFILE 1
In addition to stock making,
S&S installs recoil reducers made
by Gracoil, R.A.D. and Isis, with
the latter being their biggest seller,
claiming its good looks, light
weight and functionality make it
the most popular. A contract with
McMillan rifles for custom rifle
stocks currently provides 8-10% of
their business.
Satisfied
Customers
Having made stocks for Jon
Kruger and Andy Duffy, S&S also
stocked Cynthia Kruger’s Perazzi
with a stunning piece of quilted
maple supplied by husband Jon.
Cynthia went to S&S after using an
ill-fitting stock for three years that
absolutely pounded her face,
causing permanent nerve damage.
She says it took a while to get used
to shooting a gun that actually fit,
because she was so messed up
from shooting one that wasn’t even
close. “It just comes where I need
it to be,” she says, referring to the
way the gun handles for her. With
the Isis recoil system installed and
light loads she claims it has no
noticeable recoil. About S&S, she
says, “They’re very customer
service oriented – and they travel a
ASHLEIGH HAFLEY.
lot, so they’re super accessible.”
That personal connection is
something S&S strives for and
their clients seem to place a lot of
value on.
Ashleigh Hafley, who has won
multiple titles with her S&S stocked
Zoli, says, “They just do a
phenomenal job.” Hafley lights up
when talking about “Mr. Jon and Mr.
Mike”, as she calls them, and the
personalized service and resulting
product S&S has given her.
The Future
I asked Lupold where he sees S&S
going in the next few years. They’d
like to build their business and
clientele to the point where they
only need to make four trips per
year, with each trip lasting maybe
one month or so. I told him it’s got
to be nice breaking up the long,
cold Montana winter by going to
Florida each year, at which point,
laughing, he said, “Yeah, it is. It’s
still winter here right now – it’s
probably snowing on our mountain
as we speak.” It was the beginning
of June! ■
CYNTHIA KRUGER.
You can reach S&S Plus LLC on the
web at: http://ssplusstocks.net or by
phone at 406-250-3398.
CLAYSHOOTINGUSA