Derek Makgill

Two days at the 2018 Shot Show


I spent a few days in Vegas for the 2018 Shot Show this past week.

I started attending four years ago to work the Glockstore booth but now I spend the time getting caught up on work, meeting friends and vendors from overseas, studying booth design and marketing materials, and exploring business opportunities.

It was a great time, though if I could do it over again, I would have scheduled some meetings in advance and put together a more clear plan.

Shot Show is a playground for people who like guns, but it’s also a great event for business opportunities. Most of the companies there are desperate for people with technical or creative competence.

Since I’ve got a lot of young people who read this blog, I’ll say this: if you’re looking for a job, consider going to trade shows instead of recruiting fairs. You can often speak directly with the founders of the business, get to know their problems, and offer some solutions. And you’ll have no hiring competition.

At the Shot Show in particular, you might go around with a video camera and shoot interviews to later sell to the businesses as a marketing asset. You might take photos or design better logos for the companies on the spot. You sell them on setting up live chat for their website or help them start accepting Bitcoin Cash as a payment method. The opportunity is endless.

Anyways, here are some photos:


I’m not a hunter but if I were, I’d get Under Armor’s hunting gear, mostly because it would make me feel cool.


I’m looking forward to 2019 greatly and plan to stay the full week next time.

Just make things

I don’t write or talk much about the majority of the side projects I take on for fun outside of my work, though I probably should.

Earlier this year, I did a logo redesign project for UnderTech. Though they’ve had the logo up online for sometime, this week at the 2018 Shot Show was my first time getting to see the finished product as a tag their products. It’s not bad!

This was neat to work on because I’d always felt like their previous one looked like it belonged on the side of a gas tanker. Of course, I don’t consider myself a designer at all, but I like to test my skills and keep them sharp from time to time and when they asked me to help I couldn’t say no.

Even better, the logo is on packages being shipped around the world. UnderTech, for example, recently did a huge order to the Swedish police forces. The female officers will be wearing concealment leggings. Their clothing is also worn by guards at Tiffany’s New York, private security in Dubai, US Navy Seals, and yes, house wives too.

Here are some thoughts I had driving home from the show in Vegas this evening:

1. Professional labels are terribly overrated. Just make things. I’m not a “designer” and I have little formal design education, but so what? I designed this all the same and got paid to do it. And having completed it, I feel no particular obligation to go around seeking out design projects. This was a one-off thing. Maybe I’ll do something like it again, maybe I won’t.

2. The opportunity cost of me doing things like this is increasingly growing. I’m someone who can’t resist trying to dabble in a bit of everything, and that worked wonderfully at the beginning of my career but my time has gotten scarcer and more valuable the longer I’ve been at it. I’m happy I did the logo but in hindsight I probably could have spent my time better.

3. At the same time, I couldn’t have gotten to where I am in my career without being a dabbler. If you’re a young person who is just starting out, say yes to anything and everything. You’ll learn things you would struggle to learn on your own without context, get introduced to all sorts of interesting people, and you build the beginnings of a body of work.

And most importantly, in the end of the day, all you have are the things you made, like this logo. I can count on less than one hand the few other things that will matter as much as that.

I’m in Vegas at Shot Show 2018 this week


I’m in Las Vegas for Shot Show 2018 this week. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an annual tradeshow for the shooting, hunting, and firearms industry. It is the biggest event of this type in the world.

It’s massive. You can’t walk the whole thing during the week. It’s also incredibly white collar and staggeringly affluent. Think James Bond and Jason Bourne, not Larry the Cable Guy, though there’s some of that too.

Of course, it’s the firearm industry and sometimes you meet the wrong people at the wrong time. Last year a Chilean private military guy showed up looking for me and told my client “tell Derek Magill that I am not a man to screw with.” I’m not joking.

The previous year I had sold him some parts for which he had paid me nearly $5,000 in cash. Well, it turned out that we were not able to legally ship those parts out of the country and they canceled his order without telling me. His refund was sent to a US address he no longer had access to and long story short, he spent the year planning what I suspect might have been my kidnapping. Fortunately they made sure he got his refund and I like to think we are square now.

I’ll be here for a few days doing product research and meeting with friends and clients for Glockstore and Undertech. I’m also tentatively considering doing more work in the firearm industry, starting with an online store and am using this time to explore options.

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