Being that it’s our business to keep a finger on the business’s pulse, so to speak, we’ve continually reached out to various operations to see how they move ahead with product development and, by extension, figure out what the future holds in store for the industry at large in a rapidly changing and challenging post-pandemic global economy.
One such enterprise, and one of the original supporters of UN12 since the magazine’s earliest days, is Tuscon, Arizona, based TangoDown. Our POC is one of the company’s original co-founders, Jeff Cahill, who has been a constant since TangoDown’s inception and today serves as its president and CEO, as well as its sole proprietor.
TangoDown was originally established in 2002 in California, and incorporated into TangoDown, Inc. upon moving operations to Arizona in 2008. Cahill’s background, and the impetus for the creation of his company, represents an intersection of firearms enthusiasm and hands-on product design. As is often the case, the seeds for his company and career path were sown early in life. He grew up with four older brothers, and, as he tells it: “My dad always took us hunting and shooting. It was the family ‘sport.’ My fondest memories are of bird and deer hunts from a very early age.”
He continues: “Firearms were as familiar to me as cars or motorcycles, my other passions at the time. Love them all. Still.”
When it came time to make his way into the professional world, he focused on innate creative abilities and his applicable interests—that is automobiles, motorcycles, and, of course, guns and their related accessories—and combined them to help him forge a career path.
“My professional background began in graphic design,” Cahill says. “I expanded into product design in the late 1980s, attending Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Once out of school, I went to work for Toyota as an executive designer, and then eventually for a globally known design and marketing agency in mid-town L.A.”
In the early 2000s, he and a group of friends began working on the idea of forming a company dedicated to producing products for shooters, gun enthusiasts, and the disciplines integrated therein. “Obviously, the design disciplines helped me get the business off the ground, and workplace manufacturing experience gained in injection-molding, stamping, and so on helped create the initial and future product lines,” Cahill says.
Those early days involved a working relationship with Reed Knight II of Knight’s Armament Corporation, an alliance that helped TangoDown develop and release its first products.
“Just prior to 9/11, I was working on a grip for the AR-15 platform with some friends,” Cahill recalls. “I was in contact with Reed, as I was the go-between [for] KAC and Dragon Models for licensed miniatures of KAC weapon systems. I showed him our grip idea and he offered input. Then the Twin Towers fell, and everyone was gearing up for the War on Terror. We stepped up our efforts to design and manufacture improved firearm components for the warfighter, as what was available at the time was sorely lacking.”
That early AR grip concept became one of the company’s first patented products and its first product to market, one that TangoDown markets to this day in a largely unchanged form: the Battlegrip BG-16. In addition to being designed for improved ergonomics—featuring a softened “hand-filling” form, a more pronounced backstrap, and TangoDown’s signature all-weather positive grip texture—it was engineered to accept any spare battery configuration to power various Aimpoint optics, weaponlights, and PEQ lasers of the time.
The BG-16 was an instant hit and also a major coup for the fledgling company when Heckler & Koch purchased the grip for the very first generation of the HK416 battle rifle, which led to still more opportunity. “That caught the attention of the Special Forces community,” Cahill says. “We enjoyed working with various Tier One groups on special projects after that; it hasn’t stopped since.”
In addition to its early relationship with KAC and alliance with HK, TangoDown has worked with other titans of industry including Larry Vickers of Vickers Tactical—perhaps another manifestation of the snowball effect resulting from that first AR grip. Vickers is a well-known devotee of the 1911 platform, but the fruits of his collaboration with TangoDown yielded products for Glock, of all things.
Cahill explains: “I first met Larry Vickers when he had just retired from The Unit [1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, or 1 SFOD-Delta]. He was consulting for HK on the 416 and upcoming HK45. We were asked to render up what we thought the HK416 should look like, as HK was going to produce the entire rifle commercially versus just an enhanced upper that The Unit was using on M4 lowers. I started training with Larry and spent a fair amount of time in his pistol and carbine classes. We always chatted about how Glocks were taking over and pushing the 1911 (his favorite pistol) off the tactical pistol throne. We discussed the Glock ‘fleas,’ and then struck a partnership to develop and manufacture improved components.”
TangoDown products for Glock include support for Gens 3, 4, and 5, and items developed in collaboration with Vickers Tactical include floor plates, magazine releases, slide stops, slide rackers, magazine extensions, and triggers.
As for manufacturing, TangoDown commissioned and owns its own injection molds to the tune of millions of dollars. Since in this sense the company holds the keys to its own intellectual property, it isn’t beholden to any other entity as to the sourcing and origin of its own branded products. Polymer injection is sourced locally, in Arizona, USA, and the parts are then brought in-house for secondary operations including deburring and QC, assembly, packaging, and shipping. The same is true of steel stampings and CNC work.
“We enjoy long-term relationships with several of our vendors,” Cahill says. “We also perform fulfillment for OEM customers such as FN America, Geissele Automatics, Trijicon, and others.”
As its work with entities like KAC, HK, Vickers Tactical, and its various other OEM customers would suggest, TangoDown’s product development and overall business strategy is heavily influenced by the professional end user. The company remains to this day actively involved with both the military and law enforcement. Feedback from all of these points is critical in producing the product.
Cahill elaborates: “We compare product development to automotive endurance racing—designing and building a racecar for the worst possible conditions for the longest possible contest. That finds flaws in a system like no other type of testing.
“Law enforcement and military end users subject their equipment in kind. Inclement weather and environments, around the clock for days or months, possibly years. It also forces us to look at new technologies for a solution to unique problems. The trickle down to the commercial market is obvious.”
He wraps up the analogy with a reference to a well-known sports car manufacturer whose road cars are directly influenced by—indeed a product of—the company’s true focus of building machines for the competition circuit: “Customers buy Ferraris for what they have done, and can do.”
In a similar vein, TangoDown is active with several top-flight firearms instructors, and company members including Cahill attend classes whenever and wherever possible. “This gives us student input and real-world evaluation of our products,” he says. “All of this is essential for proper product development. Theory only gets you so far; rubber has to meet the road before you can trust your life to a product.”
With the surging popularity of pistol optics for both competition and personal use, TangoDown has filled out a line of optic mounting plates for Glock, SIG, and other popular brands. Feedback from professional end users and operators has seen further development of the company’s popular ARC magazine for M16/M4/AR-15, which has most recently borne fruit in the form of the MK3 Rifle Magazine, a hybrid-polymer unit that combines two different poly formulations to improve both function and durability.
A detailed breakdown of the MK3, authored by our resident gear expert Chip Lasky, can be found in UN12 Issue 022, still currently available on newsstands for a limited time.
As for business in the post-Covid world, with surging demand for firearms and firearm components… well, business as usual wouldn’t really cover it, because business has never been better. So much so that TangoDown’s carefully tuned logistics train has been put to the test. But so far, the company has passed the test and will continue to push the boundaries, both of market demand and its own capabilities.
“We have been all about logistics in keeping the pipeline filled,” Cahill says. “Since we own our own custom molds and tooling, we didn’t have to rely on a product sold not only to us but ten other competitors. We just focused on raw material supply and vendor coordination. Lots of travel and lots of meetings. Challenging… but critical for business survival.”
Follow TangoDown on Facebook and Instagram @tangodowninc.
TangoDown, Inc.
URL: tangodown.com