Episode 1039 – Interview David Armorlite
Raised in Detroit, Dave is a third generation auto industry career man. He began in the Ford racing world in the 1980s and has since gravitated to the supply side of the industry serving the aftermarket and accessories part of the business. Dave launched the aftermarket group for his company (Auria) with Armorlite as its flagship product back in 2020 – the same month the world was shut down by COVID.
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Hi boys and girls, it’s time for another Jeep talk show interview. And tonight we’re going to be talking with David Dave from armor light, uh, raised in Detroit. Dave is a third generation auto industry career man. He became, uh, he began in Ford racing world in the 1980s and has since gravitated to the supply side of the industry serving the aftermarket accessory part of the business. Dave launched the aftermarket group for his company. Is that Aurora or Oreo Dave?
Oreo with armor light and it’s flagship product back in 2020. Well, what a great time to start a project project.
Yeah, the same month, the world was shut down by COVID. My God, this is actually a great story because you’re, you’re still going. I mean, you launched it probably at the worst time in the world, other than the, uh, the stimulus packages that we got, which probably helped people buy armor light. They had nothing to do. So let’s, let’s work on the Jeep.
Certainly concerned like the rest of the world that they couldn’t have picked a worst time to launch a new business. And, and, but because of what you just cited with COVID and people wanting to get distance themselves from everybody else, it turned out that I think it really worked in our favor, right? Cause people were really building their Jeeps, take getting them ready for overlanding trips, family vacations. And I think it worked in our favor. Now I think you’re aware of this. I know the listeners if they’ve been listening for a long time are aware of this. We last, uh, our first spoke back in December of 2022 on episodes, uh, seven 25. And, uh, I fell in love with your product. Now, it’s one thing to talk about it and listen to all the great things, but that doesn’t initially mean that’s the truth. You know how sales are. Uh, but, uh, I went to EGS last year, uh, met you there and got to see the product firsthand. And it was every bit as good as what I thought it was. In addition to that, I’ve got several Jeep talk show team members that have purchased your product. And I think largely due to me talking about it on the show and they absolutely love it. I mentioned to you that a team member, Bill actually has a three 92 and a new 2024 jail you, I’m sorry, just J J L rather. And he has the armor light in both of them. Uh, and I’m sorry, I’m, I’m making people, some people out there don’t know what the hell we’re talking about. So, uh, armor light is a, uh, a replacement for the carpet in your Jeep. And tell me, tell me, tell them you have a better way of saying it than I do. So I’m sure.
I mean, you do quite well on your own right there. It, yeah, it’s, it’s when you look at it online, like anything that’s, you know, not three dimensional, it just looks like maybe a, uh, uh, uh, floor mats on steroids, but, but it’s not that it’s not a floor mat. It doesn’t compete with a weather tech. It doesn’t go over your carpet. It replaces your carpet. And, uh, one thing I think that most of your listeners are very aware of is how much they don’t like their carpets. Carpets are the last thing that the carmaker should be thinking of when they’re making pickup trucks or SUVs or any vehicle intended for the off-road. So what we did was we designed a product that was really engineered for the off-road and the harsh kind of environment that that brings with it. And that’s what our light is. You rip that carpet out, uh, and you, you replace it. It’s a better fit than the carpet that was in before it, which by the way, the parent organization I work for makes all the carpets. Uh, and we make them because our customers around the world, but like Jeep, say we want more carpet in a Wrangler and we say, are you sure you want carpet in the Wrangler and the other stuff, but you have an alternative for it now.
Now we have an alternative. When you realize you don’t like that carpet in your Wrangler,
then you’re going to come back around and get the aftermarket product. I don’t know. Are you old enough to remember shag carpet, people putting shag carpet in their, in their vehicles?
I hate to admit it, but yes. And I was one of the early eighties. Yes. Yeah. And I would never admit that again, especially not around the shop because I’ll probably give you a hard time about your shag carpet. So, but anyway, the, the thing that got me the most, uh, when we first talked about this and you correct me on any of this stuff that I’m remembering incorrectly, but the thing that got me the most was, uh, the one time I flooded my wife’s Jeep and I didn’t flood it going through water. I just flooded it through a really aggressive rain storm and the top was on, but the, the, the doors were off. The sides of the Jeep were, were open. And I got so much water in there and I found the plugs, I drained them, but that doesn’t get rid of the rain that has soaked into the carpet and that doesn’t get rid of the smell. And everybody that this has happened to knows that there is an awful moldy smell associated with that carpet. And really you just have to run around without the carpet and let it dry out in the sun and hope it doesn’t get rained on again. Uh, and, and the, uh, the armor light software take us software, the armor lights, uh, uh, flooring, uh, carpet, uh, what do you call it? You just call it armor light. It’s not really carpet.
It’s not carpet at all. It’s really a, uh, a heavy duty. It’s a TPO, uh, which is a heavy duty vinyl and it has a Marine, a Marine grade surface on top of that vinyl. So it won’t scratch and Mar and it doesn’t fade in the sun. Um, and, and beneath it, there’s a very dense polyester insulator, uh, and polyester won’t know. So no smell. So it no smell exactly. It’s going to get wet. It’s a Jeep. And if you’re, if you’re driving that Jeep, like you’re supposed to, you’re going to get water in it at some point. So we’ll know that. And it’s like, well, let’s, let’s choose the right materials. And if I back up quickly, before we even introduced this to the marketplace, uh, which was concurrent with the outbreak of a COVID, but before that we spent a year and a half on the trails with Jeep Jamboree. And we just spoke to the guides and to those participants at Jeep who, um, who, and we were just a sponge, right? What, what do you want this floor to do? We already know and establish, you don’t like carpet. Most of you are already ripped it out and just throwing a bunch of rubber mats in there. But would you, would you like something that’s nice in its appearance that kind of matches the rugged image of your vehicle? Yes. Do you want something that knocks the, they were telling us, please give us something that takes the heat out of this when we’re, when we’re crawling. And then the other thing was we want easy cleanup. We want to be able to open some drain plug and let it just hose it out. And then there was the whole, we were a lot of the stinky carpets, right? A lot of the components were about the stinky carpets. So we knew right away, all right, well, we, if we use polyester and even when polyester gets wet and dries, it’s not going to smell, it’s not going to hold mildew and, and, uh, mold carpets do it’s a different material, uh, because it’s a cheaper material. And, and at the OEM level, they oftentimes choose the lowest price or lowest cost solution for production, uh, because they don’t want something that’s over-engineered. We over-engineered the crap out of armor lake because we engineered it for that kind of a, uh, a harsh environment, right? But we also wanted to look good enough and perform well enough that if it’s a mall crawler daily commuter or your weekend warrior on the trails, it’s going to be able, you know, let your kids spill their ice cream and soda pops all over the place in it. It’s just going to go down the drain and it’s not going to stain anything or smell. Uh, so it’s really for any and all purposes, but really it was designed for the trail and what you’re citing in terms of that, that musty smell and wet carpets. That is probably the best selling feature of that, of our product is, is that complaint. Once you get water in the vehicle, obviously the armor light, it’s not going to affect the armor light, but do you guys recommend anything by pulling that out and getting the water out of there? Or is it just the drain plug? Really all the thing you have to worry about this, pull the drain plug, let the water out and there’s no more hassle to it. In other words, you’re taking a bunch of steps out of the process. If you get your Jeep wet.
Right. And you’re talking, so if it’s your factory carpet, you would have to take the carpet out to access the drains that are in there. They’re rubber stops and then, and then basically pop them out and let it dry that way with armor light. We’ve integrated a drain with a flip top lid on top. So all you have to do is reach down between your legs and flip it open and it drains. Uh, but even when armor light gets wet, we’re not concerned that don’t don’t take it out because it’s not easy to put in. It’s a good, it’s going to take you a whole morning or whole afternoon to basically install a full armor light kit. Uh, once it’s in, the intention is it’s going to stay in and when it gets wet and we know it will, your sheet metal after you, let’s say you have a wet, you got wet in a rainstorm or got wet and you, you know, went through a river too deep. Um, the, the, the sheet metal gets up to about 220 F about 45 minutes into, just a drive down the highway. It gets hot. Uh, especially on the JKU’s also on the JL’s pretty much every Jeep. Uh, and you got a combination of things. You’ve got the tunnel when you’re, and you’ve got your transmission running through the tunnel that gets very warm. That heats you up from the sides and beneath, and then you’ve got your exhaust on either or both sides that really, and that’s right up against the floor. That heat will dry out whatever moisture you’ve got going on pretty darn quickly. Um, if you’ve absolutely saturated it, I mean, you went into a swamp and got that nasty swamp water in there, then I would probably say, pull it out, clean it up, let it dry out, let it air dry and then put it back in. And, but that happens very rarely to any of us where it’s coming in over the doors and just give everything a swamp. So that particular kind of swamp water, that stuff smells that’s worse than even the, the, so we know how people will pay for convenience. And I would say that not only is this a good product to get, not have the smells, you’re, you’re getting convenience here because on the outside chance that you get it wet or the purposeful, uh, the, uh, thing that you do to get it wet, there’s less things that you have to do and also do less things you have to worry about, uh, with this, uh, with this, uh, armor light, uh, um, flooring or what, what do you call it again? It’s not carpet. I don’t want to call it carpet.
It’s just, it’s flooring. It’s a flooring system. It’s a replacement flooring system. It’s a, it’s not mats and it’s certainly not carpet. Uh, it is, it’s a, it’s a TPO vinyl and it’s basically TPO is just a very durosy of different various types of vinyls. Um, some of your floor mats that are popular, they’re a TPU. So it’s a thinner, it, it’s, it fades quicker. It warps quicker. It stains terribly. Uh, and, and you get what you pay for. Those are mats. And one of the nicer features that we also wanted to design into armor light is that mat function that in that tread, the tread that you would have in weather mats that’s integrated into the top of the, you don’t have to have formats with this. It is a, yeah, it’s both things. It replaces the carpet in any formats that you have.
Correct. So, so don’t buy formats for it. Don’t take your old formats and throw them on it. First of all, it’s a very, it’s a very nice, we’re very proud of how it looks. And a lot of the compliments we get in the product reviews is how much nicer it makes the whole interior look. But it’s also functionally just a lot easier, uh, and easier on your wallet because now you don’t have to go buy floor mats. You just put this in, you’ve got that functionality integrated into the surface. It does two things. It manages the water to the drain plug. So when you get water in there off your boots or even a spill, it’s going to guide the water through those channels to the drain plug and then out the bottom of the vehicle. And the other thing it gives you is what we call stiction. When you’re off camber on a trail and you want to get in and out of your vehicle, you want to plant your foot and you want it to stay where you’ve planted it. So the, the, the, the surface that we have on that product will hold your foot in place, um, in almost any condition. And, and, and that’s kind of important to all of us. I know you, I, I myself have an, on different floor surfaces in and out of a Jeep have slipped on the wrong kind of rocky condition. And it didn’t feel very good cause of the way, you know, it depends on the position you’re in, but there’s a door sill there and you could hit that door. Are you okay? I know what you’re talking about.
I forgot to mention this. So if you want to go to the website and look at this, uh, this product that we’re talking about while you’re listening to the interview, go to go armor, light.com. The word go G O a no space armor and then light as in light beer, L I T E.com, go armor, light.com. And I’m looking at the, uh, I probably should be looking at the JL or the JT, but I just happened to pull up the, uh, the, the one, the front flooring for the Wrangler TJ and, uh, it, and I want to make sure people understand this, this stuff, it’s raised and, and lowered. So if you have fitted floor mats or you’re aware of fitted formats, think of that, except it’s the whole, it covers the whole floor. So it goes up several inches in the front, several inches on the side. So you would really have to try hard or go through a lot of water to get water underneath these things. And like you said, it’s all channeled to go through the drain plugs, uh, which are, which are right there. Uh, and, uh, the, the other thing that, uh, that you guys might, might be interested in, and I think you, you brushed on this, we certainly talked about it before the interview is the heat reduction portion of this, uh, which is especially important, as you said, for like the 392.
Uh, but, and, and, and why is it, why does it knock down the heat? Did, did you guys do that on purpose, actually design it to keep the heat away from the passengers?
So, uh, when I mentioned that we spent so much time on the trail before we introduced our MRLA to get that kind of feedback from Jeepers, uh, and just wheelers in general, one of the top complaints was the heat, uh, especially in the old CJ’s TJ’s, right? Cause they’re all running sheet metal and the Hemi swaps and the LA swaps and so on. And, and, and everyone’s saying, can you do anything to knock this heat down? So we knew that that was one of our first engineering challenges. And I talked about polyester and the importance of polyester is a material that
is also one of the best thermal absorbers that you can, that you can put in a vehicle. Um, you know, it’s oftentimes used in bat, you know, around battery packs and EVs for the same reason, it can just knock the heat right down. So we knew that the polyester fiber, uh, insulator that we use across the entirety of the, of the undersurface of the floor. It’s not just in a patch here or there, uh, it’s everywhere. Uh, it, it just, it really does a phenomenal job of knocking heat down. Um, when you don’t want that coming into the cap and it, it, it does, uh, I want to, I’m going off the top of my head right now, but I know that I mentioned it, the sheet metal will get easily up to 220 F and, uh, in some cases with the, with the big eights and the three 90, not even the, the Hemis, you, you, people have melted the bottom of their flip flops and we’ve seen pictures of it. And people have for fun have sent us pictures of what, you know, their vehicle was before and after armor light. And they showed us pictures of melted clothing items and shoes and so forth. And then you put it in, uh, put our product in and then, and then they can go barefoot and no longer worry about how hot the surface of that sheet metal is. So that, that was a really big feature that we had to design for and is now becoming selling features. Well, you have to be really proud of that too, that you just knocked it out of the park where people could literally be able to tell the difference. So, uh, shoe and no shoe difference, uh, in the, the heat that’s being generated. That’s great. Uh, and I think that, uh, other than the smell, that probably is the second most important thing on, on, on doing anything like this. And if you guys haven’t gone to go armor light.com yet to look at some of these pictures, the thing that, uh, that I take away from this is, and, and, uh, you mentioned this before we started here, you do a lot of stuff to the outside of your Jeep, um, but you get in and there’s that factory carpet.
So I’m not saying just do it just for the looks, but this stuff looks off road. It looks like you’re doing off road stuff. So when people open the door or get in or, you know, whatever, they’re going to notice the detail on the inside as well.
It’s one of the comments we get back. We got back from Jared, who’s the, uh, the owner and the CEO of America’s most wanted was he has, he builds these, these beautiful machines, right? With these big eights in them and, and they’re lifted and they’re on forties and thirties and then he get inside and it’s like, well, now what? Now he has a really nice, like he, he does a seat swap, but then it’s like, well, okay, well what else they can match the, uh, the rugged tough appearance of the exterior. How can we bring that into the interior? And one of the things his comments about the floor was it does exactly that. It carries that rugged design, uh, from the exterior into the interior. But it’s, it’s appearance, but it’s also functionality. I would argue it’s functionality first, – Follow my form. – I love that aspect of it. I mean, I don’t clean, I don’t wash my Jeep or anything like that, but I do like my Jeep looking good. And I firmly believe you can have form and function if you just put a little effort into it. And I think that’s what you guys have done here. You have a great product, so it’s easily defendable. It’s not just, it looks good.
It’s like, you know, I’m a real jeeper. I’m going for something here that is very functional, makes a big difference in my Jeep, but it also looks damn good. And you mentioned saving the money on floor mats. I think I bought a set of Mopar floor mats, ones that would come with a Rubicon Gladiator. And I think it was 120 bucks. And that was back in 2021. I’m sure they’re more expensive now. So I thought that was a, got off a lot of money, but now I have, you know, fitted floor mats. And if I get any water or anything, I can pop the plug. So similar to this, but not nearly the coverage. So, you know, the thing that strikes me, and I don’t know this for sure, you may know, I believe that America’s most wanted four by four. I think they use a cat skin covers on all their seats.
So cat skin is like top of the line seat covers. And I’m not saying that if you’re not familiar, we’ve interviewed cat skin before. This isn’t something you pull over. This is something that covers the seat. So they’re very high end, very nice. And you guys are in the same arena as far as doing something for the inside of the Jeep to make it look good over at America’s most wanted. So I just want to point that out. This isn’t fly by night stuff. This is the good stuff. (laughs) – The good stuff. This, exactly that. And I’ll share another little, it’s not a secret anymore, Tony, but as of very recently, if you’re buying a brand new Jeep at your Jeep dealership,
you can build and price your Wrangler.
And one of the options now is our floor. It’s not branded as Armor Light. It’s basically the only difference is the drain plug that snaps into it is it has the Jeep logo on it and not the Armor Light logo on it. But that is now an upfit option. When you build your Jeep and it gets built in Toledo, they do the upfit there. And then it goes back to the dealership the way you’ve ordered it. And it includes now the option for our floor, which is right beneath the option you just mentioned for the Mopar, – Oh, nice. – Mats, weather mats, right? – Congratulations on that. That’s a big deal. – That’s a big deal. Getting a Jeep is always a big deal.
– It is. It’s purely a Mopar accessory,
but it is, they saw some couple of years ago, they were like, “Yep, this is the right thing to have “in these vehicles. “And we need to make this available to our customers “when they’re ordering their brand new Jeeps.” So it’s now an option, whether you have an old Jeep that you want to retrofit, or if you come to us, you have a newer Jeep, you’re buying brand new from the dealer, you can still put this product in it and order it as an option through the dealership, which is something- – So it’s not branded as Armor Light, but if you’re buying a new Jeep, how would you, I don’t know if there’s more than one choice, other than your flooring or the floor mats, how would they know to get your stuff when they were making that order, if you know that aspect of it? – It will say heavy duty performance flooring,
and that’s just, it’s the Mopar heavy duty performance flooring. And when you’re scrolling through all the list of upfit options, you get to the interior, it’ll have the mats that you mentioned, I think it’ll have a couple of other interior options, maybe the seats, seat covers, and then it’ll have the,
oh, I think they even have the headliner, insulators, and it’s in that section there. – It’s great information, I’m glad you mentioned that. I had no idea that that’s an option, and you could get this stuff straight from the factory, and you’re going, well, not the factory, but you know what I mean, straight from getting a new Jeep, you don’t have to mess with it, you don’t have to install it, it’s there, and you’re not paying extra for the floor mats,
that you’re not gonna use. – Right, and it just gets rolled, gets rolled into your financing, so your monthly car payment has got this, along with whatever other options you’ve opted for, but it gets a lot easier for some people to digest when they roll it all into the car payment. – Yeah, oh no, and just the convenience of it, again, we get back to paying for the convenience. Now, I noticed something here on your site, I’m specifically looking at the Gladiator, since that’s what I’ve got, I see Thin Skin’s Pro rear door protector. I don’t know that you had that the last time we talked, maybe you did, what is that, what is the protector?
– Well, it’s, got one behind me,
hanging on the rack here.
It’s in line with, so basically our core product is the Armor Light replacement flooring, and we realized that we have a lot of visitors that come to our website, and there are other things that are complimentary to that product that we could offer. Well, we became aware of this Thin Skin door cover of some years ago at SEMA, we thought that’s very much like what we do with our floor, it covers and protects your doors, and if you have a Rubicon or a nicer trim level with the leather doors, and you wanna keep them protected when you’re on the trail, when your dogs are in the back seat, when your kids are in the back seat, these are literally skins that are molded exactly to the shape of your rear doors for JLU, JKU, JT, and they fit, it’s almost a suction fit, and they just hang slightly into the glass, where your windows come up in the back, and kind of suction fit to the doors, and whatever you’re doing for the day that’s gonna be in a rugged kind of environment where there could be some abuse or scratches. – A dog will tear the hell out of that just by putting their feet up there, and especially if you crack the window, they’re gonna be up there every two and a half seconds smelling something.
– You sound like a guy that’s got a dog, I’ve got a golden retriever, and that’s exactly what happens, we’ve got not only do we have hair, which by the way is another huge selling feature for our product, people hate trying to get dog hair out of the carpet. – Well you don’t, you never do. – You don’t, you don’t, you don’t. So that, we weren’t really thinking of doing the rear wheel houses in the Wranglers,
or in the TJ’s or the LJ’s or any of those vehicles, but we had so many dog lovers who take their pets with them on the trail that have said, can you just get rid of all carpet? So because of those customers, we now offer the wheel houses across all of our products. So when you get a full vehicle kit, it’s not just all the horizontal surface, but it’s also seat backs, it’s the wheelhouse covers in the rear, because those are the areas too that just collect all that dog hair, and dust, and rainwater. And so now you have, you can literally remove all the carpet from your vehicle and replace it with this material. What I do is I take the leaf blower after my dog’s been in the Jeep for a while, and I will open the doors and blow through one end and let it all blow out the other end.
So convenience, convenience, convenience. – And you have that good look, all the look of the flooring, and the sides and all that stuff match. And if you’ve gone to Moab, you know about the dusts. So think of that. I just got back from EJS, it was a blast, but I got dust from last year too. So the reason why I asked you about the doors, something struck me, are you familiar with, I asked you about the, not door poncho, the poncho covering, the dash poncho, which is kind of along the same lines where you’re protecting from your electronics from the weather. You guys are protecting the carpet and the flooring from the weather and other things. And that kind of goes together. Well, I thought of a third one just while I was looking at this door thing. Are you familiar with Greg Henderson, unofficial use only?
– Okay. – Yeah. – So this isn’t an advertisement for Greg, but you know about the door pocket sags, right? Where that netting sags? – Yes. – So Greg, during official use only, is coming out with door pockets and they’re plastic, and they’re gonna have, he’s licensed with Jeep. It’s actually gonna have the same pattern that Jeep uses. They’re just coming out. And this is, I’m just telling you about this, because you guys might want to contact Greg because now you could actually sell the door pockets for those doors as well. But anyway, that’s up to you. But I’m really happy because I’m gonna be getting a set for the gladiator and I don’t want saggy stuff. You know, as you get older, you don’t like sags. You take it as a personal offense. (both laughing) – Very good flight. I’m with you there too. – But check that out. And listeners, check that out too. Greg’s a good friend of the show and I’m really looking forward to getting those door pockets out. – Yeah. – From unofficial use only. Now, the other thing, this is neither here nor there. It’s not important, but I think it’s really a cool idea. You guys have drain plugs and you can buy alternate drain plugs in different colors. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, the drain plugs are in the, like the mats or in here in the, their armor light stuff. And they have multiple colors. So you can actually accent your interior like some people do with their hinges and things. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, Dave is showing us purple, green and black. And I think you got red as, yeah. And I think you got red as well. – We’ve got red, red and blue and pink and all the colors of the rainbow. Orange is popular. Our best sellers are red, blue, orange. And then the black is usually the most popular. And that’s what comes standard with your order.
A lot of people, we have people, we have customers that change their drain plugs. – To fit their mood. – Kind of like with the season.
With their mood, with the season. – There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s funny.
(laughing) – Yeah. It’s, and they’re not that hard to pull in and out. They snap into the sheet metal. So they go through our floor and snap in and hold into the sheet metal.
The biggest, probably the biggest issue that we have with customers in terms is getting them to push hard enough so that they hear that pop into the sheet metal. But yes, a lot of our customers will pull out the black ones, put in a different color, depending on what the occasion is. Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We have a lot of customers that run with the pink plugs. And then when that’s over, they put back in whatever their favorite accent color is. – Well, there’s some people that sell out for their Jeep for breast cancer awareness. And it’s always the wrap or the colors that they have on the outside. And this gives you the opportunity to match that at least somewhat on the inside. So it’s cool. I mean, that’s what Jeeps are all about is customization. And this is just another aspect of making that Jeep more your Jeep.
– Exactly. – So I did want to mention you guys have the flooring, the floor mats, not floor mats, I’m sorry. The carpet replacement for the TJ, the JK, the JKU, so two door or four door, the JLUs.
Oh, and I think maybe there is a little difference between the JLU and the four by E.
Yeah, so you make sure that you guys know that if you’ve got a four by E, then you can get it for your four by E. Of course, we mentioned the JT and the JL. Also too, and I’m just going to mention this because I’m feeling nice. You guys have them for the Bronco, the Ford Bronco, the proper Bronco, not the Bronco Sport, which isn’t really a Bronco.
– Correct, and I wasn’t sure we were allowed to mention the B word when talking to you, but yeah, it’s in fact, we’re in the middle of launching the Bronco floor right now. And it’s exciting because there aren’t as many true wheelers out there yet in that market. I think you’ve got some old schoolers that are really embracing the new Bronco. And again, to your point, not the Sport, but the real Bronco. But they’ve done a good job at Ford of building that vehicle for the trail. It is, the following is growing. And for almost all of us out here in the aftermarket, I think it’s a real opportunity to take the lessons we’ve learned with the Jeep community for so many years and apply that to- – Well, you guys should make some money, that’s fine. It’ll never be as good as a Jeep, but yeah, sure. Throw them a bone.
(laughing) – We’ll throw them a bone. And then we’ll start it out on the trail, which is actually the better vehicle. But I’ll say this, it wasn’t on our priority list, but someone called our attention to these Bronco forums and said, “Hey, they’re calling for your product. “They’re calling for Armor Light. “You guys should go check that out.” So we started following and getting involved in some of these forums. And sure enough, these are people that bring it home, brand new vehicles. And the first thing they’re saying is, “I want this carpet out.” Along with other decisions they make about how they wanna fit it up for the trail. I want this carpet out and I want the, they heard about, because their buddies have a Jeep or whatever, I want this Armor Light system. – Or their turncoat bastards, they got rid of their Jeep and got a Bronco. I’m just gonna throw that out there. That day, and they know it because they’ve used it. And they go, “Damn, I want this. “I had this on my Jeep, but it was wonderful. “I want it for the Bronco.” (laughing) – There are some turncoats out there, yes.
(laughing) – Yeah, well, that’s great. I mean, it’s absolutely wonderful. I’ve got a good friend. We actually do a monthly get together here in Cady, Texas at Jeep Beats in the old town Cady. And he does the graphics. He does graphics wraps and interior and all kinds of stuff. So he has a Bronco that he loves. He loves driving on the highway, but he has a very well built up Gladiator that he uses for off road. And he’s doing great business because Bronco owners want to have those graphics on their vehicles just like Jeep owners do. So it makes sense that the great products that have been developed for Jeeps that like you guys have developed, the Bronco owners are gonna want that too. So yeah, absolutely. I have no problem with anybody having a Bronco. I’m not interested in them because I like Jeeps. That’s the only thing that I care about. Also too, my tie rods don’t break whenever I take it off road. But that’s another story. I always have to throw that in, a little dig.
(laughing) – That’s a little dig. – All right, so TJs. Now on the TJs, you can actually Jeep out a bit. And you correct me on any of these, maybe it’s on several of the products. I’ve only looked at the TJ stuff because of my wife’s Jeep that I was telling you about earlier. You can get on the TJ, you can get the front piece or the rear piece or the whole thing. So you could actually, if you wanted to start with the front, you could get the front and then later on as you collect the aluminum cans and stuff, save up and get the back piece too. Actually it’s a three piece, isn’t it? Because you can get the one for the cargo area as well. Is that correct?
– Customers who started, and by the way, it’s across all of our products. You can get just the fronts.
And then a lot of our customers get just the fronts and we see them again about a year later, they get the mid, which is the backseat area. And then we see them again a year later and they get the rest of the, they finish out the whole cargo area and the wheelhouse area and so on. And we have others that are happy just to have the fronts because they have rebuilt or reconfigured everything past. – That’s a great comment. – Yeah, I didn’t think about that because a lot of people modify things and they don’t need every piece of it.
– Exactly. So we tried to, and we, again, we learned that being out on the trail that we can’t just have one product fits all. It had to be, okay, people use their rigs differently and they build them differently. So for those that only need the fronts, we’ve got you covered. You have a bench rear bench seat that you use periodically, but not all the time. Okay, maybe you only need that midsection, but nothing in the very back because a lot of folks put a lot of different things in the cargo area that wouldn’t require any kind of a surface. And there’s certainly no heat to worry about back there. Like there would be coming through the tunnel and you’re exhausted to them in the front. So yeah, everyone has different needs. Some people want the entire vehicle kit. They don’t want any more carpet in that vehicle. And others are just happy with the fronts or some combination of fronts in the midsection and they stop there. And for all of the different models, we can accommodate those different needs. – Advantages, you don’t have to worry about water because the water that gets in there, the majority of the time is going to evaporate away. You don’t have to worry about the smell because of the material that you guys use. It does not have any mold or mildew. So you don’t have to worry about that aspect of it. It’s not, put it in, take it out, put it in, take it out like you would have to do with carpet. You install it and it’s meant to stay installed. You can remove it, of course, if you have to, but it’s meant to stay installed, which means a convenience factor. It looks good. It looks off-roadish, which we all like. I don’t care who you are. You’d like something looking custom and off-road and this is going to be different. So when you’re at the mall and people are looking at your Jeep and they look in there and go, “Ooh, do you take this off-road?” Because they’re going to look in there and say, “Oh, look at this.” He even did something interior or she even did something interior to help this thing look good. I really don’t see a downside to this, especially if you don’t have fitted formats or if you’re planning on getting some and this is going to save you, I mean, it would have saved me 120 bucks. So I don’t see any downside to this. Am I missing anything? Not initially a downside, but am I missing anything that’s a positive for these?
– Yes, one thing, and it’s probably one of the better selling features that we’ve overlooked completely and that’s cleanability. It’s so much easier to clean the vehicle out after the trail. Or again, like I said, it might just be the picking up the kids from soccer or from school and they’ve spilled their ice cream, their drinks, their whatever all over the place. You open the drains, you get a hose, you hose it out the drain, you close the drain and it’s back to factory clean. And the worst case we’ve ever had, we use a tire brush, maybe with a little bit of Dawn dish soap or Adam’s cleaner. There’s a spray cleaner called Adam’s. We sell that too, because it works so well. It will bring it back to factory clean every time. Like I said before, there’s no fading, it doesn’t stain. We haven’t found anything yet that will stain it. And with there are some stubborn areas that might be stained with salt or something, a little bit of scrubbing with the tire brush back to factory clean every time. So cleanability has been a very big feature that a lot of folks seem to be very– – Yeah, I can see that. And I’m gonna recommend that when you’re hosing out the inside of your Jeep, leave the kids in there, especially if they’ve made the mess. You can clean them off at the same time. Just take them to the car wash, you know, and shh. (laughing) – That’s a very good point. – I actually, the little brats will probably love it. (laughing) Again, again. – Yeah, that’s true, do it more. – All right, so we haven’t mentioned this and I don’t know if this is across the board, but I know the standard color is, I don’t wanna call it a black, maybe that’s what you guys refer to it as, because it doesn’t look like it’s a deep black. It kind of looks like a, maybe a charcoal or something that’s blackish. Maybe it’s just the pictures I’m seeing here. So, but you have the black or the charcoal, whatever you wanna call it. And you have another color. Is that across the board or is it just for certain models?
– It’s available for any of our products. That’s more of a special order now because we call it Mesa Smoke is the black one. It’s a charcoal one that you just described. That is by far the most popular.
Especially with TJ, but we have, every now and then we have a nice run on the khaki and it’s a desert khaki.
Also in the beach, parts of the country like Florida again, beach sand and the khaki, you can’t even see the sand. It blends in very nicely. So we do get orders for it, but not nearly at the same magnitude as we do the charcoal color. So we’ll make those on special order, which just means we’ll wait to a certain point. I think it says on our website, you could wait up to 90 days when we’ll run the khakis,
but we will make them for any of our vehicles. – And the thing I’ll mention is, you know, some of the, especially in the TJ realm, I don’t know about the later wranglers, but some of the TJs came with a khaki or tan top. And I’m thinking that if you have that, you might want to match it or somewhat match it with a flooring. I get to see that that would kind of make it pop when you get in there. Some people just like that. It’s the same with guns. Some people like the black guns. Some people like the desert motif on there. I like anything that people can’t see because I want me having a gun to be a surprise.
(laughing) So, but anyway.
– Yeah, so black and tan is popular too. Some folks like to mix the tan floor with the black interior.
And that is a nice look. – You can piece it together however you like it. That’s interesting.
– We’ll do all khaki floor, but because their whole interior, like the IP and the seats and everything else is black, they just like to have contrast. – I was thinking you could buy some khaki, some Mesa smoke. – No, that would mess up my inventory too much. – That’s really nice. I think there’s like a, just looking at the TJ, 9806, there is a, I think a $10 difference. It’s a $10 more for the desert khaki. So just FYI. And at least that’s what it was when we recorded this interview, it could always change.
All right, so the only thing I can see here, the only problem I can see here is you don’t do red. Cause I’m thinking red flooring would be a big winner. The two people. – What was the idea of custom colors? – The two people that would order it. (laughing)
But I’ll tell you what, red drain plugs and the black floor look really nice. – It’s nice too, cause if you have a red Jeep like I do, it helps accent the flooring to match the color combination on the Jeep. So yeah, it’s really cool. And it’s all about modifications, I think. I mean, if you’re, even if you’re not an off-roader, you can easily get into the modifications. It’s just so much fun buying all this stuff, the multi-billion dollar aftermarket that’s available. And that includes you guys. And I’ll just say, I really appreciate you guys doing this because if you guys weren’t doing it, somebody else might do it, but they may not do it as well as what you guys are doing it. And love your product. And I have seen it in Bill’s Jeep. And yeah, I’m definitely interested in getting this in the future for my wife’s TJ. Cause it just, little details like this just make your Jeep, make you feel better about your Jeep. And it shows it to people. It’s something to be proud of when you make modifications to your Jeep with quality products.
– Our best seller is word of mouth from one Jeep owner to the next because they all like to keep track of what the other is putting into their Jeep and how they’re upfitting them. So that, you know that, right? Your Jeep and buddies are looking at what you’ve done. – Where’d you get that? What the hell is that? Why does that look all British? Oh, do you know about this? My God, it’s been around forever. And then you don’t have to tell them it’s about 2020.
(laughing)
– Really, really cool. Dave, this is a lot of fun. I think I mentioned to everybody listening here that the last interview we did was episode 7.25 back in December of 2022. Go back and listen to that. I’m sure there’s some things we covered there that we didn’t cover here. But I personally think this is a great product. I am personally gonna get some in the future for at least my wife’s TJ. And I think that you all to have a really hard look at this stuff because if for no other reason, it allows you to the convenience and not have to clean and worry about the water that you get in your Jeep, that smell. And if you haven’t lived through that smell yet, it’s not like a dead body or anything. You don’t have to put anything up your nose like a crime scene investigator, but it’s not pleasant. So this looks good. It’s fitted. It’s not gonna slide around like you mentioned about getting it out of the Jeep on off camber or any situation. Oh, so we’ve got a Jeep Talk Show team member that other team members bitch about because he will armor all his floor mats.
This stuff looks nice and shiny without the armor all, which is really just a way to slip and slide in your Jeep when you’re getting in it.
(laughs) – It’s the last thing. The last thing you put on any kind of a vinyl surface is armor all. – Unless you want to go ice skating. – So you don’t have to clean it. You can just air blow, take an air blower. Oh, that’s kind of the caddy shack cleaning, isn’t it? That’s what Bill Murray cleaned out his little room, wasn’t it, with a leaf blower.
So, and easy to clean.
It’s just convenient. It’s a nice product. Check it out. Go ArmorLight.com. Dave, where can the kids find you guys on social media? You know how the kids love the social media these days.
– Yeah, well, it’s at Go ArmorLight and we’re in Facebook, we’re in Twitter and Instagram,
and we also have a YouTube channel. – Very, very cool. Thank you so much for being here. We’ll have to get you back in the future just so we can make sure people know about this really, really nice product. I mean, if America’s most wanted four by four uses, it’s gotta be good.
(laughs) – Yeah, enough said.
Thank you, Tony. – Hey, thanks again to David Ladd of ArmorLight. Visit the website right now, Go ArmorLight.com, and you know the Jeep Talk Show officially loves ArmorLight. I think you will too.
Hey, coming up next week, Josh Davis with Pocket Change LJ, and I say with, that’s who he is. So this isn’t a company. This is a jeeper with a story. Think you’re gonna enjoy it. He is doing great things with his LJ.
And that’s wrapped today for this episode of the Jeep Talk Show. I wanna give a big thank you to our special guest for joining us today and sharing their knowledge and experience with the Jeep community. Remember, we have four episodes a week, and well, you know, Chick Chat looks like it’s gonna be every Monday, so I’ll be announcing soon, I believe, that we are doing five episodes a week.
Anyway, with four episodes a week, it’s understandable if you’ve missed past episodes. You can always find us on your favorite podcast platform or on our website with over 1,000, with over 1,020, with over, what the hell episode are we on? With over 1,030 episodes, there is plenty of Jeep Talk Show to keep you entertained, keep you motivated, whether you’re out mowing the grass, working out in the gym, maybe driving to an off-roading destination. So yeah, check out all of our back catalog, there’s a lot to listen to. Oh, and you know, we love hearing from you, our lister. Reach out to us via email, phone, and social media. We use your voicemails on the show. So until next time, keep on jeeping and we’ll see you on the trails. Oh, and really quickly, don’t forget about the Jeep Talk Show off-road event Texas, coming up on June 7th and 8th. Just head over to our Discord server or jeeptalkshow.com to find out more information.
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