Well, I guess everything...
-Have the hottest and most loving wife of anyone on this forum.
-Got F&D owners out of my life.
-Got all my intellectual property rights back.
-Have a nice machine shop where I love working.
-Have a great product that people love.

That doesn't mean its an easy life. But it's what I wanted.

We're not going to hear about the New Braunfels era.

I've not heard of them

but that is unfortunate

It wasnt much of a seller, mostly because of poor marketing efforts by F&D, then several other companies started making the large frame ARs and promoted them accordingly. But yes, in a couple years I will start on a 300wsm and 338LM folding rifle. My prototypes were 308win and they turned out really nice.

Yeah you can stop by our shop sometime. I will PM you.

Yeah, so here's the deal about the licensing of the folding firearm to F&D in 2017:

The license required F&D to manufacture and sell at least $500,000 worth of the product per month.
Allowed 9 months for F&D to gear up production.
During this time, F&D requested that FoldAR("ETM") to design and produce approx 250 pre-production units from billet, which ETM did. This is what F&D called the XAR Invicta product.
About 5 months in, F&D agreed that it would be better for ETM to take over the manufacturing portion of some of the components (upper and forearm) primarily because F&D was unable to hire the appropriate personnel and equipment for manufacturing these parts.
Aside from the sales requirement, within the license, F&D also agreed to do two very important things: 1) fund development and construction of manufacturing fixtures and 2) submit a purchase order to ETM to produce the upper and forearm parts. F&D failed to do both of these things, even while ETM allowed additional time.
The license also required F&D to keep confidential all of ETM's property relating to the license, and to refrain from making copies of the provided material, including the pre-production units.

While ETM was performing its services for F&D and gearing up to mass produce the folding uppers and forearms, F&D secretly hired a third party to make copies of the models and drawings and then to have someone else manufacture all these items. These activities were kept secret until more recently discovered in litigation. It was found that a very extensive team had been put together for the purpose of wiping ETM out, but only after agreement had been made with ETM and only after ETM had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on specialized manufacturing equipment and many hundreds of hours in development time and effort.
Once F&D had its team set up, F&D stopped making its required payments to ETM as was otherwise required under the license.
F&D's (Brian Shirley's) provided excuse for stopping payments was that it was nearly impossible to even "give-away" the pre-production folding firearms and therefore was parring back its efforts under the license. What I didnt know was, at the same time he made this statement, he secretly submitted an order for 6,000 sets of uppers and forearms with this third party manufacturing team.

Then, in December 2017, it was discovered that F&D's owners had acquired a $1mil loan from a local bank. The astonishing part was that they had secretly used my patent on the folding firearm as collateral for the bank loan. I reported this to the FBI in Oklahoma City, and very soon after, the bank released the patent as collateral. The bank should have prevented this from the outset, but they were long-time good buddies with the oil-man owner of F&D and ignored their lawful duties under common banking regulations.

For numerous reasons, including the bank fraud discovery, I terminated the folding firearm license with F&D in January 2018.
Per the license, F&D was required to immediately stop manufacturing, advertising, and selling the folding firearm product.
Then F&D demanded that ETM turn over its manufacturing operations to F&D... which has no basis in the license.

However, from there on out, F&D completely ignored the fact that a license even existed and defiantly continued to advertise and sell without regard to termination.
F&D was counting on me being unable to afford litigation to stop them, given the new debt I had acquired for the production build up and also receiving no more income from the license.
This was a bad assumption made by F&D, as several law firms wanted to take the case on contingency in light of the blatant and criminal bank fraud issue.

As litigation proceeded, they didn't remove the XAR Invicta product from their website until 18 months later, recently in June 2019.
Today they are still advertising the product on their multiple social media platforms, though it is known that the F&D employees have very rarely gone in to work at the facilities for the last ~22 months.

The license states that the XAR and Invicta trademarks had to be assigned to ETM upon license termination, along with the return of essentially any form of property which relates to the folding firearm. Nothing has been assigned or returned to date.

In May 2018 the F&D LLC was involuntarily terminated by the Texas Secretary of State, it was finally reinstated last month. So all that false advertising and infringement done between May2018 thru Sep2019 (~16 months), had been done so with personal liability, i.e. no corporate liability protection. There were also 3 other agreements F&D breached with ETM, as subject of the court case to be finally resolved within the coming weeks.

Then the ATF calls me last week asking me what I know about F&D's NFA items. They said they were in Seminole, OK and about to enter the F&D facilities.
I told them that I had machined some machine gun lowers in April 2016 for F&D at their facilities, with their equipment, and under F&D's license and Class 2 SOT. Once completed (took me less than 1 day at their facilities), I handed them over to Brian Shirley and directed him to file the proper ATF forms within 24 hours. I never followed up with F&D to see if they had registered them, as it was out of my hands at that point.
The next day the ATF stated that Brian Shirley was charged with violating the National Firearms Act, that he was required to resign from F&D, that F&D would unlikely being able to acquire a new FFL.

I've been dealing with these guys for the better part of 7 years now, and have been at the brunt end of their control tactics.
They have suckered me in, and when I tried to leave, they held me down with various legal/contractual strong-arming.
However, my decisions to deal with them all these years is on me, and that's what I get.
Throughout the years I received multiple physical death threats from Shirley, interference with my marriage, illegally cutting off power to my residence, risking my FFL standing, and numerous other issues stemming from Shirley's conduct. They have even posted numerous online postings under my name/handle in the past which had degraded my reputation in some communities.
But I knew if I stuck in there and continued doing the right thing, and not trying to screw anyone over, it would pan out in the end.
The fallout of all this, and the continued interference F&D caused, has resulted in ETM not being able to timely pay certain vendors the past year, has drastically cut into our ability to produce enough product for demand, and effects our ability to market the folding firearm accordingly. With resolution quickly coming to a head, we will be able to get caught up with everyone and start producing a lot more product, and with the awesome improvements recently released.

So to any business owner considering investment partners, here are my words of advice:
-Look at the success (or lack thereof) of the potential investor in his other businesses. Visit these businesses and look at how they run things.
-Don't allow an investor to set up a shell company to serve as the investor/partner. Make him invest in his personal capacity.
-Ask for (and require) the potential investor to submit personal financial statement and tax returns, and to disclose all important financial related information.
-Don't give up any management control unless that investor is accepting the risk and assuming the liability, and has a history of success in similar startups.
-Investor "Success" doesn't mean running the founders out after the founder has risked everything and has set up the business for potential success (see movie "Horrible Bosses 2").
-Investor "Success" means their verifiable achievements in making the founder become more profitable and more productive (see TV series "The Profit"). That investor should have a real exit strategy made in writing.
-A bad (but smart) investor will use the business and control funds and operations of the business in a way to bankrupt the business (and you) in order to acquire full ownership when the wheels start rolling or light is seen at the end of the tunnel. They will try to put the blame squarely in your lap, when it was their concealed intent all along. I now see this as a common strategy for unscrupulous investors and they should be avoided at all costs by employing the above advice.