Last week, Costa Ludus released their custom leg rig. Built by High Speed Gear Inc, it incorporates their TACO mag pouches mounted to a platform mounted to the belt via two 1″ straps along with a single leg strap.
Now consider this. Costa Ludus has 100 of these in stock and they sold out in less than 1 hour. When Chris Costa released his pistol, it sold out in 5 minutes and before that he had sold out a 125 custom run gun with LaRue in less than 24 hours. Those rifles were going for about $2800 a piece. You can poopoo Costa or any other tactical trainer for that manner, but when I see numbers like that, I sit up and take notice. So does industry and so should you. If anything, you need to consider why, regardless of how you feel about him.
The Gear Locker conducted a review of the product which you can read here.
As we understand it, Costa Ludus is working on a resupply. When this happens they will be available at www.costaludusgear.com. We’ve also heard there should be some solid color versions to go along with MultiCam.
Tags: Costa Ludus, High Speed Gear Inc., HSGI, The Gear Locker
Seems like a really short article. You leave the readers hanging by going into statistics and start setting up a story. Then, you simply end the article while we’re stuck here waiting for an explanation as to why Chris Costa’s gear sells out faster than N’sync on tour. I would prefer more content.
That is the question. Why is it selling so fast? I’m open to suggestion here.
Costa has a lot of fans, I mean a LOT of fans. People who’ve never gotten any closer to training with him than seeing a piece of the “Art of” DVD series on Youtube buy into him big time. At this point, pretty much everything he puts his name to will sell like crazy because people like him for various reasons, from the reasonable to the ridiculous.
I’ve met him, but I don’t know him. I’ve never trained with him, but my main trainer has been to his courses. I’ve seen most of the DVD’s. Given the opportunity, I would train with him. He’s obviously a charismatic instructor, and there’s no doubt the guy can shoot. He teaches some stuff that I don’t use, but every instructor will have some of that. BLUF, we could do a lot worse that Chris Costa if people have to put a trainer on a pedestal.
What I don’t really get, and what I can’t explain, is the cult of personality other people have put up around him. Near as I can tell, that’s not coming from him, its from his fan boys. The Kevlar beard thing is baffling to me. I gotta admit, though, its kinda fun to mention that to Jon C. now that he has a titanium goatee. 😉
It’s pretty easy to explain. Costa (and Haley) lucked out with their Magpul affiliation and the success of their DVDs. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry who owns a Bushmaster or DPMS knows about “the Magpul guys.” It drives people nuts because there are countless other instructors who are arguably far more qualified (Larry Vickers, Kyle Lamb, Jason Falla, Mike Pannone, Pat McNamara, Kyle Defoor, etc.) that no one other than training junkies have ever heard of.
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That may be true but couldn’t you say that the two if them help expose the training world to others that might not know anything about it? Some people will always treat their training as the end all be all but others that are more open minded might see it as a blessing. Getting to like Costa or Haley gave them an introduction into the training market that is overflowing with instructors and very little audience.
TM – Luck often plays a part in business success and to that extent I would agree with the comment. But beyond that, no one I have ever met and done business with has the combined skills in training, business and especially marketing that Costa does. (Deference to Kyle and Larry whom I have not yet done business with) Costa works is a$$ off to be as good as he can be and leaves it up to others to decide just how good that is. If I misread what you meant, my apologies, but to dismiss Costa’s success as just “luck” would be unfair to him and to a lot of people that have contributed to his rise post Magpul.
I have attended several of Costa’s classes and, from my experience, he is an incredibly talented instructor and very very charismatic. Great guy. From the conversations I have had he doesn’t seem to embrace the cult “beard” following and is actually quite humble.
Has he been “lucky” that the Magpul videos were so successful? Sure. Are there more “qualified” instructors out there? Sure. But, I believe being able to teach/instruct is a hard-earned gift and he’s got it. Just because he doesn’t have a Tier 1 background doesn’t mean he hasn’t positively contributed to the industry and helped educate people on how to better defend themselves.
I believe that his genuine demeanor, excellent teaching ability and magnetic charisma is what has led to his success (and a little fantastic marketing…).
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