A word about quality and continuous improvement

It is no small thing that I promote and sell Vanguard Belts as a buy-once, cry-once, durable, lifetime kind of belt. When I'm selling my belts face-to-face with prospective new customers at gun shows, I sell the belts heavily on the merit of their quality and durability. I wholeheartedly believe in the strength, longevity, and durability of the synthetic belt material, or else I would not have started this company. I literally built this company around my love for that material.

When I started 6 years ago, I knew very little about the properties of the metal hardware (buckles and screws) that I would need to seek out to match up with the quality of the belt material. I did my best to balance cost, availability, and what seemed like a good fit for the belt products I intended to create.

I'm no metallurgist, but I knew I wanted to avoid brass hardware because it is a soft metal and because it would tarnish over time. Steel hardware would likely have the strength I wanted, but as we all know, steel is prone to oxidizing and rusting. That was a concern, so I sought out stainless steel screws and buckles.

I quickly learned that going with stainless steel buckles was going to be more costly than going with regular steel buckles with nickel plating. I found a buckle distributor where I could procure nickel plated steel buckles for a very reasonable cost if I bought in bulk. The volume needed to get that sweet price point per buckle was a box of 600 buckles. As a beginner, I was hesitant to commit to that many buckles because if they were of poor quality, then I'd be stuck with nearly 600 lousy buckles. I took the chance and placed that order. And happily, for the most part, the nickel plated steel buckles have performed very well for the vast majority of my customers.

But not for everyone. I have nearly depleted that first batch of nickel plated buckles, and out of nearly 600 buckles installed, sold, and deployed, I've had exactly THREE customers come back for belt service where I needed to replace the hardware due to unusual wear and subsequent rusting due to the exposure of the raw steel beneath the plating. So all things considered, that's not bad performance. But even so, I decided after the FIRST customer came back to me for belt service that once I had depleted most of the nickel plated buckles, I would switch to all stainless steel buckles after that point and going forward.

I have made mention of that switch to stainless steel buckles previously, both here on Facebook and also to many of my in-person customers at shows. If you are one of the many early adopter Vanguard Belt owners who has a nickel plated buckle, and would prefer a stainless steel one instead (whether yours is wearing/rusting or not), simply reach out to me by email or phone and I will be happy to provide you with a new stainless steel buckle free of charge. I want your buckle to last, and I now believe that stainless steel buckles are the way to go. I mildly regret starting out with nickel plated steel buckles, but no worries -- all newly made Vanguard Belts now include a stainless steel buckle by default.

Now, when it comes to the Chicago screws and posts that I use to assemble the foldover that wraps around the roller buckle, I have had a very challenging time finding quality screws that I like. I started out with bulk orders of supposedly "stainless steel" screws from Amazon, and I quickly learned that there are many varying levels of quality available with virtually no way to assess that quality from the product photos or the descriptions on Amazon. When ordering those, it was a crapshoot on whether I'd get good screws & posts, whether I'd get the correctly sized screws & posts, or whether I'd even be able to get the same ones every time.

Many belts went out to customers with a myriad of different screws with varying degrees of quality. To this day, I'm still not completely happy with the quality of the latest screws I'm using even though I consider them to be better than the Amazon ones I started with. The current screws and posts that I'm using are sourced from a company that specializes in supplying them to the kydex holster-making industry. I have found those screws and posts (w/ a black oxide finish) to be superior to the silver colored Amazon ones I used for years.

But even with that improvement, my third customer returning a belt for service (a belt that was only a few years old) brought back a belt whose metal hardware had been utterly destroyed by his sweat. He had one of the original nickel plated buckles, and its plating had begun to wear away and there were early signs of rust, which you can see in the images included in this post. That rusty, slightly worn buckle is the one on the left. For comparison, the buckle on the right is one of the brand new stainless steel buckles right out of the box. This customer is getting a new stainless buckle to replace the original nickel plated one.

But here's where it gets interesting. This same customer had started with the old silver Amazon screws and posts, and I'd already replaced them once previously with the newer, better black oxide ones. When he brought this belt back to me recently a second time, the better black oxide screws had disastrously failed due to significant rusting, again due to the customer's profuse sweating. I did not expect that. The black oxide finish should generally be resistant to rusting because the black finish is already an oxidation finish. But those screws were no match for the sweat from my hard working friend who happens to be an Amazon delivery truck driver. In the second image on this post, you can see what only about a year and a half of hard use did to those black oxide screws when faced with constant sweat. Those screws were so badly rusted that I had to use a special screw extractor tool to turn them out because a regular Phillips screwdriver could not even engage the screw -- the screw heads literally crumbled away as particulate rust.

This friend is not only getting a good stainless steel replacement buckle, but I have a small batch of good quality all-stainless steel screws and posts from a pricey but high quality supplier (NOT Amazon). I don't have many of those high end stainless fasteners, but I will order more if needed. I gave his belt a good workover including a good cleanup, and I have outfitted it with all stainless metal hardware. The belt will be returned to him soon. I'm expecting that this time his belt will hold up against the hard rigors through which he puts it on a daily basis.

The synthetic belt material, by the way, is still in excellent condition.

This brings me to my main point. I continue to strive to make and deliver the best quality belts that I can while keeping the price point the same as when I began. By moving to all stainless steel buckles, I'm eating some extra cost now and making less profit per belt while delivering to you a better belt. And I'm okay with that. I want your belt to last because that's important to me.

I'm still going to stick with the newer black oxide screws and posts for now because it is my belief that they are still very good, resilient fasteners. I also believe that my hard working friend is an outlier when it comes to the degree of sweat that most Vanguard Belts will encounter. He admits to being one of those people who may profusely sweat even under relatively modest amounts of work or heat exposure.

Having said that, if you are finding that the metal hardware on your Vanguard Belt isn't living up to the promise and expectation (yours AND mine), again please reach out to me via email or phone and I will happily replace that faulty hardware free of charge. It is important to me to ensure that your belt lives up to the hype with which I sold it to you. If it's not holding up, reach out to me and I'll make it right, even if that means replacing the belt in its entirety. No one has ever called me on that warranty yet, but if it should come to pass I'll do what is necessary to get you a belt that will serve you well.

I support my loyal customers with genuine enthusiasm because they have taken a chance on my product. I will continue to strive to improve my products as I learn more about what works and what doesn't. This is a journey of continuous improvement and I hope you'll take it with me.

For any kind of warranty repair or hardware replacement needs, feel free to contact me as follows:

Email: brian@vanguardbelts.com

Mobile Phone: (219) 588-0532

I humbly thank you for your patronage and for your support of Vanguard Belt products.

Both the worn buckle and rusted screw images can be seen here on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/vanguardbelts/posts/963982152121908