Video Transcript
Here at T.REX ARMS, one of our major objectives is to produce high-quality holsters that enable people to carry service handguns, duty-style handguns, in a comfortable, but also accessible way every day, seven days a week. When we started the company, we really focused on appendix carry. That is my preferred solution for carrying a handgun. It's very easy to carry something a little bit larger, carry extra ammunition, a tourniquet, something like that, and have that on me all the time, carrying also with a weapon light and a pistol optic.
We realize, though, that not everyone is down for sticking a handgun in the front of their body, or their body type doesn't allow for that, it's a little too uncomfortable, and those people typically resort to something like a three o'clock holster or four o'clock holster, either worn outside the waistband or inside the waistband. Last year, we wanted to make a dedicated outside the waistband holster that could be concealed somewhat easily, the iron-side holster, because those people should have a good holster that is extremely accessible and modernized as well to accommodate weapon lights and pistol optics, so that they can carry a duty-style handgun, something that is very important to us here at T.REX ARMS, seven days a week with no issues.
After designing this holster during the process, we were actually looking into what about taking this concept and improving hybrid holster design out there? Hybrid holsters are a way out that a lot of people have carried, especially before the appendix carry craze, but there are some downsides to traditional hybrid holsters. Typically speaking, they're going to have a soft material on one side of the holster, and then they're going to have a kydex shell on the other. And the issue with this is, as that soft-sided material, some sort of synthetic or leather, fake leather, something like that, as the body wears that material in and you sweat and there's just various things going on, there have been cases of that material actually collapsing when people are re-holstering and the material going into the trigger guard and then the pistol discharging. So it's not necessarily the safest holster design out there. So when we looked at the hybrid design, we wanted to take the principles that we've been using to make all of our other holsters, maximizing accessibility and safety while also creating a modernized holster and apply that to the hybrid holster design out there. And this is what we've come up with.
There's a couple things in particular that really make this different than a lot of other or most other hybrids on the market. With the first thing being, we have a fully formed Kydex holster in front of the soft sided comfortable material. What this means is you're still getting the accessibility and retention and safety of a standard Kydex holster out there and you can adjust all the retention and everything else. Re-holstering into this is also very easy and fast. So if for some reason you're utilizing your pistol and then you need to put it away quickly, there are a few instances in which you may need to do that, such as copying a suspect or maybe you need to quickly go up a ladder or transition back to your primary to get the gun back up and running. Re-holstering into this holster is much easier and I would argue much safer than some of the other hybrids out there that do not have a full Kydex style holster going on with it. We also don't have a leather material. We spent a lot of time researching different sort of synthetic materials out there. We wanted something that could sustain the weight of a full metal handgun with a weapon light, with an optic, with a full magazine and not sort of collapse. Something that has good ventilation as well. Something that's very comfortable. Something that's very durable and something that's also somewhat cost-effective because you can obviously get really crazy with some materials out there. This material is called Alcantra, if I'm pronouncing that properly.
This is actually a material that is used on the interior of luxury vehicles, Lamborghinis and a few others out there. That's just a fun little side note. But we just found that this material gave us the properties that we were looking for and it is very comfortable. Speaking very honestly, I am not probably going to be using this product a whole lot. I'm an appendix carry guy. That's just what I use all the time. But as I've been using this holster in testing and also in filming some of the content that you guys are seeing in this video, it is very comfortable. I actually would have no problem wearing this holster around here at work or even certain places if I had to wear a suit, for example, because of the comfort and the fact that I can get away with carrying, say, a much heavier handgun, such as this Beretta M9 with an X300, a little bit easier than taking this entire handgun or something similar and trying to carry appendix.
A holster like this is going to allow you to get away with carrying much heavier handguns a little bit easier than something like the Sidecar or like a dedicated appendix carry holster. Even something like a 1911, even without a light, it's just much easier to support the weight here at 4 o'clock with this holster than one of those other styles out there. When you receive an Ironside Hybrid, you are going to get a built-in 10 degree cant. And you'll kind of see it right here. The kydex shell is rotated. This is just to make the pistol a little bit more concealable when you are carrying it at 3 o'clock, which is what this holster is intended for. But you can adjust the clips to reduce that angle or increase that angle if you want to do FBI cant, which I don't recommend.
But if you want to do that, you can move the clips around. What I like to do with mine and what I have been doing is moving the clips to try to actually get the pistol a little bit straighter. It makes it just a little bit more accessible when you're going down there to grab it. I'm also a skinnier guy, and that probably contributes to it as well. So that's something you can do if you want to adjust your angle. You can move the clips along all the little holes right here, which is another thing we wanted with this material so that you can kind of build the holster around what you need.
Out of these holsters, you may find that there are different sizes of backers. And we do have three different sizes for the different sizes and lengths of handgun. Now, this really isn't going to affect you guys very much. When you go to purchase one of these, you select exactly what handgun that you're either getting the holster for, and we will select the appropriate size for you. Or if you go to buy just the backer to convert your iron side holster, you will still select what kind of holster you are using on top of this, and you'll get the appropriate height as well. Ultimately, though, it doesn't really, to some extent, matter. You could take a smaller holster input on our larger backer. You could take a larger holster put on our smaller backer. It's still very comfortable. But we are trying to optimize the product as much as possible for you guys, and that's why we have three different sizes.
If you're still watching this video and really trying to figure out if this is really the holster for you, it really comes down to what do you already carry right now? If you're already someone who's carrying appendix all the time, this probably isn't the holster for you. It's not really the holster for me. But that wasn't the objective that we had when we went out and made this holster. We weren't trying to make this product for all of our existing customers who already have decided how they want to carry a handgun, what kind of handgun, seven days a week. Those people are more or less taken care of, and they're out there carrying a handgun out in public, and that's exactly what we want. This is a product that we wanted to design for people who just really like carrying it at three or four o'clock. And maybe they're using a hybrid holster from another company that doesn't offer some of the features that ours does. Because again, we're really trying to improve on this concept. Because this concept is a very nice concept for people that maybe do care a little bit more about comfort, but should have a holster that is very accessible for their handguns that can actually get it out easily and quickly. So this holster may not be for you. This holster is for sort of a different customer base out there. But if you are interested in trying out a three or four o'clock holster, this is definitely a good option out there. That was our goal from the beginning, was to try to improve on what's out there already and have something available for those of you who just can't get down with taking a handgun and shoving it in your pants, appendix. Because hey, not everyone's down for doing that. If you have any other questions about this product, go ahead and email us at team@trex-arms.com.