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superior handgun. For a company to have that slogan out the gate, there's only

one way to live up to that. You're either going to be superior or you're

to be a mockery.

Six years ago, we were bringing in a couple guns and begging people to try

to now one of the leading defense manufacturers in the world.

The idea of being number one means that that many people, the largest percentage

of people in America that are exercising their Second Amendment right are

choosing you.

And that means you're doing something right.

In a car race, no driver wants the other drivers to wreck. We want everybody to

race. If they're not racing with me, there's no race at all.

I just want to cross the checker line first.

To understand how Canik USA got here, you have to understand where it started.

Canik USA is a collaboration between Century Arms and Canik because 80 % of

commercial handguns in the world are sold right here in the United States.

And this was something that was recognized by the Futur family from

65 years ago when they were a typewriter repair company specializing in

Remington typewriters.

They had this company that was repairing typewriters, and a guy came in and

said, hey, I want you to repair this typewriter, but I don't have money to

you. The guy ended up trading a couple surplus rifles, and William's

accepted him and put him up in the window of his store and said, well, I

know what to do with these. I guess I've got to take out a newspaper ad.

So he took out a three -day ad on this newspaper saying, I'm selling these

rifles. And the same day, before the ads even ran, the guy comes in and says,

I'll take those two rifles from the window.

And that was the beginning of it. That was, wow, there's something here.

So my name is Nils Jonathan, and I travel around the country and around the

world, and I shoot guns really, really fast.

I'm 35 years old, and I've been shooting for almost 23 years.

My first match was one of these Tuesday Night Steel competitions, and I was

shooting a Colt Series 70 Gold Cup. So it's a nice pistol.

with seven -round magazines and .45 ACP.

And I was so bad, my dad had to walk behind me and pick up magazines,

them, and then putting them back in my mag pouches just so I could finish the

stage because I missed so many shots.

Then, eight years later, I'm the U .S. national champion.

Kind of the middle of 2018, Canik actually reached out to me, and they

somebody to...

come represent the brand, but also help them develop new products.

And that was the real interesting part for me.

So, yes, I get paid by a huge, well -known gun company, but I also get to

them develop the next line of pistols for both competition but also for the

-defense market. So being part of the design has actually been one of my

favorite parts of the job.

So my competition gun is the Canik SFX Rival S, which is our steel frame full

size.

My favorite gun just got released last year. It's the Canik Mete MC9 Prime,

which is our brand -new micro -compact carry gun.

It incorporates a ton of the features that we came up with for the competition

side, and we molded them into a concealed carry package that is fast

real easy to pick up the sights, becomes a tritium night sight, an amazing

trigger. Really comfortable grip texture.

You know, the magwell is removable.

It comes with a holster that you can actually use and a whole bunch of other

accessories if you want to modify it to fit your... That's the great thing about

Canik is when it comes to designing new products or incorporating suggestions,

Canik wants your feedback. So if you, you know, want a particular caliber...

If enough people want something, we will make it. If they want different sights,

if they want different triggers, if they want a holster in the package, which

all of our pistols include out of the box, we will do that. So we listen to

customer.

I get a text message from one of our owners or our product development guy.

did you see what they're saying on Reddit?

Did you see the Facebook post number six down from Steve from Toledo? We see

every post, every thread.

And I don't mean just our social media coordinators. I mean from the top chair

and William all the way down to the assemblers on the line. We're having

meetings over Reddit threads.

And you'll see that. You'll see that shift.

You'll see thread that will say, I wish Canik did this. And then three months

later, holy crap, Canik did this.

So we were committed to that with the Prime.

We said, what are all the new innovations that have really started to

trendy over the last five years? Like a flat trigger, the ported barrel, the

tritium sights, the ability to co -witness.

The optic to the iron sights, the 17 plus 1 capacity, that aggressive grip

texturing, all these little feature sets that make the Prime unique.

We said, how can we do that and still bring it to the consumer at a place that

doesn't truly have sticker shop? But at the same time, if they need it on the

rain to deliver the closest, tightest grouping they've ever had, or if they

it in that one crucial moment that may define the rest of their lives, they

and we know that it's going to deliver.

Some of the things that make Canik different in the firearms market is the

point we're able to keep the pistols at. And normally people would think that

that would mean that the gun's cheap.

But in this case, that's not. It's a very high -quality, well -manufactured

pistol, and we're able to keep those prices at a point that everybody can

afford, which was very, very important to us.

Another thing Canik does is we incorporated this thing called the

Series. So every year we do one or two.

signature series like custom edition pistols from canik and it'll be

models but we'll partner with cerakote or you know different companies to make

really really customized limited edition and super cool pistols

in 2024 we

teamed with mr terran butler of sharing tactical innovations and created the

canik tti com

a full -size pistol that was kind of that hybrid between cool and tactical

competition. Taren did a whole bunch of different design work with Taren in our

R &D team. So he introduced an integrated comp on the end of the

reworked the texture, and he had the sight changed.

If you were to get a custom, full -blown TTI, you're anywhere between $3 ,000

and $8 ,000.

For the Canik TKI Combat, you're looking at under a grand.

And it was the first time he had ever done a pistol for even a third of the

price that we brought it to market at.

And it was 2024's handgun of the year. And it was like, man, it can't get any

better than this.

And then we opened Canik USA, and we start pumping out Canik Primes in

of 2025.

And it's only been a year since we've put in for the handgun of the year. And

said, we've got to put in for the prime again. But lightning doesn't strike

twice, right?

Next thing you know, we get the notification that it's won industry

awards concealed carry handgun of the year 2025.

So this governing body that took in all these other platforms said, we don't

care if we take everybody off.

This truly is the best gun in the world. And for this year, for this new

innovative gun, and we're going to give the award to Canik two years in a row.

Once I graduated school, I joined the family business, and I wanted to learn

much as possible. So I'd spend a year or two in different departments or

different areas. I'd become familiar with that department or area, and then

move on to the next.

It's almost similar to what I do here, where I want to learn every aspect of

process and be familiar with it myself.

Sometimes I'd sneak into the assembly room, and I want to...

be proficient in all aspects of what we do here. I want to understand what our

team members are going through, what process they have to put in place, and

how to do it myself.

My record is nowhere near the guys on the floor, but I'm getting pretty close

now.

So the facility we're about to see is brand new, as I mentioned. It's a 162

-square -foot building.

81 ,000 -square -foot is the Canik manufacturing floor.

One of the things that Canik is important is this is the footprint. This

first facility in the U .S. for the Canik brand.

There's five factories worldwide throughout Europe and Turkey.

So this is going to be the base of operations.

for the u .s which is supported by all the other factories of the brand behind

us so welcome to the canic usa manufacturing floor

in this area we have our cnc machines we have one line set up that's fully

operational producing mete mc9 prime right now we produce the black variant

in the near future we'll have additional models or additional colors available

So this area, we have laser marking and plastic injection.

So we manufacture frames completely from polymer pellets on these machines back

here. And then these machines will mark the slide, the barrel, and the frame for

BATF requirements.

These are the barrel turning machines.

This is where we finish the barrel.

Here we have a finished slide of our machine here.

And now we're going to go to the special processes. We're going through the next

step.

We go through very meticulous machining processes. We do 100 % gauge control.

Every single critical dimension we check here is absolutely vital, and it never

skips a beat. We use CMMs in between our...

our CNC machines, which acts as kind of a backup to also check the parts

tolerance. We use hard gauges, dial gauges, no -go gauges.

And after we're finished machining through that whole process, we go into

quality control where we do 100 % inspection on the part.

So for this test, we're doing a frame compression test. We're mounting the

frames onto the fixture here, and we're going to apply continuous force

downwards. We're going to measure the maximum force it takes for the part to

break and how much deformation you have at the maximum force applied.

We're going to be looking for the hardness of the part and the thickness

compound layer, which gives you all of your corrosion resistance, your

and your wear resistance.

This is our compound layer.

Compound layer here is what gives you all of your surface hardness, corrosion

resistance, and wear resistance.

This looks nice, uniform, and thick.

Based on the size of this diamond, we can determine how hard the part is.

You want to make sure it's hard enough so that the part is durable and tough,

but you want to make sure that it's not too hard.

so that your part isn't brittle and prone to cracking under heavy use.

Another thing we do here is we put all of our nitrided parts through a salt

spray test where they're expected to undergo 168 hours of continuous salt fog

testing.

168 hours in the salt fog chamber simulating several years of real -world

without any lubrication or protection.

There's a lot of companies out there that are just looking for their parts to

black, and that's their standard.

We go above and beyond. We want to make sure our parts are going to survive

seven days in the cell fog chamber, which is a lot more than most

And beyond that, a lot of companies are looking for, like, pitting or serious

corrosion damage. We're rejecting that we see any signs of red rust or

at all.

Any visual disturbance is an automatic fail.

Here's one of our slides.

This one's been in for about four days.

We're seeing no red streaks, no corrosion, no pitting.

Just what we would expect.

After the assembly process, we do a QC mechanical check on the actual gun

itself. We test fire every single gun in this building to make sure there's no

critical errors.

So it's kind of a benchmark for our standard and quality.

So from the beginning, we look at the weapon like this.

We look at the aesthetics of the weapon. We make sure that everything is true

and sound with the slide, with the sights, with the optic plate, with all

pieces that go on it. So we have the frame here. We have the detent, the

lock lever, the detent, the press pin, magazine catch release, firing pin,

back strap, trigger.

We want to make sure everything's in place. So we've got count one.

two three four five six when it comes to the pins so we take the slide off we

check the recoil spring we check the plungers we check the firing pin we

the detent on the frame and check the fly lock lever we check the trigger bar

this is the ejection block or ejection assembly and the locking blocks make

the springs are all good set in place and make sure the sears operate put the

slide back on the weapon

Test the functionality.

Test the reset.

Take a magazine.

Make sure it ejects the magazine.

Slide lock closes.

A little dowel rod is to check the firing pin.

I'm going to lock it open. Put a range flag in it.

Run the box and go test the web.

Basically, what you're looking for in here, once you load it, you want to make

sure it doesn't fail you to feed, doesn't fail you to battery.

And when you actually go to discharge the weapon, you want to look at the

ejection of the case.

And if it's anything out of order, you make a note, you be analytical with it,

and you give it to the product management.

For your everyday carry or whether you want to use it for personal protection,

your family's protection, or if you want to use it for sport shooting, if you

want to do a USPCA match or whatever, it's a very compatible weapon for all

aspects.

When people ask me why can't, the easiest answer for me is would I?

Give one of these to my mom to carry.

That level of assurance as a son that I can give my mom something that in a

moment where maybe she hasn't trained as much as I would like to, when she needs

it, I'm going to enable her with the best chance of it being proficient in

instant time of need.

I hope, I pray that nobody, not just my family, but... All of our consumers

never have to use a Canik in that situation.

But if they need it, we're going to deliver the best performance out there.

And that's what Canik is.

You know, the American dream is this.

We built a 162 ,000 -square -foot manufacturing facility, Canik's first in

.S., to make the METE MC9 Prime.

And starting in December with...

Three or four employees, December 2024, and now we have over 70 less than a year

later. More of a loss of words of how I would be able to describe that feeling

other than an immense sense of pride.

We've come a long way, and it's nice to take a step back and realize the

progress that we've made as a brand, as Canik.

But this is just the beginning for us.

We make guns that on the range are show -stopping guns, from performance to

aesthetic. And we're going to continue to do that, and we're going to continue

to disrupt the industry. And the other guys are either going to have to

acknowledge us and catch up, or they're going to get left in the dust.