Cliff and his wife, Lisa Powers, purchased the company “Mernickle Custom Holsters” from Bob Mernickle, a renowned competitive shooter. Cliff who was born in Dallas, joined the Army and worked in governmental jobs for five years before getting approached by Bob in 2017. The family is heavily involved in competitive shooting, and already had experience with leather work.
“I had four people in my family involved with competitive shooting,” Powers said. “It can get expensive so we were already making our own holsters for ourselves and for others that would see our work.”
The family completed the purchase of the company April 1 of 2019, hoping it wasn’t an April Fools joke. The whole family, involved in shooting, is also involved in the business that has now became a family affair. Clint and Lisa’s daughter Hayley decided to move with her family to Utah when they’d become approached to purchase the company. The company was previously in Reno, Nevada under the leadership from Bob, who is a Canada Native. Once the family signed the papers, a location change soon followed.
“We moved to Pampa and ran the company out of our ranch,” Lisa Powers said. “We chose Pampa because it was closer than Reno to our family and we wanted to be close to them, as would any growing family.”
When the company first moved to Pampa, it was ran out of the Powers ranch outside of Pampa. The ranch served as the HQ for the company and the location that they hosted events that brought in hundreds of people. When the company was founded in 1974, it was a Canada based company that already made a name for itself. Bob Mernickle was already a competitive shooter, but found that he could do more by making his own customer holsters that quickly grew into the international company it is now.
“There isn’t a gun company that I can’t call and get on their shelves,” Cliff said. “We aren’t a small business, we work with some of the biggest names in the gun industry, most of the time I can call a company that we don’t work with yet and say who we are, and because of the name we make that business relationship immediately.”
Mernickle Custom Holsters is the official holsters company of Extreme Fast Draw, and Cowboy Fast Draw, but they also hold relationships with the five largest gun companies. The office in Pampa is ran like a small business, but they’re shipping out 200-250 holsters a week, with a consistent influx of orders ranging up to 800 a week.
“We use to offer to our employees, that if we have less than 100 active orders on the floor, Friday’s would be a half day for everyones,” Powers said. “But 100 became 200 and so on, we had to push the number back because business was growing, so now we just take those half days to give our workers a break because we are so consistently busy.”
The company still works nine hour days, four days a week but offers that half day so no one is overworked. Powers’ daughter, Hayley Gething serves as a Floor Manager and Jr. Executive and V.P. of sales.
“I do a little bit of everything,” Gething joked. “But I am the person that Ruger talks to when they need something, or Colt needs something. I work with the big companies we have and get their needs met, that’s the biggest part of my job.”
“It is very humbling when the CEO of Colt calls my company and says ‘Hey Cliff, can I talk to Hayley,’ Cliff joked. “But she handles it perfectly, it’s what she does.”
Every member of the family is involved, Cliff and his wife Lisa are the faces of the company and keep the company going, but are also working the floor making orders, it’s a collective family company.
“We teach our staff how to do everything,” Lisa Powers said. “So if someone is gone, there isn’t a delay on the order, we’re all trained and know how to do everything if it’s needed.”
All the employees are required to know some aspect of the shooting sport, so when they are making a sale on something they have a basis to go off of, not just trying to sell a product they don’t know much about.
The company is larger than first meets the eye, it’s a world wide company, so they can offer someone anything they’re looking for.
“I hate telling people that it’ll be a wait, but for custom holsters we are still one of the fastest in the business.” Cliff said. “With this new space, we have a larger work area and no one is packed on each other trying to work, so we plan to grow in staff.”
With the company being an established brand, they’ve sold to some cool clients, providing all holsters to the Vancouver City Police and the Vancouver Secret Service Academy, and the Texas Rangers. Mernickle made custom holsters for the Hoover Volunteer Fire Department.
“That was cool, we got to make custom radio holsters for the Hoover Volunteer Fire Department,” Cliff said. “It was a cool thing to be able to do something like that for them.”
Along with the competitive shooting side of the business, Mernickle also makes day-to-day holsters for ranchers and cowboys and concealed carry.
Mernickle Custom Holsters has made holsters for a couple of movies such as The Virginian with Trace Adkins and the holsters for Forsaken with Kiefer Sutherland and are currently working on an order for another movie.
“This movie holster we’re working on now is based on a screenplay,” Cliff said. “The coolest part about this one is that the movie wanted one that would grow with the character, as they show her young and then in adulthood. So we were able to make one that is adjustable to grow with the character over time. It was a cool project to get.”
A larger part of the shipments are for the everyday person that carries. Offering a line of holsters for anyone and everyone.
“The company has grown three times since we took it over,” Clliff said. “When we took it, they were slowly wanting to downsize just due to age but we’ve been able to grow it back to where it was and then some.”
The company fell into the families lap after they’d gotten into the competition.
“When I got out of the Army, Hayley and I didn’t have much in common, so we got into shooting and really enjoyed it,” Cliff said. “We bonded over it and then when we were on our way to Colorado for a shooting competition I thought I’d make a safe dad bet and tell her if she won her event, I’d get her a customer set of holsters. A couple hundred dollars later, I realized it wasn’t the best move to make a bet with her, because I have to keep paying up. So that’s why I decided to start learning how to make these on my own.”
While they’re all involved, Lisa, is the silent champion of the family. For the first year that the family got involved in shooting, Lisa didn’t participate, she would attend everything but didn’t take part. After being convinced by the family, she took up the sport. She’s now the National Champion for Black Powder and has held numerous State Championships for Utah and Colorado and an eight time World Time Champion Pocket Pistol Shooter, outshining the family.
“I’m the quiet one of the family,” Lisa laughed.
The company has now moved it’s HQ to 304 S. Cuyler, and plans to have a grand opening once everything is fully set up, hoping to host it in the spring.
“We want a big grand opening, once we have the store front ready.” Cliff said. “When we do it, we’ll have the XFDA guys bring their mobile trailer so folks can try fast shooting. But we’ll also have a gun fighter reenactment for patrons to see.”
Annually the company hosts a Cowboy Shootout at their property, hosting 178 shooters.
“That’s how we got on the radar of the EDC because of the large crowd we drew in,” Cliff said. “We are going to keep doing it and growing it, but next year we’re going to have a group that toured the world as a showgirl shooting group that we’ll open to the public to get tickets to.”
To view the companies catalog, visit their website at mernickleholsters.com and check out their Facebook Mernickle Custom Holsters
