GRAVETTE -- A pair of Gravette area men who founded a business here almost 30 years ago have seen that company prosper and grow until today it is a supplier to some of the largest gun manufacturers and gunsmith supply houses in the U.S.
Gary Phipps, who was born and raised in Gravette, and Larry Eaton, a Maysville native, started Graco Corporation in 1986. Their focus at that time was on producing handgun clips for competition shooting. Their product line now includes eight different recoil reducers, five styles of adjustable butt plates, adjustable comb hardware in eight different styles and several styles of barrel weights for different model shotguns.
Phipps and Eaton are both Gravette High School graduates, but they were not friends in high school because Phipps is nine years older than Eaton. They met when they both were working as machinists at an area company. Their employer was struggling financially and, suspecting they should seek other employment, they decided to go into business together. Phipps was already doing a little gun repair after his regular job and they felt they could fill a need in this area.
Gary and his wife Jean, along with Larry and his wife Sue, started Graco in a rented 30-by-50-foot block building and purchased equipment to make clips for the Colt 1911 handgun. Gary, Larry and Jean were the only employees for the first few months. They added another employee later in 1986 and another in 1987. By 1988, more employees were added as production increased.
In 1987, Graco started doing contract work on small parts for the handgun shooting industry and in 1991 began marketing its own products for the shotgun industry. The company started with recoil reducers. Its trademark GraCoil recoil reducer, which the company began producing in 1992-1993, is one of the most popular recoil reduction units on the market today.
The GraCoil is a compression butt plate with an adjustable tension setting and adjustable pad plate. Adjustments can be made for length, drop and rotation to make factory gun stocks adapt to fit any shooter's style. The GraCoil is used on both shotguns and rifles.
"Everybody's built a little different," Eaton explained, "and the same gun doesn't fit every shooter."
Graco products are designed to increase the shooter's comfort and improve accuracy. Recoil reducers are mercury filled to absorb shock, resulting in less fatigue, better concentration and higher competition scores. Counter weights give the shooter more muzzle control and better gun balance. Graco manufactures the products and also installs them. Customers send in stocks, Graco craftsmen install parts and make modifications, then ship them out all over the U.S. and into several countries.
As Graco's business has grown, the owners have added on to their original building twice and purchased two adjacent buildings. They now have 19 employees, two of whom only do installation work on stocks. Most employees are long-time workers. A feature article in "Trapshooting USA" magazine last year pointed out that the average time employees had worked there was more than 11 years.
"That means when we find a good employee, they stay with us," Eaton commented.
Both Eaton and Phipps are shooters themselves. They both grew up with fathers who kept bird dogs and took them quail hunting from an early age.
Eaton continues the family bird hunting tradition, hunting quail and pheasant in Kansas and traveling to South Dakota almost every year for pheasant hunting. He never got involved in clay target shooting, but Phipps began target shooting in 1975 and this year will be competing for the 36th time at the World Shooting Complex in Sparta, Ill.
General News on 05/13/2015