About Us

Welcome. I’m Brian Meyers, President and CEO.

Around 2001, I was just a guy who loved off-roading and wanted parts for my own Jeep that I couldn't afford to buy.

So I decided to figure out how to build them myself.

It started in my mom's 20' x 20' garage. I spent countless nights teaching myself how to fabricate through trial and error. There was definitely more error in the beginning.

Eventually, I got a little better.

Guys in my off-road club started asking if I could build parts for their Jeeps too. What started as a way to outfit my own vehicle slowly turned into building parts for friends, and before I really knew what was happening, those friends started turning into customers.

At the time, I was going to community college during the day and spending my evenings and weekends in the garage building parts and filling orders.

I still remember getting a credit card machine and taking my first order over the phone while sitting at my mom's kitchen table. It probably doesn't sound like much today, but at the time it felt huge. I can still hear the sound of the paper ripping as I tore the receipt from that machine.

This thing was becoming a real business.

In 2003, we officially formed JcrOffroad. A year later, I moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Daryl Hutson joined me as a partner.

More than twenty years later, Daryl and I still own the company together.

Two Very Different People

People have asked how Daryl and I have managed to stay business partners for so long. I think a big part of the answer is actually pretty simple.

We're very different.

Daryl is exceptionally good at things that don't come naturally to me, and I'm good at things that don't come naturally to him. Over the years, we've learned to trust each other's strengths while still being willing to challenge each other's thinking.

Neither one of us could have built this company alone. Together, we've built something we're incredibly proud of.

As the company grew, so did what we wanted to build. We launched Victory 4x4 in 2015 and Squatchproof in 2019. Today, those brands operate under Fat American Manufacturing, the company behind everything we make.

Through all that growth, Daryl and I have remained the owners. We've never taken on private equity or outside investors. The machines on our floor, the buildings we've expanded into, the brands we've launched, and the improvements we've made have come from serving customers and reinvesting back into the company.

That hasn't always been the easiest path, but it's ours.

We Definitely Didn't Have It Figured Out

It would be easy to look at where we are today and make the early years sound more polished than they actually were.

They weren't.

We didn't know much about manufacturing. We didn't know much about running a business, and we definitely didn't know much about leading people. Most of what we know today came from making mistakes, figuring out why something didn't work, and trying to do it better the next time.

One of my favorite reminders of those early days is an eBay feedback comment we received from a customer:

"Great hoop, but looks like it was painted by a blind monkey."

Honestly, that was probably fair.

At the time, I was spray-painting parts in a dimly lit garage. Today, we have an in-house powder coating operation and a finishing process I couldn't have imagined standing in that garage all those years ago.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, we had to let the blind monkey go.

The Biggest Lesson Wasn't About Manufacturing

For a long time, I thought building a great manufacturing company was mostly about equipment, processes, and learning how to make better products.

Those things matter, but the biggest lesson Daryl and I have learned over the last twenty-plus years is that none of this happens without people.

Some of the best ideas we've ever implemented didn't come from either one of us. They came from people on our team who challenged the way we'd always done something, solved problems we couldn't solve, and found better ways to build products and serve customers.

Looking back, that's become one of the most rewarding parts of this entire journey.

I've watched people walk through our doors without knowing what they were capable of, learn a trade, develop new skills, become leaders, and accomplish things they probably wouldn't have imagined when they started.

The machines matter. The building matters. The products certainly matter. But none of those things improve themselves.

People do that.

From the Garage to the Trailhead

What started with a Jeep, a garage, and parts I couldn't afford has become something much bigger than Daryl or me.

It's been built by the employees who have poured themselves into this place, the customers who trusted us with their vehicles, the vendors who grew alongside us, and the friends and family who supported us when this whole thing was still being run from my mom's garage.

More than twenty years later, we're still learning. We're still screwing things up occasionally. We're still trying to get a little better every day.

And we're still doing what started all of this in the first place: building products for people who love getting out and using their vehicles.

We're grateful you've found us, whether you're buying your first product from one of our brands or you've been with us since those early days.

We look forward to being part of your build and spotting you from your first question to the trailhead.

Sincerely,
Brian Meyers
President & CEO