Meet the CEO

                      Author: Angela de la Cruz

Manny Dela Cruz is the founding member of GunAuction, and is the company’s President and CEO.  Manny originally came up with the idea of creating an online auction websites after seeing other auction websites on the Internet that dabbled in firearms.  He wasn't impressed with what was out there, and too many folks were trying to charge big money for poor service.  Manny also has a great love for things that go bang and he spends a lot of time at the range.  He figured it might be fun to create a website that catered to the shooter, while providing a great public service.

Manny is a devoted husband and father.  He and his wife Kristy have been married since 1996 and together they have four sons: Andrew, 19, Jacob, 14, Joseph, 12, and Samuel, 8.  They now live in Utah where they enjoy hiking, camping, fishing, and of course, shooting.

Where were you born?

Agana, Guam

Tell me about your family…

I come from a big family. I’m the oldest of 10 kids and in many ways that sort of shaped my expectations about family.  I married my wife and she was pretty much perfect and she remains so to this day. She means everything to me. She is the rock around which I have anchored my life. My wife and children are my reason for existing. Everything I do is motivated to make sure they are taken care of; and if you ever get in the way of that I will run you over.

What one thing about your upbringing shaped you into who you are today?

Nobody is the sum of a single event, but if I had to point at one person, it would be my mother.  I would say that my mom’s influence on me has been first my work ethic and the idea that in order to get anywhere you need to work and then work harder.  The second thing is that in order to improve you have to be unflinchingly honest about yourself when you look in the mirror. You have to fully understand your motivations, what you really want and what you have done in the past.  If you can’t look honestly at who you are and what you’ve accomplished or failed to accomplish you can’t ever expect to get better or improve. 

What initially made you interested in guns?

I think my first real experience with a gun was when I was growing up I was part of scouting.  One of our activities was to go to the Davis Street Range in San Leandro, CA. One of our scout leaders had a Winchester Lever Action rifle that shot 45/70, which is a pretty big bullet.  I was 12 years old at the time and I just remember picking the rifle up – and I had shot BB guns before, but I had never shot a firearm before – it was heavy, it felt unfamiliar, and squeezing the trigger, and this massive blast, which kind of drove me backwards.  I did it again and again, and it was such an out of control experience!

The fact that such a loud, concussive, powerful force could come from such a tiny package – a bullet.  It was such a visceral experience and it scared me. But at the same time it scared me, I said I want to do this more so that I’m good at this.  I had a friend who lived out in the sticks and his dad let him have guns and go shooting, so I would earn money, buy ammo, and then go use his guns to shoot things. I was driven. I wanted to know and wanted to learn.

How do your boys like shooting?

All of our boys love shooting. All of our boys love guns. They very clearly understand that guns can do lots of damage. I don’t have to worry about them coming across a gun and not knowing what to do. They are well trained.  They know that if they’re doing it right, I’ll let them do it more, so if you want to go shooting, you’ve got to behave.

Manny Dela Cruz with M-1 Garand

What’s your favorite gun to shoot now?

I do own this M-1 Garand that I just love shooting. It’s such a strong gun, and it’s so accurate.

What are your hobbies?

I work on cars. I actually took a day off yesterday because I have a Saab that’s like a project car I work on. It’s a weird European car so there’s always something weird or new that I’m discovering about it; which is fun. I’m a mechanically minded guy.

I like being out in the woods, so going out and listening to nature and just turning the cell phone off. That’s always enjoyable (he says as his cell phone starts to ring).

I’m a church going guy. I go to church on Sundays and I participate. I’m a Sunday School teacher, so my religion is an important part of my life and who I am.

My kids, my family, doing stuff with them - those are my hobbies.

Where do you like to hunt?

I’ve been hunting down in Zacatecas, Mexico and in Tampico, Mexico. Dove hunting is really fun; you sit next to a body of water in Zacatecas in the high desert, and the doves come in in the evening to get water and you shoot ‘em!  And there’s a lot of action; the birds are coming in fast. It’s a lot of fun, and then afterwards you have a lot of dove to eat. 

Best hunting story you’ve got?

That experience of dove hunting in Mexico was funny because we all posted up around this one pond that was probably about an acre in size and we all had 12-guages. It was me, my brother, and Mike Wiederhold. What would be funny is occasionally a bird would come in and get confused and it would just do laps around the pond and everybody was shooting at it.

The bird would go through, Marcus would miss Bang! Bang! Bang! - because he always pulls the trigger three times, even if he hits the bird with the first shot, he’s still gonna pull the trigger for two more shots - and then I would miss and it would fly back towards Mike and Mike would miss and I would miss and then finally it would leave.  And that’s a testament to how bad of a shot we were.

What made you decide to serve in the military and why did you ultimately choose the Marines?

I was kind of in a hurry to grow up when I was 17 or 18 years old and I wanted to do something that I thought would make a difference.  There were certain expectations that I would go to college and that I would do this, that, and the other, but I wasn’t on that program, so I decided to join the military. My family came from a long history of serving in the military.  My grandpa served in the Air Force, I have several uncles who served in the Army and the Navy. No Marines. There were no Marines in the family.

I kind of bought into the idea that the Marines are the best. The have the toughest boot camp, the training is the toughest, the discipline is tighter - everything is just a tad tighter and more difficult to do.  That’s not denigrating the other branches of service; they’re important and I know they do very difficult jobs.

What was your job while in the military?

The Marine Corps offered me opportunities in jobs that seem more interesting than the other branches of service. My original impulse was to sign up for Embassy duty, a Marine Security Guard (MSG). Then at the outbreak of the first Gulf War, recruiters form other MOS’ came through and were like “Why are you doing this, you could be doing this other thing.” I sort of changes MOS’, became intel and went to school at Fort Belvoir in Virginia on the East Coast to got some intelligence training and then went to the fleet. It was an interesting job and I got to shoot guns.

What is your most memorable experience from the Marine Corps?

There were a couple of them.  When you first get there they make you stand in these footprints and they swear you in and it is intense.  I mean there are drill instructors cruising around, it’s an unfamiliar feeling, and you’re standing their ramrod straight trying not to look like an idiot and these guys are screaming at you and giving you instructions, which are barely coherent because you can’t understand half of what they’re saying because of the way they say it; and you’re running around and they’re shaving your head.  But that moment of stepping off the bus and it is nighttime and standing in those footprints…. that’s a moment.  That’s one of those moments that will stay with you the rest of your life.  You’re committing.  If there was ever a moment a time to bolt, you should have done it before you got on that bus!

And nighttime fire!  We did firing exercises at night.  Familiarization fire at night and trace-around at night is one of the most beautiful things ever, as crazy at that sounds. It’s just a stream of fire that shoots off into the distance; it’s just beautiful. 

Why didn’t you make the military a career?

I wanted a family. I want to be a father. I wanted to be a husband. I’d see my friends do that while they were in the military and the stresses that place on a family are extraordinarily difficult. If someone is in the military and manages to keep their family together, that is extraordinary.  It’s just a very difficult thing to do.  I knew that, at least for me, the decision to stay in the military would be incompatible with me more important goal of getting married, having a family, and doing the 9 to 5 thing.  So that was my biggest reason for leaving.

If you hadn’t decided to start Auction Arms (GunAuction) what would you be doing now?

Honestly I have no idea.  My life has been such a random series of events strung together in a storyline that it’s tough to know where I’d be.  If I hadn’t left the military, I was thinking about trying to become a commissioned officer.  Finishing my degree, maybe becoming a warrant officer, and then becoming an LDO. You know, I could be colonel now…. or not.

If I had not started this company, maybe I would have started another company. I’ve got a lot of skills as a fabricator and a welder; I could have started my own engineering firm.  There’s a lot of different things that I could have done, but I ended up doing this and this has been a really wild ride. I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a lot of fun.

Do you think your sons will ever want to run this company?

I don’t know. All of my boys, to some extent, have a streak of independence that makes them want to go and do things their way, which I can respect because that’s how I did it.  I don’t want to be hiring my children and them using the company as a crutch. I really want them to go out in the world and make a name for themselves to some extent to understand what the world is like and to fail occasionally. It’s good to no be successful right out of the gate. 

What’s the future look like? What do you want to be doing 15 years from now?

Fifteen years from now all my kids will be grown up.  Right now my wife and I are raising kids and that takes up a lot of money and a lot of time.  I’m not looking forward to the day when all my kids are gone; I figure it’s just part of the natural progression, but at that same time, when they’re all gone and I’m not spending ridiculous amounts of money on them just keeping them fed and clothed and housed and toyed up, then it could get really interesting. 

I’m going to grow the company.  We’re doing a great job of expanding our market and improving the services of the company and making us more attractive to the people who use our services. We have a very loyal following; people who really like how we do things and I’m grateful for their loyalty and I want to ensure that they keep getting the best service that we can provide. 

Meet the Partners of GunAuction

                     Author: Angela de la Cruz

Manny’s office looks out to the snow covered Mt. Timpanogas in Orem, UT.  He has small models of Red Ferrari’s lining the windowsill and he’s sitting in a big leather chair behind his desk wearing a GunAuction branded t-shirt and hat.  Bob, whose face is projected on a wall-mounted big screen TV via video chat, is smoking a cigarette outside and showing the guys a silver clock out of an old Packard that he restored.  Mike is the quiet one; he sits there intently listening and nodding his head as a he takes a sip out of one of the two Diet Coke cans sitting in front of him. 

It’s like I’m sitting in on a group of old friends, catching up and showing off their new toys.  And that’s exactly how this company got started. 

Manny and Bob worked together at Bank of America in San Francisco and would spend their lunch breaks talking to each other about their time spent in the military and their views on the Second Amendment.  It wasn’t until 1997 when Manny bought a gun on eBay, a Ruger P-89 which sits loaded in his top desk drawer, that he thought about wanting an auction website where he could purchase guns.  After having the idea, Manny, who worked in tech support, started programming the site in the evenings on his home desktop computer. 

Bob Lancaster

“I would run back to Bob’s cubicle and say ‘Look what I did’ and Bob would say ‘That sucks’ or ‘That’s awesome,’” Manny recalls. 

It was those early conversations that helped form the beginnings of what was AuctionArms.com.  After a few months of back and forth with Bob about the site and its functions,  “We launched it! And nothing happened.”

AuctionArms.com was nothing but a website domain with about 150 users who bought and sold sparingly.  Manny say, “At that point it was a hobby and we weren’t making any money at it. And then one day I was at my bother-in-law’s house and he tells me ‘You might wanna check your website because eBay just announced they’re not gonna allow firearm sales to take place anymore.’  I thought he was yanking my chain….I checked the website and we had something like 2,000 registrations a day.” 

With success coming quickly to the site because of eBay’s decision to ban the sale of firearms, one would think Manny would be thrilled. 

“It was a nightmare! Our one little server kept crashing and we didn’t have any money.”  

So Manny did what any young entrepreneur would do: he asked for money.  He asked for money from the users of AuctionArms.com.  And the money came. 

“I sent an email out to users,” Manny laughs, “And I was getting something like a hundred checks a day sent to my house.” 

The checks were for small amounts, but what guy wouldn’t get excited about strangers sending him fistfuls of money?  It was especially a blessing when both Manny and Bob were laid-off at Bank of America in 2001 and needed something to fall back on.  Manny decided to work on programming AuctionArms.com full time and Bob worked on the financial and legal aspects of the company. 

“I was putting in a lot of time for this,” Bob recalls “I joked with Manny about throwing me a little equity if something comes of this company.  A couple years later Manny called me up and said ‘You’re a partner.’” 

Michael Wiederhold

Mike came into the company a little later; he was jetting across the country teaching week long classes on computer programming, but it all came to a halt in 2001 with the dot-com bubble.

“I was out of work for three or four months, living on savings.” Mike says, “I was at church and was introduced to Manny.  He asked me what I did and invited me to come visit him…. I let it sit for a couple weeks because I didn’t want to appear too eager”

“But you were running out of money,” interjects Manny with a smile.

“I was running out of money!” Mike continues with a laugh, “I came into the office and there’s a big screen TV, there was soda all over the place, and there’s this ratty old couch, and everyone was just sort of - pals.  It all just really appealed to me, so we had a short interview and it turned into a job.”

And the first formative years of AuctionArms were pretty much just like that; a bunch of guys Manny had gathered together to work on this website.  He pulled in his brother, Marcus, for customer support, and an old friend, Dan, as a business partner.  Even though the company was finding success, Manny didn’t take it too seriously, because he knew his days were numbered. 

Manny was diagnosed with kidney failure, spending three days a week on dialysis, waiting on a transplant that may never come.  At the age of 30, he was faced with the possibility of losing everything: his wife, two young sons, a growing company, and a life barely lived. 

“I was fighting for my existence. Fighting to pay the medical bills,” he says, adjusting the hat on his head.

With that weighing on him every day, Manny made sure a good portion of ‘going into the office’ was really a chance to hang out with the guys.

“Every Tuesday we were out on the boat. Fishing, wake-boarding, inner-tubing, just having fun!” Mike remembers, “I kind of took it as his ‘I might not be here tomorrow so I’m gonna make my run at it’”

Manny Dela Cruz

When Manny received a transplant from his mother-in-law in 2004, the urgency to ‘live life to fullest’ kind of died down and the guys realized there was real work that needed to be done while they were out playing.  They admit frequent soda breaks are still taken and Manny is constantly looking for ways to escape the office and have fun, as time went on, AuctionArms became less like a hobby and more like a business.

And like most businesses with friends, relationships are hurt and egos are bruised.  When AuctionArms first got started, there was the one other business partner, Dan, but as visions and opinions on the direction of the company began to splay, critical decisions had to be made.

“We couldn’t have people pulling in different directions,” Manny explained, “And some things were said that probably shouldn’t have been said; and in the end we had to go one man down.”

Letting go and buying out the fourth business partner in 2006 isn’t something that Manny, Mike, or Bob like to dwell on, but Manny says, “I think it was for the best because it clarified everyone’s vision on what direction we need to go.”

The guys took the opposite approach than most would think in settling into their job grooves.  While getting the company off the ground, Manny and Mike were just doing programming and Bob was just doing paperwork.  Now they’ve all branched out; with Manny looking for new business opportunities, Bob negotiating contracts, and Mike interfacing with sellers. 

Mike explains, “One of the neat things about working for a smaller company is the opportunity to put your hands in a lot of different aspects of the business.  It’s really exciting!” 

“My job is constantly changing,” adds Manny.

And more change came in March 2012 when the guys decided to rebrand AuctionArms.com as GunAuction.com.  The company rolled out a new website design, a new logo, tagline, and a charge to give customers an even more personal look at the people behind the company.

“You know one of the great things about this company is even though we have over half a million people visiting our site everyday, we still have customers that know Bob by name,” comments Mike, “and have my home phone number and can talk to my wife to tell me to fix something on the site.”

“The gun community is growing,” adds Bob, “Having this community, this family, come together to advance the industry is important.”

 And Manny finishes, “I want to make sure that those personal touches stay in place for the long term health of the company.”

And the family vibe they’re trying to spread isn’t contrived; these guys have been friends for over a decade and they describe their relationship like a marriage “It’s a long term partnership we have here; and after a decade of doing this together, I think, at this point, it’s working the best that it ever has and there’s a lot to look forward to.”