How/Why GKE Exists...

Why GKE exists

 I'm not too sure how to start a thought piece or any other form of writing for that matter but I hope this will do. This is just me, putting into words, how I developed GKE from an idea and concept to give the great community/people that have followed it from the beginning (and more recent followers) an understanding of the process' and mindset that took place. 

 The first time I thought about some kind of a new way (or more of a specific place to do so that's more professional than FB Buy and Sell groups anyway) to buy and sell, new and used, personally owned military items was on a three hour drive to my parents house from work. I decided that I spend   fair amount of time driving around the country for various reasons and that should use this time more effectively. Although I enjoyed The Ricky Gervais show Podcast, i'd used up all my data allowance for the month, so fuck it, what else was I going to do? After having that initial thought somewhere along the A1 near Catterick, the next time I spoke of it was the following day in a conversation to my mum. It went something like this:

 Me: 'I've had an idea for a marketplace for military kit, or something similar'

 Jane: "That's nice. Would you like a brew?'

  So that was the first inkling of the project. It didn't get another good thought until a good six months later.

 The next real thoughts the idea had came on a broken down coach at Durham services on the way to Leeds-Bradford Airport. My Battery was on it's way to a joint live firing exercise with our Reservist counterparts in Denmark. We were all pretty excited about this one as we were told we'd be mentoring them in individual job roles but the truth was that we were filling in the blank spaces they had in their detachments. Not as fun but it wasn't Otterburn, and it wasn't January. Our C-130 had decided not to fly for three days so they were spent traveling to and from Leeds-Bradford, on the second day we stopped via Durham services and the coach packed it in as well. That left us on that fucking coach for a good six hours before a replacement arrived.

 I basically decided there and then that I was going to start a business that would hopefully make the kit game a little easier to navigate. I could've gone to sleep but I decided to use the coach full of diverse and colourful blokes to try and gauge a bit of market research as they're essentially the troops that know best. So I whipped out my notepad and started asking questions, I probably pissed them off and i'm sure that they're bored to death of hearing about GKE from me by now, but they've been my best source of inspiration and continue to do so, so i'll keep asking, however, they were great, exactly what I needed to hear, honest thoughts and a couple of 'you're a fucking idiot' never go a miss. As I didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing I decided to start with the easy(ish) stuff, the brand. 

 I'd decided whilst conferring with the blokes that the word 'Exchange' summed it up nicely, so that was definitely in. The word 'kit' comes neatly before it and the two together do a good job of telling you what the fuck is going on. I knew it needed a little more something to define the brand as Kit Exchange is a little to broad. So we started talking about words like 'Zero' (from the 'Zero Foxtrot' brand), and a few others. We decided that none of these fit the bill as well as 'Gen' did. 'Gen' to me defines the word honesty and reliability, if a bloke is Gen then you can count on him, if a story is Gen then it must be true, if an item is Gen then it's a good bit of kit. As well as all of that it's a word that 99% of the British Army and further afield have used and are familiar with, so that's what I went with, Gen Kit Exchange. Below is the first Gen logo that Hannah and myself came up with.

 The next bit was the initial logo, luckily for me there were two blokes on that coach who were good artists and could doodle no end. One of the blokes, Alex (different Alex), had a 'F' bomb morale patch on his daysack (imagine the 'G bomb' logo but with an 'F'). I decided this was striking and had military ties, this coupled with the fact Alex actually has an 'F' Bomb tattoo on his wrist cemented the fact that I liked it and would use it. (For our US counter-parts, the 'F bomb' relates to the word 'Fuck' however on British soil and especially in the British Army it means 'Fella') Fuck the bloke who F bombs coupled with a Brecon point, there's a special place in Hell for you. So after some confirmation talks with my Girlfriend (who luckily studied Graphic Design at Uni), she thought it looked okay from that perspective and knocked up an initial logo that incorporated all of the above.  

 So now i've got the name and the logo. How the fuck do I make a marketplace? I couldn't do it all on my phone so I went out bought a second hand MacBook Air that has served me well. Initially I wanted GKE to be a mobile app, after all, everyone has a mobile so it made sense. I decided that I could teach myself how to build an app but it would take years to become a coding genius capable of creating the quality that was needed. So then, I decided to outsource the actual building of the app to an actual developer. I spoke to hordes of mobile app developers and individual freelancers, all of these conversations ended in a price tag of anything from £30,000 - £150,000 for all of the features I was talking about. Essentially what I needed was a 'Shpock' type app, turns out this cost over £100,000 to develop. Well fuck. I haven't got that kind of money and on a Gnr's wage I never would. 

- This is the part one in the lengthy story that is GKE, i'll post them throughout the coming months to give you an idea of wtf went through my head that delivered it to the stage it's at now - Stay Frosty - Alex

This informative Kit Pest Review article was written by Alex Miller. Hopefully you enjoyed it and if you have any thoughts or comments related to this article then leave a comment! 

 If you'd like to visit Cooper's Kit Corner, you can find it here.
 If you'd like to visit Gen Kit Exchange, you can find it here.