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Dave Payne the Inventor of Zero Carry®
My name is Dave Payne. I am a mechanical engineer and have been working for HP for almost 29 years. I have worked in several different departments of HP from manufacturing, R&D and quality assurance. I am an active guy who enjoys volleyball, skiing, mountain biking, whitewater rafting, shooting sports, skateboarding, backpacking and other activities. I am married, have four daughters and two granddaughters. I have enjoyed inventing products throughout my life.
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As a kid I was always inventing and building something. A couple of my ideas were developed and turned into retail products that I have sold in stores and on the Internet. When I started carrying a concealed weapon, I couldn't find a holster that I liked so I decided to develop my own. I didn't like the fact that most holsters made even my smallest gun feel large and bulky inside the waistband. I quickly determined that the key features for a carry holster would be trigger protection, gun retention and holster retention. I also knew that this design would need to be comfortable or I wouldn't want to wear it.
As I investigated these design parameters I quickly gravitated to an exoskeleton-type frame for my holsters. That is, instead of wrapping all the way around the gun and creating bulk in the waistband I decided to only cradle the gun around its perimeter, top to bottom, and leave the sides exposed. This design makes the thickness of the holster as thin as possible. With my exoskeleton holster design the holstered gun is no thicker than the gun itself; zero thickness. And that is how the name Zero Carry came to be.
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As my design progressed I recognized that I could add a simple feature that would make the gun even more concealable. I call that feature the concealment wing. The users belt pushes up against the wing. The wing acts as a lever on the holster that rotates the pistol grip up closer to one's body. Making it so the pistol grip doesn't protrude through or print through ones shirt. My first design was a universal fit IWB holster. It easily adjusts to fit hundreds of different sizes of guns. My latest design is called Zero Carry Elite. It is a model specific design.
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I now have over 100 unique designs that are sold on my website. I have been selling my Zero Carry TM brand holsters for about 7 years now. We have sold thousands of holsters and have shipped them all around the world. I am always looking for ways to improve my design’s comfort, strength, and quality as well as the primary features of safety, retention, concealment, and comfort.
