As much as I love it, our industry needs an occasional kick in the pants to move into modern times. Adoption of new technology is not just “cool”, it’s necessary for us to thrive over the long haul.

In the “let’s make a real difference to the growth of the industry” category is a new firearms industry venture - FireFunder.com. It’s a crowdsourcing enabler that allows all of us to kick in relatively small amounts of money to invest in new products and technologies.

Started by a ticked off inventor who couldn’t get funding through Kickstarter to build his new idea for a multi-diode shotgun laser, the company aims to help both inventors with new ideas fund production of their products and established companies bring even more products to market if they are limited by capital constraints. Any business has to shelve good product ideas because there’s never enough money to go around.

The model is basically the same as Kickstarter. With the help of FireFunder.com, companies set up online campaigns where they promote their idea and production plans. The crowd (that’s you and me) decides whether to pre-buy the product at a discount, thereby providing the company with capital to start production.

What’s in it for gun stores? Well, two things actually. First, lots of good ideas original in the retail gun community. After all, who’s in a better position to identify new market opportunities than those interfacing with consumers every day. In this scenario, FireFunder.com can help turn those ideas into products. Second, retailers can get first dibs on new products at a discount by acting as the “crowd” and investing in new products.

FireFunder.com expects to go love around the end of March, but you can visit their site now to sign up for information and updates.