I’ve been a fan of Falco Holsters going back to my discovery of Grand Power pistols in 2016. When I found that breaking out of the norm for handguns frequently means better handguns, I also discovered that meant finding a holster was harder. Falco’s proximity to Grand Power in Slovakia meant they had the holster I needed and I didn’t think much more about it until I bought my next non-mainstream gun…for which Falco also had a solution.
As the years went on, checking with Falco became my go-to action plan and as I reviewed more and more handguns. When people asked me about holsters I learned to simply answer, “Check with Falco.”
Today Falco lists over 3,600 options. If you can name a handgun, optic, light, carry position, and holster material, chances are very good they either have, or can create a solution for you in nylon, leather, Kydex, carbon fiber, or any mix thereof.
Part of how they accomplish this is because every Falco holster is hand made. That made sense to me as a way to make so many models and being able to react to consumer demands. It also caused me to question how Falco is able to keep up the volume they produce and maintain quality standards. It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to visit the factory in Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia that I was able to see how Falco pulls it all off.
When I think “handmade holsters,” I envision the local guy down the street in his garage on a saturday night. Sometimes he does a great job, sometimes he doesn’t. He might be good at one aspect of holster making, but not all aspects, and certainly not for all makes and models of gun, or all styles of holster, and if the order before mine is particularly challenging, I know I’m going to have to wait longer for my holster to be made.
The Falco Holsters factory isn’t filled with individuals each working on a holster. They use an assembly line model which has a few advantages, namely in that it creates and rewards true artisans. The person who rounds the cut leather edges is a specialist, as is the one who dresses those edges and so on. Additionally, if someone at the end of the assembly process botches their job, the entire assembly line before them has to start over.
That performance pressure keeps workers caring about what they do and it’s amplified by the community-like environment Falco has created for its workers. The company’s employees aren’t random strangers punching buttons on automated machines, they are friends, neighbors, and peers crafting something together with their individual work impacting the success of each other.
“But why should I buy a holster from Slovakia?” is a question I’ve been asked by Americans and is a fair one to ask. In the case of Falco, I think Slovakia’s long history of being subjected to the political whims of other nations has helped create a culture of skilled artisans. From the Hapsburgs to the Astro-Hungarian empire, Hungarians, Soviets and through the era of Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks have stubbornly remained…Slovak.
They’ve kept their language and culture through the punishment of not being the star or top priority of whomever was controlling the land. That resulted largely in Slovakia needing to make do with what they had, to learn how to make things and how to maintain or repair them.
In fact, Falco’s founder began by repairing and sewing paratroopers’ parachutes. That sewing skill was later applied to making and repairing jeans and other goods in an era when replacements were hard to come by. From there, falconry gloves for a local forestry school became the next evolution.
The logic stands that if one learns stitching for life-or-death parachutes and mangled-flesh-or-not falconry gloves, then making quality holsters that hold up seems a relatively simple task and applying the skills obtained from parachutes, jeans, and gloves to crafting holsters makes for better holsters.
In the mid 1990s, Falco Holsters began selling in the United States and freed those looking for custom holsters from the confines of only what was made locally. In today’s modern age with hundreds of handgun models, red dots, lights, and Americans’ love for “custom,” Falco offers the modern convenience of online shopping…sending an email to have a team of artisans produce a truly personal option or simply ordering a pattern that’s already been figured out and proven. Either way, they’re still be made by hand, passed hand to hand from specialist to specialist before being approved by quality control to receive the Falco Holsters stamp and shipped to you.
For more information visit https://www.falcoholsters.com/