The GOAT (Go Off-road Armor) Story

The GOAT Story Go Off-road Armor

Back in 2016 I bought a new LR4 and decked it out for some “Overlanding”, a newish term to me back then, having come from the Jeep world. Some college buddies of mine and I struck out for Utah for some statewide offroading over the course of a week. We stuck mostly to the deep desert, White Rim, and the south rim of Canyonlands National Park. After a long and glorious week of exploring, we headed back to Denver stopping off in Glenwood Springs for some much-needed showers, hot food, and some beverages.

While sitting there enjoying our food at the Historic Doc Holiday’s Saloon, we were chatting about the trip, and one of my friends brought up the excessive pin striping on my black, and very new Land Rover. This sort of thing wasn’t new to me, having crushed several brand new paint jobs on Jeeps. I opened up that I had been pondering an idea to help protect vehicle panels from brush and branch strikes when wheeling. They thought it was a great idea and after a couple of well-timed shots of whiskey, we came up with Go Off-road Armor Tech or “GOAT”.

Fast-forward a bit to early 2018, and I finally decided to pull the trigger on this idea. I had done some research and this isn’t a new idea, with a French company doing the same concept since as far back as 2003, as well as a few domestic companies doing this for Jeep Wranglers. With a new Tacoma in the garage, I figured why not the Toyota crowd with the Toyota off-road pedigree and robust aftermarket.

The first mockup and production set were ready in plain black by August 2018 and the website was up! Then it was crickets…. for a while. I realized that I needed to get this word out much more actively, and Instagram was the mechanism. Patterns grew, new models came out, the word got out, and the orders came in. What a surreal feeling to watch something that I created, grow. I am not a trained businessman nor seasoned entrepreneur. I was

always a corporate lackey, a cube dweller; a minion. This was new territory, terrifying and FUN.

Now GOAT is officially a little brand, growing and evolving. We are always trying to find ways to improve the product. We have done design changes, and are constantly challenging our material manufacturer to come up with better, less maintenance, innovative materials and solutions. This has been a helluva an adventure, but worth every late night and stressed out day. I think we all need to try to do something crazy and daring in our lives, and this is my big All-In. Every night, I put my 7-year-old to bed who reminds me to not stay up too late working. A little tidbit: he is the one that most of the time fills in the shipping info for order fulfillment email, with not one mistake yet. He grabs my phone, goes to the website admin page, and knocks it out. Teach your kids they CAN!

The GOAT Future:

Matt Uhart

GOAT will continue to strive for the best product with the release in Q4 2020 of the new v3 material which features a major upgrade in the truck facing substrate that will allow the panels to stay on much longer than the current offering. Models currently offered are the Gen2 & Gen3 Tacoma, Gen5 4Runner, and the FJ. We will release the Gen3 Tundra CrewMax and the Chevy ZR2 in late November 2020. 2021 will hopefully see big growth with the Gen4 4Runner, and getting into the Subaru, and Lexus markets.

Custom and semi-custom orders are an agility that is built into this business model and we do a lot of custom color ways on existing patters, vector art adds, and full ground-up custom designs from scratch. We do commercial advertising sets, but are selective about what brands and businesses we make armor for. We want to keep it “in the family” so to speak, working with businesses in the off-road, outdoors, sporting, and aftermarket world. Sorry folks, we won’t bling out your plumbing van!

www.instagram.com/goattruckarmor

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www.goat-truckarmor.com