By Samantha Cart
Ranger Scientific Team Invests in West Virginia
Dan Pearlson and Mark Ryan.
Perseverance and grit are hallmarks of the Mountaineer spirit. While Daniel Pearlson and Mark Ryan are Mountaineers by choice—not by birth—they have demonstrated enduring perseverance and grit in their commitment to West Virginia over the last five years. Their investments in the Mountain State span industries, from entrepreneurship, manufacturing and job creation to education, philanthropy and community building. These investments in the state’s greatest resource—its people—are breaking the mold for what’s possible and what’s expected in the Upper Kanawha Valley and beyond.
Choosing West Virginia
Pearlson is the CEO of the ammunition manufacturing company Ranger Scientific. He relocated to Charleston, WV, in 2018 from Pacific Palisades, CA. His list of accomplishments is vast. A serial entrepreneur, inventor and technologist, he has been engaged in the development of national security infrastructure and law enforcement and national defense technologies for almost 30 years.
One of his companies, Votan Research Corporation, developed advanced technologies for law enforcement and military applications licensed to the Raytheon Company. He served as the chief technology officer for remote data telemetry in support of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Golden Phoenix in 2010, which simulated the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the San Fernando Valley. He also founded Sequent Technologies, Inc. and took the company public on the NASDAQ in 2003, and he is the developer behind the first cellular live video streaming and vast scale visual information systems. These successes don’t even begin to scratch the surface of his resume.
Ranger Scientific’s director of business development, Ryan, has more than 25 years of business development and executive management experience that includes the banking, finance services, oil and gas and retail sectors. He formulated and served as president of the Clearview Mortgage Group, a small national mortgage bank headquartered in Fort Worth, TX. In addition to his commercial interests, Ryan is the director of the Heroes for Freedom and Liberty, a strategic advising member of the Project Bluelight Foundation and a board member for Wheelchairs for Warriors.
These accomplished men are the backbone of Ranger Scientific. A private startup company, Ranger is preparing to introduce harmonically tuned rifle ammunition into the U.S.’ $16 billion small arms and ammunition industry from right here in West Virginia.
The company initially announced its intention to build its first factory on a 1,024-acre former strip mine in the Upper Kanawha Valley in 2016. Delays in the environmental remediation of the site and political opposition to ammunition production created some roadblocks for the team, but Pearlson did not waver from Ranger’s commitment to the Mountain State. Before the 2016 announcement, the duo extensively researched several states before selecting West Virginia as the company’s home.
During Ranger’s exploration of potential sites in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, offers from these states ranged from significant tax incentives and grants of land to loans, direct investment and rebates on income taxes paid by employees. West Virginia declined to compete. However, the Ranger team’s assessment of each region was not solely monetary.
“The needs of employees and the communities in which we engage are a key part of the equation,” says Pearlson. “In the Upper Kanawha Valley of West Virginia, Ranger found an excellent site for purpose-built facilities, a workforce ready and willing to work and a deep sense of community. We can have a tremendous positive impact here. In the end, West Virginians, not the government, won us over. There is no better place on Earth to find good-natured, hard-working and enthusiastic people to help build a world-class operation. Texas doesn’t need it, Kentucky could use it, but West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley deserves it.”
While the stall in breaking ground may have caused other business-minded people to look elsewhere, Pearlson decided that in addition to proceeding with the development of Ranger’s original mountaintop manufacturing site in Quincy, he would also acquire the former high school building in the city of Montgomery, which will serve as the company’s first factory and later as its secondary site.
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper has been working with the Ranger Scientific team since 2016. While some people discounted the idea that this type of manufacturing facility could be successful in West Virginia, Carper has been a vocal supporter.
“Everybody is so busy looking at what was done 50 years ago instead of what needs to be done for the next 50 years,” says Carper. “Anyone who knows anything about venture capitalism and entrepreneurship knows it is always a risk. This project will create jobs, and that means for the first time in a very long time, new manufacturing is coming to Fayette and Kanawha counties. This is the type of thing we need to do to diversify the economy. I am more than willing to tell everyone I told you so. We can’t be afraid to say yes to good news.”
Putting Down Roots
Pearlson and Ryan could have operated Ranger Scientific from anywhere in the world. The powerful draw of West Virginia’s beauty and her people are illustrated by the fact that they both now reside in the Upper Kanawha Valley. While their commitment to putting down roots and creating jobs in a community devastated by the decline in coal is admirable on its own, they haven’t stopped there.
Pearlson formed the Kanawha Champions Foundation in 2018 and the Kanawha Valley Trust in 2020 in an effort to help revitalize Montgomery and surrounding communities. The purpose of these entities is specifically to endow communities in the region with educational and economic development resources.
Since 2018, Pearlson has contributed to many projects aimed at enhancing economic opportunities and dealing with economic hardships without fanfare. The Kanawha Champions Foundation paid to build a state-of-the-art, ultra-high-definition television broadcast studio; outfitted a theatre craft shop; initiated a ground-breaking literacy campaign with a large grant to cover all costs and personnel; and provided numerous laptops, high-power computer servers, printers and football equipment to Riverside High School.
The foundation has also donated food, clothing and funds to the Upper Kanawha Valley Sports and Activity Center in London and the Union Mission in Kanawha City, specifically focusing on the immediate needs of people impacted by homelessness, unemployment and the COVID-19 shutdown in Clay, Fayette, Kanawha and Nicholas counties.
The Kanawha Valley Trust has partnered with BridgeValley Community and Technical College to invest in vocational training and academic tracks for student veterans, and through its enterprises to stimulate local economies, the trust has started to build a diverse, robust and self-sustaining economic revival of the entire region.
Montgomery Mayor Greg Ingram is excited about the investments Pearlson and Ranger Scientific are making in his city.
“Dan has a passion to rebuild the Upper Kanawha Valley and to be a good steward of the community,” says Ingram. “What he has going on is going to revitalize the entire Upper Kanawha Valley, not just Montgomery. This is evident in his business model and in his philanthropy. What we have found ourselves doing in West Virginia is transferring assets rather than creating assets. Ranger Scientific is coming in and creating assets and creating jobs for West Virginians. My hat is off to them. We are excited here in Montgomery to get it up and running and see all the good things their team plans to do. I think this will create a model for other communities in our state to follow: stop transferring wealth and start creating it.”
Changing the Game
While it has been a long road paved with obstacles, Ranger Scientific is well on its way to becoming an icon in the Kanawha Valley. As one of the largest private manufacturing startups in the state’s history with nearly $20 million already invested, the company officially broke ground in June 2021, five years and one day after it was first announced to the public. Initial production is scheduled to start in October of this year.
“The Wolf Pack facility in Montgomery will be Ranger’s first operational factory floor, but at only 30,000 square feet, it is far too small to meet long-term production demands,” says Pearlson. “There is insufficient space to perform all the operations necessary to ship retail product, so in the interim, packaging and shipping to distribution will be contracted to another West Virginia company. At the same time, new construction at the Black Bear campus on Ranger Mountain will contain the company’s initial propellant magazines. Over the next three years, the company intends to spend another $27 million to build its 130,000-square-foot primary manufacturing and automated storage facilities on 40 of its 169 acres of
industrial space in the Quincy area.”
Ryan anticipates that in addition to approximately 400 direct jobs, related indirect jobs will put the company’s impact at closer to 1,200 jobs created.
“It is really good news if you can bring in 10 new manufacturing jobs. It is tremendous news if you can bring in 30, and if you can bring between 150 and 400, it is an absolutely phenomenal success,” says Carper.
The potential economic impact of Ranger Scientific has been calculated to be approximately $1.2 billion over 10 years. The company anticipates it will have a payroll of approximately $22 million. Its employee compensation package is about twice the per capita median income in Fayette County.
“We intend to contribute to an outstanding standard of living,” says Pearlson. “As part of the compensation package, Ranger will provide fully paid medical coverage for all of its employees and 50% of the cost of family coverage. Together with other benefits that include paid parental leave for both parents that exceeds statutory requirements, we are proud that our programs are unusual.”
While it seems that the company’s leadership, culture, predicted impact and benefits are what set it apart from the rest, it is ultimately the product that is changing the game. Ranger’s harmonically tuned ammunition technology is based on the tried-and-true technique of matching a specific rifle to exactly the right amount of propellent to reduce barrel vibration.
“All rifles vibrate when fired,” Pearlson explains. “That vibration is most of the reason why bullets spread when they leave the rifle’s muzzle. This directly reduces the accuracy of any rifle. All rifles vibrate differently, so no single load can work with all rifles, not even of the same make and model. By matching the best load for a specific individual rifle, the accuracy of each shot is significantly and obviously improved. The problem, until Ranger, was that ammunition matched to specific individual rifles had to be handmade. Every single load must be weighed to exacting specification—a very time consuming and expensive process. As an example, at Fort Benning, for the last 65 years, it has taken one person an entire day to make 1,000 rounds. In the same amount of time, a single machine at Ranger’s Montgomery facility will assemble at least 275,000 rounds.”
Ranger’s patented proof kits will enable customers to prove to themselves that Kanawha ammunition is superior by identifying which class of load for a specific cartridge configuration is best for their individual rifles. The cost of Kanawha ammunition will be comparable to other mass-produced ammunition, while its superior accuracy has been proven through independent testing. Kanawha ammunition is two to 10 times more accurate than any other mass-produced product. Industry experts expect that over the next five years, Kanawha ammunition, along with other Ranger brands, will dominate consumer markets.
What does this all mean for West Virginia?
“Ranger Scientific’s products, starting with Kanawha ammunition, will be sold worldwide, and a substantial interstate trade surplus can go a long way toward replacing much of the lost coal revenue to the state,” says Pearlson. “The best way to accomplish prosperity for our communities is by creating high-paying, self-sustaining careers and an interstate trade surplus that brings a vast and sustainable flow of investment capital into West Virginia.”
