2019cnc4-5

42 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST April/May 2019 Article by Sean Buur Photos provided by Bottle Breacher W hen Eli Crane was given a bottle opener by his brother it opened more than just a beer for this Navy SEAL. Growing up in Yuma, AZ. Bottle Breacher’s CEO and founder Eli Crane never dreamed of being an entrepreneur. He was athletic, played sports and occasionally got into a bit of trouble. Pretty standard stuff for American boys and girls of his generation. That all changed for him in 2001. “I was a senior attending University of Arizona, Tucson when we were attacked on September 11th,” tells Eli. “The next week I dropped out of school and joined the Navy. Spe- cifically I hoped to become a Navy SEAL and serve on the front lines.” Eli didn’t complete SEAL training on his first attempt and spent a few years on a ship growing up a little as a gunner’s mate. He got a second shot at SEAL training and graduated with class 256. “220 of us started and only 24 of us finished,” explains Eli. “I spent the next nine years as a Navy SEAL, doing the best job in the world.” Eli and his wife Jen started Bottle Breacher five years ago while he was still in the Navy. Eli spent his days train- ing SEALs to take down ships, and his nights in the garage building bottle openers. “Bottle Breacher began as a humble operation and even now we are still very humble,” explains Eli. “Jen was running her own boutique online business while I was deployed. She was and still is instrumental in our marketing and online sales programs.” Eli would love to claim credit for inventing the bullet bottle opener, but that isn’t the case. “My brother was deployed as a Marine in the Philippines and he brought me a bottle opener made from a 50. Cal bullet,” tells Eli. “It was just a generic casing, worn, vintage looking, nothing flashy, nothing about it caught your eye, but it was still really cool. I knew right away I could improve on the concept.” A breacher on a SEAL team is an operator who is trained to get into a structure they are assaulting. It could be a plane, buildings, ships, rooms, anything. A breacher has the training to get the team in mechanically or explosively. “You have to get into that bot- tle somehow,” laughs Eli. “So you might as well breach it. I wanted to name our product something that represented the culture and my background, but also something that was catchy, be easy to remember, and had a little mystique about it. Not everyone knows what a breacher is, so it opens up to the story. Story as you know is so important to PR and marketing.” Just like that Bottle Breacher became a thing for Jen and Eli. Eli made his first 500 units by hand with a cloth measur- ing tape, a sharpie, and his Dremel tool. Each opener took 7 minutes just to cut out. The SEAL mentality knew there was a better way; he just needed to find it. “I built my first fixture out of an old broom handle,” details Eli. “At the time SHARKS INVEST WITH SEAL - SEAL INVESTS IN HURCO BOTTLE BREACHER