It has been a while since I have written one of these longer updates.
Usually, these posts are a chance to look back at what ZR2STEPS has accomplished, talk about what we have learned, and give people some idea of where we are headed next.
This one is different.
The last couple of years — and 2026 in particular — have tested this business in ways I never anticipated when I first started designing a step for my own truck. There have been periods when the business was growing, periods when it was barely hanging on, and more than
once when circumstances outside my control came very close to ending it altogether.
And yet, somehow, we are still here.
So this update is about what happened, where things stand now, and why, despite everything, the story isn't over.
STARTING THE YEAR ALREADY HURT
We entered 2026 still dealing with the aftermath of a serious dispute with UPS involving duties assessed against shipments entering the United States.
ZR2STEPS manufactures predominantly polymer-based vehicle accessories. Yet a number of our shipments were assessed duties associated with steel and aluminum products — charges that, in some cases, approached or even exceeded the value of the products themselves. On some shipments, the added charges effectively represented close to 200% of what the customer
had paid for the product.
The customers did not cause that problem. They ordered a product from us in good faith, and as far as I was concerned, they deserved to receive what they paid for. So ZR2STEPS absorbed the damage. Customers received their products while I carried the unexpected brokerage and duty costs on the business side. Those charges accumulated across numerous shipments and hit a very small
company with extremely limited working capital. For a large corporation, it might have been an accounting problem.
For us, it was existential.
I believe the circumstances surrounding those shipments involved serious failures in brokerage handling, classification, communication, and contractual obligations. I am now pursuing those
issues through a legal claim against UPS involving allegations including breach of contract, negligence, and consequential damages.
That matter remains unresolved, and a settlement conference is presently scheduled for December 2026.
I am not going to try that case in a blog. But I will say this: the financial impact was severe. It stripped away capital that should have gone into inventory, equipment, development, advertising, and growth. At one point, I genuinely had to look at the business as though I were starting again from almost nothing.
And then I got back to work.
REBUILDING ANYWAY
I did not have the luxury of waiting for ideal circumstances. So I kept designing. I kept printing. I kept shipping. I kept answering customers, developing new
products, improving old ones, testing ideas, building tooling, expanding fitments, and trying to squeeze every possible improvement out of the resources I still had.
ZR2STEPS has never been backed by venture capital or some enormous corporate balance sheet. Most of this company has been built one product, one printer, one customer, and one very long day at a time.
Slowly, the rebuild started working.
New products gained traction. Existing product lines continued to develop. Customers kept finding us. Word continued to spread. And during the first eight months of 2026, despite everything that had happened before it, ZR2STEPS reached a new personal record: more than $11,400 in sales in a 30-day period.
For a company our size, that mattered.
Not simply because it was a revenue record, but because of what it demonstrated. The market was there.
People wanted the products. Years of development were beginning to translate into meaningful commercial momentum.
After being knocked backwards, we had fought our way forward again.
And then the rules changed again.
THE AMERICAN MARKET CHANGED
The overwhelming majority of ZR2STEPS customers has historically been in the United States. That has always made sense. The American truck, Jeep, and off-road aftermarket is enormous, and many of the vehicles our products were originally developed for have particularly strong ownership communities there.
But the introduction of new U.S. tariff measures affecting Canadian goods has fundamentally changed the economics of selling into that market.
For a small Canadian manufacturer already operating on tight margins, adding substantial duties at the border does not simply make a product a little more expensive. It can make the transaction economically irrational.
And that is effectively where we are today.
ZR2STEPS is not banning American customers, and our products are not being deliberately withheld from the United States. But I am no longer treating the United States as our primary market or actively building the business around U.S. direct-to-consumer sales.
At current costs, that pathway simply does not make economic sense. That is a difficult thing to say after spending years building recognition in that market.
But pretending otherwise would accomplish nothing.
For now, the focus has to change.
A PROBLEM THAT NEVER WENT AWAY
At the same time all of this has been happening, there has been another issue running through the background of the ZR2STEPS story: what I believe has been sustained market suppression resulting from alleged infringement of my intellectual property. I have discussed parts of this issue before, and I am deliberately not going to turn this post into
an accusation sheet or a legal argument. Those matters belong in the appropriate legal channels.
What I can say is that I hold an issued United States utility patent covering important aspects of the technology behind these products, and I believe multiple competing products have entered
the market in ways that raise serious infringement concerns.
From my perspective, the commercial impact has been substantial.
A small inventor-led company depends heavily on its early market window. Those early sales create the cash required to advertise, hire, develop tooling, build inventory, improve production, and eventually move into larger-scale manufacturing. When competing products capture that demand while the original company is still trying to establish itself, the consequences compound.
Revenue does not simply disappear once. Growth capital disappears with it. Advertising disappears. Equipment disappears. Manufacturing opportunities get delayed. Distribution becomes harder. And the business spends resources defending ground that should have been
used to expand it.
That is the market reality I believe ZR2STEPS has faced.
We continue to document competing products, monitor relevant activity, track the commercial impact, and consult with legal professionals regarding possible enforcement of our intellectual
property rights.
That process is continuing.
And I will leave it there for now.
WHY WE SUSPENDED ETSY
The same circumstances eventually affected our relationship with Etsy.
Etsy was once an important part of the ZR2STEPS business. It gave a tiny company access to a large marketplace at a time when very few people knew our name. But over time, that relationship became increasingly difficult to justify.
Among other concerns, I became deeply uncomfortable continuing to spend money advertising within a marketplace where products I believe raise legitimate intellectual-property concerns
could also compete for the same customers. The economics became even harder to justify once U.S. tariff exposure was added to the equation.
Eventually, I made the decision to suspend ZR2STEPS operations on Etsy.
That was not a decision I took lightly.
But at some point, a business has to stop feeding systems that are no longer helping it move forward.
Our focus is now on ZR2STEPS.com, direct relationships with our customers, Canadian market growth, and building the next stage of the company.
WE KEEP GETTING BACK UP
If there is one pattern that defines this business, it is probably this:
We get knocked down.
We get back up.
Then something else happens.
And we get back up again.
There have been moments during the last two years when shutting the doors would have been the easier decision.
The UPS situation nearly knocked us out.
Market competition and alleged infringement have suppressed growth.
Tariffs have effectively removed the market that historically represented the
majority of our customers.
Capital remains extremely tight.
And yet I am still here designing parts.
Still building them. Still improving them.
Still answering customers.
Still solving problems.
Still protecting the work.
Still looking for the next opening.
I am not interested in pretending that everything is wonderful when it is not.
Things are difficult. But difficult and finished are not the same thing.
ZR2STEPS is not a company of quitters.
I have spent too much time building this, learned too much, developed too much technology, and come too far to simply disappear because the road became harder than expected. Every time this business has been knocked down, I have gotten back into the ring.
And I intend to keep doing that.
Eventually, there comes a point when perseverance creates its own opportunities.
And recently, for the first time in a while, some of those opportunities have begun appearing.
AFTER THREE YEARS, NEW DOORS ARE
OPENING
Ironically, some of the most promising conversations in the history of ZR2STEPS have arrived during one of its most difficult periods. After roughly three years of developing these products largely as a direct-to-consumer business, we have begun receiving serious interest involving retail placement, manufacturing, and larger commercial relationships.
That is new territory for us.
We are now actively exploring manufacturing pathways that could allow certain ZR2STEPS products to move beyond low-volume additive manufacturing and into substantially
higher-volume production.
Done correctly, that transition could change almost everything.
Manufacturing at scale has the potential to improve material options, repeatability, production capacity, unit economics, and distribution.
It could allow us to build a better product at a lower production cost.
More importantly, it could potentially give ZR2STEPS a pathway back into the United States by creating enough manufacturing efficiency to remain commercially competitive despite the additional costs of reaching that market.
That is one of the objectives now.
We are also beginning conversations around retail distribution — something I have worked toward for years but until recently had never had arrive organically at our doorstep.
And there is another potential opportunity developing behind the scenes that I cannot discuss publicly yet.
That is still only an opportunity.
There are no guarantees.
There are technical, manufacturing, financial, and commercial hurdles between here and there. But three years ago, nobody was asking. Now they are.
That matters.
BUILDING WHAT COMES NEXT
The next stage of ZR2STEPS will therefore look different from the last one. Our immediate focus is increasingly Canadian.
We will continue expanding our Canadian customer base, working with Canadian creators and vehicle communities, and developing products suited to the trucks and Jeeps people are actually using here.
At the same time, we will continue improving the product platform itself.
The goal is better engineering, better materials, greater durability, improved security, easier installation, and a more modular product architecture.
We are also exploring outside manufacturing relationships, financing, strategic partnerships, and potential investment that could help us cross the gap between small-scale production and true commercial manufacturing.
That gap is significant.
Production tooling, testing, inventory, manufacturing, and distribution all require capital that a tiny bootstrapped company cannot simply manufacture out of thin air.
But the opportunity is becoming clearer.
The technology exists.
The patent exists.
The customers exist.
The demand has now been demonstrated.
And increasingly, the commercial opportunities are appearing as well.
What we need now is the manufacturing and financial bridge between where ZR2STEPS is today and what it has the potential to become.
FINISHING 2026 — AND LOOKING BEYOND IT
There is still a great deal to get through before this year is finished. The UPS matter remains headed toward a settlement conference in December, and I intend to continue pursuing accountability for the losses I believe that situation caused this business.
Our intellectual-property enforcement efforts are also continuing, and the next year may bring significant developments on that front.
Meanwhile, we will keep working on manufacturing.
We will keep developing distribution opportunities.
We will continue building new products.
And we will continue looking for partners who see what I have spent the last several years trying to build.
The objective has not changed.
Build better products.
Use better materials.
Reduce production costs.
Scale intelligently.
Protect the technology.
Reach more customers.
And build a sustainable Canadian company capable of competing internationally despite
everything that has been thrown at it.
There is no guarantee that the road from here will be easy. Experience suggests otherwise. But this company has already survived things that could easily have ended it. Every time something has pushed us backwards, we have eventually found another way forward.
So, to everyone who has ordered a set of steps, shared a post, sent a message, offered feedback, helped test a prototype, told a friend about the company, or simply followed along while I tried to figure all of this out: thank you. Your support is one of the reasons ZR2STEPS is still standing.
We have taken some hard hits.
We have some difficult fights ahead.
But we also have opportunities in front of us today that did not exist a year ago.
And I intend to pursue every one of them.
Despite the setbacks, and everything else this business has had to absorb on the way here, there is still one thing I can say with absolute certainty:
I AINT HEARD NO BELL!