The Art and War Podcast 131: KommandoStore - Who is ‘Ivan’?
After 11 years of anonymity while running KommandoStore, founders Basil and Ashur join Nathan and B.R to give the origin story behind /K/’s favorite internet surplus store. The lads get into starting out buying surplus USMC backpacks from a government auction in high school, selling them out of Basil’s childhood basement and how 4Chan and the ’S.T.A.L.K.E.R Challenge’ created the basis for their first customer base.
The guys also get into how they came to work with Arktis, learning that the Crye Precision Legal department are actually pretty friendly when sending cease and desists, the history behind both the cursed and wholesome ‘box art’ sent out to customers and how they shutdown a state’s shipping hub literally through ‘weaponized autism’, how a con artist attempted to work with KS to bring back the Italian Mateba Autorevolvers and navigating Russian customs and bribes throughout the C0V1D and war in Ukraine era to bring Gorka suits to their customers and eventually importing a Gorka employee to the states to help them avoid Russian conscription. All that and much more in this episode!
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