Frequently Asked Questions

Three places to find out, in increasing depth. Read the Qualifying Belief page, which explains the two mental-model beliefs TSG is built around. Read Who TSG Works With and Who TSG Doesn't Work With, which describe the dealer profiles that fit and don't fit, in concrete terms. Then take the Self-Assessment: six to eight questions, three to four minutes, and an honest read on fit with a specific next step for each outcome.

Most web vendors sell activity (campaigns, ads, monthly content, promotional updates). TSG sells infrastructure: a system that runs continuously, accumulates authority over time, and reduces the activity you have to coordinate. The distinction matters because of what it means for timeline. Activity produces short-term visibility but stops when you stop paying; infrastructure compounds for years and keeps producing value after year one. TSG is only the right tool if the infrastructure model is what you actually want.

Usually not, unless your belief about what a website is for has changed. If you want a website that stays out of the way (posts current inventory, shows the latest promotions, otherwise quiet) maintenance-style providers will serve you better than TSG, at a fraction of the cost.

If you've started thinking the internet needs to be doing actual sales work in your business, that's a different question. The Qualifying Belief page covers the belief shift in detail.

Usually no. Single-brand dealers, particularly those in manufacturer-aligned programs, typically have website infrastructure subsidized through the manufacturer relationship. TSG is manufacturer-neutral by design, built for dealers carrying three or more brands who value that independence. If you're planning to diversify beyond a single manufacturer over the next 12 to 24 months, that's a different conversation; TSG may be the right tool at the point you've added a second or third brand.

Our working range is dealers doing $750,000 to $5 million in annual revenue. Below $750K, TSG's first-year cost ($41,000 at Pro) is usually a disproportionate share of revenue and the return timeline doesn't justify it. If you're approaching that threshold, the door stays open; come back when the math works. If you're above $5M with internal marketing capacity, TSG may not be the right shape either.

Pro is $5,000 setup plus $3,000 per month. First-year total: $41,000. Setup covers site build or migration, catalog onboarding for up to three manufacturers in the Small/Mid/Large Pack tiers, site governance, technical configuration, and dealer onboarding. The monthly covers ongoing operation, automatic manufacturer promotion handling, Authority Profile content development, Search Authority Engine, and safe-industry-literate support. Pro is month-to-month, with no commitment past the current month.

Charter is $10,000 setup plus $6,000 per month with a 12-month commitment. First-year total: $82,000. Charter includes everything Pro includes plus unlimited manufacturer Packs (including Advanced), all SafeBuilder variants including Fort Knox, Promotion Engine at any volume, custom website design, direct strategic access, priority execution, and an annual on-site partnership session. Charter is capped at 6 to 10 active partners by design.

Pro is month-to-month with no contract. You can cancel at the end of any month. Charter has a 12-month commitment because the work at Charter depth takes 12 months to earn its scope: custom design, deeper integration, unlimited Pack onboarding, and strategic-access relationship-building that wouldn't make sense on a shorter arc. After the initial 12 months, Charter renewal is at your discretion, annual, and not auto-renewing into another 12-month lock.

Yes. Pro is designed to be month-to-month with no friction on exit. You give notice before the next billing cycle; the current month runs to completion; your site and catalog are delivered to you in a clean handoff. If you want to return to TSG later, the door stays open, with no re-qualification friction.

You keep your domain. You keep your customer data. You keep your catalog content and product pages. You keep your Authority Profile content. TSG provides a clean export of the Shopify store and any related assets. The Authority Engine and Promotion Engine configurations stop running (those are TSG infrastructure), but the content they produced stays with you. No hostage-taking, no data trap.

Adding a manufacturer Pack is straightforward: Small ($1,000), Mid-Size ($2,250), Large ($4,250), Advanced (from $6,500). Adding SafeBuilder is $600 setup plus monthly support. These are one-time or monthly additions to your existing relationship, with no re-contracting. For dealers on Charter, most of these are already included in the partnership. Scope-change requests are confirmed in writing before work begins so the cost is visible upfront.

No. Pricing is public, visible, and the same for every dealer at each tier. TSG doesn't run promotional discounts, introductory rates that escalate, or negotiated concessions. The pricing reflects the work, and the work is priced fairly. The Founder Legacy Rate that appears in some internal documents refers to a closed list of one and is not a live tier.

Setup is invoiced at kickoff and paid before build begins. Monthly fees are invoiced on the first of each month for that month's service, payable on standard net-15 terms. For Charter dealers, annual prepayment discounts are available on request, discussed during the Charter Qualification conversation rather than promoted publicly.

Setup is non-refundable once work begins. The foundation work (catalog cleanup, site build, governance setup, technical configuration) produces deliverables that stay with you regardless of whether you continue past launch. Monthly fees for Pro are not refunded after the month has begun, but because Pro is month-to-month you can cancel any month with notice. Charter's 12-month commitment means monthly fees are payable through the commitment term; we do not refund months within an active Charter term.

Add-Ons are specific capabilities that extend the system when your business needs them. Pro includes three Manufacturer Packs and Search Authority Engine; SafeBuilder, Promotion Engine, and Packs beyond the first three are priced separately. Charter includes unlimited Packs and all Add-Ons at no additional cost. The Add-Ons Hub walks through each capability and what triggers needing it.

Most setups complete in three to five weeks from kickoff to launch, depending on catalog complexity and your team's availability for intake inputs. A single-brand dealer with clean existing content can launch on the faster end. A multi-brand dealer migrating from an existing site with accumulated technical debt lands closer to five weeks. The One-Time Setup spoke describes the seven-step process in detail.

Showroom-side changes typically show up within weeks of launch, not months. Customers who find your site in the research phase arrive better informed, with better questions, less reflexive price-shopping, and fewer misconceptions to correct. You'll notice the quality of early conversations change before you notice traffic numbers change. This is what TSG's early-value column is for. The Qualifying Belief page covers this dual timeline reality in depth.

Meaningful search visibility, the kind where your site is ranking on queries your market actually searches, typically emerges between months six and twelve. Months one through three are setup and initial indexing. Months three through six show early ranking movement on lower-competition queries. Months six through twelve is where compounding begins. Month twelve onward is long-term authority where the content library becomes a structural competitive advantage. This isn't a fast channel. It's a durable one.

Honest answer: at month six, for most dealers, you should be seeing real showroom-side change (better-prepared customers, higher-quality conversations) and early search-side movement (ranking on low-competition queries, Google Business Profile engagement growth). If neither is visible at month six, that's a conversation worth having, either the work isn't producing expected patterns, or the reporting isn't capturing what's changing. We don't guarantee specific outcomes because we can't, but we do structure work so expected patterns are visible by month six.

Charter work takes roughly 12 months to earn its scope. Custom design, unlimited Pack onboarding, Authority Profile deepening, direct strategic access: none of these produce full value in three or six months. A shorter commitment would force TSG to compress the work, which would produce a worse result. The 12-month commitment reflects the honest timeline of the work. Dealers who aren't prepared to think in 12-month horizons typically fit better at Pro (month-to-month) or not at all.

Upfront: business information (store location, service area, hours, contact details), confirmation of which brands and lines you actually stock, access to your current website and analytics, brand assets (logos, existing product photos if custom), and decision-making when asked.

Ongoing: the Authority Profile intake (one 60 to 90 minute recorded conversation), occasional content feedback, approval on major topic direction, and about 30 minutes per month or less of your time for the ongoing relationship.

Typically 30 minutes or less per month once setup is complete. Most of that is optional feedback on content. Required time is closer to five to ten minutes: approvals when requested, clarifying a question from the team, occasional strategic input. TSG is built to function as digital infrastructure for the business, not as a vendor you manage week-to-week. Your time stays in the showroom; TSG runs the system.

No. You don't need Shopify expertise, SEO expertise, content expertise, or development expertise. TSG handles all of that. What you need is industry expertise, which you already have. The relationship is built around you providing the safe-industry knowledge and TSG providing the digital infrastructure that carries it.

Most ongoing work runs through Richard (founder) and the TSG team. Richard personally runs Authority Profile intakes, Charter strategic sessions, and Free Evaluation reviews. Day-to-day content production and site maintenance run through TSG's team structure. You're not routed through account managers or handed off between vendors. It's a small team by design.

Direction changes are expected over 12 to 24 months. Adding a new manufacturer, shifting promotional focus, expanding into new product categories, reconsidering which brands lead the site: these are routine adjustments, not contract renegotiations. Scope changes that add cost (new Packs, SafeBuilder on a new line) are confirmed in writing before work begins. Directional adjustments that don't change scope happen conversationally.

Pro is TSG's standard tier: standardized architecture, templated design, three included Packs, month-to-month. Charter is the partnership tier: custom design, unlimited Packs, all Add-Ons included, direct strategic access, 12-month commitment, 6 to 10 partner cap. Pro is the right starting point for most dealers. Charter is for dealers whose digital decisions affect their whole business direction, where the website is doing strategic work, not just operational work. The Tier Hub compares them side by side.

Yes. Many dealers do exactly that: start on Pro to prove the model works for their business, then move to Charter once the strategic case is clear. Moving from Pro to Charter mid-relationship is straightforward. The Pro work transitions into the Charter structure without starting over, and the setup fee credits appropriately. The Tier Hub notes this path explicitly.

Depends on your business. Most Pro dealers don't need any Add-Ons beyond what's included. Pro's three Packs cover 1 to 3 brand dealers cleanly, and Search Authority Engine is already bundled. Dealers add Packs beyond three if they carry four or more brands. Dealers add SafeBuilder if they sell Fort Knox, AMSEC high-end, vault doors, or other configured products. Dealers add Promotion Engine if they run custom promotions beyond manufacturer campaigns. The Which Add-On Do I Need? page walks through the decision in four questions.

Only if any product you sell has more than three customer-selectable options: size, color, lock, interior, hardware, finish, upgrades. Shopify's three-option limit is architectural; beyond that, the combinatorial math stops working. Fort Knox with full configurator, AMSEC's high-end lines, and vault doors always need SafeBuilder. Standard gun safes from most manufacturers don't. The SafeBuilder spoke explains the threshold in detail.

Four things mainly: (1) unlimited Manufacturer Packs of any tier including Advanced, versus Pro's three Packs from Small/Mid/Large; (2) all SafeBuilder variants including Fort Knox at no additional cost, versus Pro's add-on pricing; (3) Promotion Engine at any volume included, versus Pro's per-month as-used pricing; (4) custom website design rather than templated Pro architecture. Plus the Charter relationship itself: direct strategic access, priority execution, annual on-site partnership session. The Charter Spoke lays out the full scope.

Yes. TSG is built on Shopify as the ecommerce foundation. Shopify is what handles checkout, variant management, product data, customer accounts, and the core commerce infrastructure. TSG layers on top of Shopify; it is not a Shopify alternative. If you're currently on a different ecommerce platform, setup includes migration; your existing site stays live during the build and switches over at launch.

Your existing site stays live and serves customers throughout setup. TSG builds the new Shopify environment in parallel. At launch, your domain points at the new site, redirects are configured to preserve existing search rankings, and customer data (accounts, order history) migrates with you. You don't go dark during the build. The One-Time Setup spoke covers the migration reality in detail.

Your domain stays yours; it's your property, we don't own or hold it. Email stays wherever you host it now (TSG doesn't touch email). Search rankings transfer: we map existing URLs to new-site equivalents, configure 301 redirects, and preserve Google's view of your site history. SEO doesn't reset; it continues.

Setup includes an app and integration audit. Some apps get retained if they add real value. Most dealer sites have apps that are redundant, outdated, or conflict with the new architecture; those get retired. Typical savings from app cleanup: $50 to $200 per month ongoing, which is $600 to $2,400 per year the setup recovers beyond launch. The One-Time Setup spoke covers the app cleanup opportunity in detail.

TSG was founded in 2024 by Richard Atkinson after 26 years in the safe industry, most recently as Regional Sales Manager and Director of Dealer Sales at Liberty Safe. At Liberty, Richard built the internal Partner Program that supported roughly 90 Shopify dealer sites. TSG is the second iteration of that work, structured as an independent vertical SaaS business rather than a manufacturer program. The Approach section has the full founder story.

A small number by design. As of April 2026, TSG works with three Charter partners (Norcal Safe and Vault, The SafeMarket, NW Safe) plus a closed-list legacy-rate account. MVP launch in September 2026 opens Charter to 6 to 10 active partners total and Pro to a larger but still deliberately limited pool. The small-number-by-design approach reflects the depth of work per relationship, not artificial scarcity.

TSG is manufacturer-neutral. It doesn't take funding from manufacturers, doesn't favor any brand in its architecture, and doesn't run manufacturer-branded programs. Dealer Authority Profiles reflect the dealer's view of the manufacturers they carry, not the manufacturer's view of the dealer. Neutrality is a structural commitment, not a preference.

No. TSG is vertical SaaS infrastructure for safe dealers. It doesn't run ad campaigns, doesn't handle social media management, doesn't produce custom video, and doesn't function as an extension of your marketing team. The Who TSG Works With page covers the distinction in detail. Dealers who want marketing services should hire a marketing agency; dealers who want digital infrastructure should consider TSG.

The Proof section has case studies for our three Charter dealers (Norcal Safe and Vault, The SafeMarket, NW Safe). Those are the authoritative examples: real businesses, real numbers where available, real site links. Pro dealers aren't featured as individual case studies because Pro is a newer launch; Pro case studies will appear in Proof as Pro dealers accumulate meaningful results history.