The return of 7-10 man format, woodsball, hyperball, and mech-only was along time coming. The market has been in decline since 2008-2009. And you can pin-point the start of the market decline around the time of the big mergers and acquisitions in the industry ( which started from 2004 onward, with the Matrix buyout by DYE) The industry lost its soul. And there are anumber of compounding factors, IMO, the market dynamics and industry landscape changes coincided with the global recession in 2008 which saw the whole industry take a nose dive. As it is, paintball was never mainstream and was always prohibitively expensive for most people. Moreover, most people feel as if something great got lost along the way. Something that we have been trying to recuperate for the past 5 or so years since the return of the old-school formats. But the reason for the market nosedive is multi-factored, but I do think that paintball lost its appeal when so many of the smaller custom shops got pushed out of the industry as a result of vertical integration. There other specific reasons I can point to, but I digress. Im just happy that the industry is making an effort to find its soul again. And Im happy to see some of the custom shops like FreeFlow, BPS, and Shocktech making Cockers again. I know Jack has said that he has zero interest in reviving a Cocker line especially since Belsales is long-gone -- but can you imagine a new line of Eclipse Cockers? A man can dream. But yeah, it makes sense from a bottom lline perspective. He has highly-successful lines in all segments and price points. Manufacturing Cockers for him would have to be a labor of love. Not something practical for his supply chain and manufacturing efficiencies.
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