What does the Paintball Industry need?
- Thread starter Missy-Q
- Start date
With the birth of The Federation, I was wondering if there are any plans regarding separating Sup Air from the general paintball bubble and gaining recognition as a......dare I say it....a sport?
If this aspect of our game is pushed to the forefront of the paintball scene, is it possible to make some headway in this direction? We (or should I say Pete and his gang of merry men) seem to be taking the necessary steps to achieve 'sport status', either directly or indirectly. The Fed as a UK overseeing body combined with the UKPSF.......structure is coming into play now, but are we still a million miles away from sporting status and grants? If orienteering clubs
confusedcan qualify for sporting grants, there must be something we can do!
If this aspect of our game is pushed to the forefront of the paintball scene, is it possible to make some headway in this direction? We (or should I say Pete and his gang of merry men) seem to be taking the necessary steps to achieve 'sport status', either directly or indirectly. The Fed as a UK overseeing body combined with the UKPSF.......structure is coming into play now, but are we still a million miles away from sporting status and grants? If orienteering clubs
confusedcan qualify for sporting grants, there must be something we can do!
Personally I think change from the bottom up is more difficult than from the top down, and takes longer. Field owners are the one section of the industry that already make margin. For them to make more margin is not a bad thing, but I don't see that it helps the industry recover, unless all that money is re-invested. Some fields do a good job of re-investing, most do not, so the extra margin generally leaves the industry, which is not healthy.
If manufacturers make extra margin, we can expect to see more new products, and more R&D, also a possibility of more factory sponsorships, and an upturn in press advertising.
If distributors make more margin, they can expand, go national, or even global. they can also branch into some manufacturing, carry deeper and wider inventory, advertise in the press, sponsor local events/teams.
If the stores make more margin, they can get better more upscale locations, sponsor local teams/events, possibly open 2nd stores, and thus increase their exposure.
All the above is good for the industry.
I still don't get it, but no big deal.
The issue as I see it is that the manufacturers are making product with 2 prices in mind. The price they can make it for, and the price it could retail for. Typically, the cheaper it retails, the better it sells, so the idea is to price it as aggressively as possible.
Unfortunately the downside of this is that to get to the aggressive price, the margin is being cut out for the distributor and dealer.
The customer see's the final price. They don't care about margins,. I personally believe that the same amount of product would get sold if everything was 10% more expensive across the board, and if that 10% was going to the store owner, they would not be in the mess that they are in now.
Your idea of attracting more customers at a crappy margin is a better situation than the status quo, but comes with the increased overhead of attracting those customers, so the margins could even be less rather than more. A well run company can operate with a 12% overhead. Therefore if there's a 20% margin on a product, that represents 8% profit. Anyone here be happy with 8% profit on items sold from their paintball store?
Don't forget MAP pricing is not legal in some european countries ...100% agree with you Missy on this point! However this will work in USA as MAP can be enforced but in Europe MAP is not enforceable in a lot of countries and because of the different currencies it makes it very hard to enforce it like in USA. So if there was a way of enforcing it I feel that we (as an industry) should find a way of fixing it
Differents currencies, differents vat, and different WEDGE in europ could be a massive issue to set a european map (if it was legal anyway
)
As I see it, the issue of having local stores is that they need to be linked to a local site, if not there is no where for their customers to go. For this there needs to be the support of the site to provide the facilities for the store customer. Own gunner days/walkons. Speedball/Sup'Air training field etc. etc. Now many site owners won't see the benefit in this, or setting up, or supporting the set-up of a store in their area.
To make it worth their while, the industry has to provide attractive margins for them to do so. Then they can encourage "punters" to go buy their own equipment and come back and use these facilities.
If this utopian business model ever worked we would not have any complaints on here about the nearest training site being too far away, there would be more support and more players/teams.
However, most site owners (not all) are happy to take the margin they earn on paint sales and are not interested in much else.
Another example of a too sensible idea maybe?
/rose tinted specs
To make it worth their while, the industry has to provide attractive margins for them to do so. Then they can encourage "punters" to go buy their own equipment and come back and use these facilities.
If this utopian business model ever worked we would not have any complaints on here about the nearest training site being too far away, there would be more support and more players/teams.
However, most site owners (not all) are happy to take the margin they earn on paint sales and are not interested in much else.
Another example of a too sensible idea maybe?
/rose tinted specs
Good point, but it's same issue in every country outside of the US. The manufacturers are in the us, or get their revenue in USD, so there won't be any changes soon.Don't forget MAP pricing is not legal in some european countries ...
Differents currencies, differents vat, and different WEDGE in europ could be a massive issue to set a european map (if it was legal anyway
This problem is solved through exclusive distribution. The distributor for that country sets the price, and insures the margins. Thats what structured industry is.
How do you manage shop who buy from other shops to don't have to care about supplier mind / request ? (Yes, that does exist)
How do you manage european shops buying from US shops to pay cheaper ?
The problem of your way to manage the margins insurance is that if some shops start playing with rules, other shops can't do a lot against it.
Why can't paintball shop be clever enough to know that killing margins mean killing yourself and don't help the customer in the long time ?
Many other activities/sport/passion/.... don't have this problem.
If you take the exemple of france which were a LOT less developped for paintball couple of years ago, shop are selling a bit more expensive and in exchange, they own really nice field on which people want to play and so agree paying a bit more and playing on turf all year (sometimes without entry fee !!), owners were clever enough to don't kill their margins and use the money to develop themself in term of field. Some owners who didn't understand this are now kind of surviving alone in their underdevelopped region (I mean: underdevelopped for paintball).
(I choose this example because that's the market I know the most)
How do you manage european shops buying from US shops to pay cheaper ?
The problem of your way to manage the margins insurance is that if some shops start playing with rules, other shops can't do a lot against it.
Why can't paintball shop be clever enough to know that killing margins mean killing yourself and don't help the customer in the long time ?
Many other activities/sport/passion/.... don't have this problem.
If you take the exemple of france which were a LOT less developped for paintball couple of years ago, shop are selling a bit more expensive and in exchange, they own really nice field on which people want to play and so agree paying a bit more and playing on turf all year (sometimes without entry fee !!), owners were clever enough to don't kill their margins and use the money to develop themself in term of field. Some owners who didn't understand this are now kind of surviving alone in their underdevelopped region (I mean: underdevelopped for paintball).
(I choose this example because that's the market I know the most)
That bus has been and gone mate...we can impose a parochial structure on what we can but our influence will only really be in the UK.With the birth of The Federation, I was wondering if there are any plans regarding separating Sup Air from the general paintball bubble and gaining recognition as a......dare I say it....a sport?
If this aspect of our game is pushed to the forefront of the paintball scene, is it possible to make some headway in this direction? We (or should I say Pete and his gang of merry men) seem to be taking the necessary steps to achieve 'sport status', either directly or indirectly. The Fed as a UK overseeing body combined with the UKPSF.......structure is coming into play now, but are we still a million miles away from sporting status and grants? If orienteering clubs
I would love to force feed the tournament demographic with 7 man and squeeze XBall out of it because I genuinely believe it's had such a detrimental effect on us when looked at over the past few years.
And if you think I'm talking out me ass, I will invite any pro player, or any other player for that matter who believes we should maintain XBall as our default format, to come on here and debate with me as to the exact reasons why we should indulge ourselves with XBall.
If somebody puts their head above the parapet, and then makes themselves known, I will open up another thread to accommodate him / her.
Should be interesting ....
Do it anyway ,I wont pretend I could stand shoulder to shoulder in an argument about why it has been detremental to us ,I would however love to hear the reasons why you think so , on a personal level I have found it way better to play than 7 man and I think you'll get a lot of people that agree with me on that ...however the discussion you wish is above that level so kick it off.
I'm going to search and see if if I can find posts by yourself stating that X-ball was the only way forward, because if memory serves there should be some
I'm going to search and see if if I can find posts by yourself stating that X-ball was the only way forward, because if memory serves there should be some
The UK needs customer sites along the lines of SC Village and Hollywood Sports Park.
Customer sites need to employ more tournament players who can talk down to rental customers, thus encouraging them to step up.
And generally, UK paintball needs more people like Paul Hadwen, Terry Glynn, Mick Holdaway and Jerry Braun.
Bish bash bosh. Job done.
Customer sites need to employ more tournament players who can talk down to rental customers, thus encouraging them to step up.
And generally, UK paintball needs more people like Paul Hadwen, Terry Glynn, Mick Holdaway and Jerry Braun.
Bish bash bosh. Job done.