50 cal - does the UK customer benefit?

[Piper]

I understood 50cal site gun sellers were tying sites in? perhaps im wrong.

regards to pricing, they all pretty much pay the same, so if one site is only paying the alleged 30% cheaper price then thats a huge advantage to new / struggling sites. Then .68 sites will have to follow suit surely?

Tying customers in is done now in .68 cal, so what's the difference? If you are tied into a deal you are tied in. But even if someone is tied in if the paint is bad then it is bad so I am sure that company would fix the issue. If they did not tehn why would you want to do a deal with them and tie yourself in? Makes no sense to me.

But why would any business want to throw away an additional 30% profit? I don't know any business in any industry that would turn down an additional 30% profit.

 

[Richie T]

Again, hyperthetically for new sites,

If you could make 500% profit anyway, whats another 30%? to get a bigger customer base?

 

[Piper]

OK so new site opens and has a choice buy .50 at x price or buy .68 at 30% more, and he sells (for the sake of this thread) paint per 100 @ £6.00......... Now it is his first year and things are tight because he has had to buy brand new equipment........ He need to make money as soon as possible and pay some bills, the industry standard for selling paint is £6.00 per 100 and he has bookings..... why would he drop the price? He will just make more money and pay his bills and be out of debt quicker than the guy down the road who went the .68 route.

Forget .50 for a second, if a new site opens and he buys paint cheap (and it is out there) and he is a brand new site what is to stop him selling paint at under £6 per 100? I don't see that introducing .50 cal would make this argument any different.

Anyone can sell paint for whatever they want.

I get what you are saying I just see it working in practice.

 

[Reiner]

OK so new site opens and has a choice buy .50 at x price or buy .68 at 30% more, and he sells (for the sake of this thread) paint per 100 @ £6.00......... Now it is his first year and things are tight because he has had to buy brand new equipment........ He need to make money as soon as possible and pay some bills, the industry standard for selling paint is £6.00 per 100 and he has bookings..... why would he drop the price? He will just make more money and pay his bills and be out of debt quicker than the guy down the road who went the .68 route.

Good point, but let's look at it from a customer's point of view. Let's say I organize groups on a regualr basis, so I try each of the fields. One is selling .50 cal at 6.00/100 and the other is selling .68 cal at 6.00/100. At the .50 cal. field I get a tiny little bag of small paintballs, slightly more than a third of the size of bag I get at the other field. I might feel like I'm not getting as much. But then again, it's still 100 shots, so I might get over it.

Then I start playing and I find out that the .50 caliber balls won't fly quite as far and when I do hit someone 90 feet or further out, the paintballs are bouncing almost every time. Not the case at the .68 cal. field I played at. I could also follow the balls in the air a little easier because they were bigger. I think next time I'm going to take my group back to the .68 cal. field since it's the same price anyway.

 

[Piper]

Then I start playing and I find out that the .50 caliber balls won't fly quite as far and when I do hit someone 90 feet or further out, the paintballs are bouncing almost every time. Not the case at the .68 cal. field I played at. I could also follow the balls in the air a little easier because they were bigger. I think next time I'm going to take my group back to the .68 cal. field since it's the same price anyway.

Fair point, however do you think that every case of .68 cal flies straight and does not bounce? Have you played a full day on .50 cal? Have you tested any .50 cal?

I saw a customer the other day that pretty much had the same arguments as you, and they are all valid points. He shot the guns and paint and then ordered straight after he had shot it. He felt that he could see it fine, it flew same disatnce, when you consider there are trees etc in the way, it marks just as well as .68 cal and he could see it flying through the air.

I guess at some point it is personal choice some will go for .50 and some will stay with .68.

 

[k4p84]

There are plenty of sites out there that will only take paint if it is zero - one out of ten on a bounce test.

So how are these sites caring if the player gets welted up as none of the paint breaks on the player?
They don't, they see the fact that there site equipment does not have paint smashed in it so they don't have to clean it.
Also more bounces means players will shoot more paint to try and eliminate another player so this generates paint sales as does using respawning in game.

Not every site cares about repeat custom, they rely on being near a large population centre and therefore a large customer base. In these cases customer satisfaction is not important as they know they will have say 100+ players a weekend regardless of how they treat them.

This is sadly true so don't go shouting 'Heretic' at me.

So with all this 'data' saying .50 cal will bounce regardless then by your own admission these sites would swap over !

Regarding improving the value of the .50 cal I would be be surprised to see paint fall below £5 for 100 simply because this is were sites make there money. Rental players don't batter an eyelid when they spend £100 on a case currently and I don't see the majority suddenly becoming educated as to the true value of the product when they are handed .50 cal upon a switch.

Alas with 90 odd percent of all the current paint being shipped over from the States we do not always get the best quality product. Paint is very susceptible to environmental factors.

We have all seen paint that is dimpled, far from round, soft to the touch straight out the bag. Some paint is so brittle that you dont want to fill your pots up to the brim in case when you close the lid it breaks, vice versa i'm sure we have all seen the TechPB video showing if my memory serves 'Monster Ball'. A bag that could be stood on by a player and none of it broke.

The consistency of the product will certainly aid in is uptake but please do not preach about how poor .50 cal is when you:
A- have not tested it first hand,
B- GI Milsim I believe said they still wanted to make the ball a little heavier so the final product may be slightly different,
C- the fact that the current .68 cal is not a perfect product by any means. They are still trying to improve it today.

I have yet to see .50 cal personally but I know Piper has a very good reputation for supporting a good quality product so I do not see him trying to push a sub standard one onto the market.

I think his attitude on here sums it up, 'say what you want but when you actually try it you might like it' .

Ed

 

[Richie T]

OK in answer to your question......... yes we have reduced the cost to the site owner and the stores, compared to 68 cal. Now as we only sell wholesale I can only hope that stores and fields will reduce the cost to the player.......... which I am 99.9% sure they will

So you think fields will lower their prices or not?

What your saying is based on the assumption fields have bookings full stop. If they dont theres a few things they need to look at, and price is one of them.

 

[Rider]

it'll certainly give fields the option to cut a little of paint price to undercut other nearby fields and maybe draw in more custom.

if the field is doing well or at capacity then there wouldn't really be any need for them to drop price - they can just take the extra profit, and rightly so.

 

[Piper]

So you think fields will lower their prices or not?

What your saying is based on the assumption fields have bookings full stop. If they dont theres a few things they need to look at, and price is one of them.

No I don't think fields will drop the prices.

 

[Mav2124]

If the .50 Bounces more would that not in theory mean that the customer would have to spend more on paint in order to get hits?
So even if they lowered the price they would still end up buying more?
Just a thought