It’s not often we see too many positive words describing anything going in paintball these days, it seems forever and a day since we talked of any growth or prosperity within our industry.
The US has, with no exaggeration, been a disaster zone with retail stores bearing the brunt of the recessive onslaught which is of course no surprise seeing as the first thing that’s gonna get burned is the retail market when disposable income has been sucked outa people’s pockets.
Europe has been pretty steady I suppose with the least developed countries in the Eastern block ironically performing really well.
France and Germany are going great guns but over here in the UK, we’ve managed to out-perform an anvil in the race to the bottom of the sea.
The UK always likes to buck trends for some reason but this is one trend that is best left un-bucked and the UK industry / paintball federations look on seemingly unable to help… Italy is kicking off well as are some South Americans nations ..
The Far East is most definitely a boom market but it hasn’t reached the necessary point on its growth curve where it can significantly help offset the downturn in the US.
Companies face a butt-wobbling juggling act as their need to invest in growing markets such as the Far East has to be balanced against having enough cash set aside for any downscaling that still needs to be done Stateside … You need to invest to stay ahead of any growth curves but cash is even more precious if your mainstay market [The US] has had the living sh!t kicked out of it.
And it is against this backdrop we now begin to hear snippets of Stateside recovery; and this ‘recovery’ comes in the form of recent sales figures .. it has to I suppose … anything else is just bullsh!t; not much point in telling the bank manager you believe sales are gonna be up next month or whatever .. you need the money in the bank to do any sort of convincing especially to people like bank managers.
After all, it was the bank manager who saw off Smart Parts dragging Billy and Adam Gardner screaming to that company dead-box in the sky even though those guys had never missed one damned payment on their loan.
In a way, that demise, although shocking to the rest of the industry, was I think, a blessing in disguise for the Brothers’ Gardner as it enabled their Phoenix company, Gog Paintball, to rise from Smart Part’s ashes and trade again … albeit on a much smaller scale.
And so, can we assume we’ve hit rock bottom and the only way is up?
Not on your Nellie!!! ….
All we can do is assume there is a possibility we’ve bottomed out and then hope for the best.
It’s actually quite ludicrous to assume we won’t bottom out but the problem has always been in knowing when we get there .. not that anybody’s in that much of a rush to get dumped on their ass but hey, at least the future’s rosier once you get there.
The number of retail stores closing in the US has slowed and there are random tales of improving sales but there doesn’t seem to be any systematic improvement going on.
Certain patterns of sales are followed when a recovery is underway and I’m afraid this is not yet happening but we can see an overall increase when compared to previous sales, ignoring of course the normal yearly variables.
Most markets respond to that amorphous notion of ‘confidence’ but that ain’t really gonna affect us at the front end of paintball because retail sales ain’t the same as stocks and shares etc ..
If mums and dads have got spare money, then some of it goes to their kids; if guys have got jobs and money in their pocket they’ll buy into their chosen pastime but all the time money’s short .. nobody’s gonna be buying paintball retail that’s for sure.
Our sport is a high adrenaline, high financed indulgence and is at the top of the pyramid of a whole raft of other sports/pastimes kids can focus upon, which are of course, a lot cheaper than paintball to play.
For paintball to begin any sort of recovery, there will have to be recoveries in many other sports before us and so any recovery ‘seen’ in paintball, we have to treat it with due scepticism if only to protect whatever money we have left.
Sooner or later we will hit rock bottom and start the difficult journey back up the ladder, we may well have got there, the point is … the last thing we need to be doing now is to get ahead of ourselves which is a recipe for disaster as it was this very mistake that helped get us here in the first place.
Tournament paintball geared its ass up for TV but it never happened and probably never will, let’s move on and learn from it.
Our industry invested heavily in that prospect and subsequently paid a huge price; we now need to invest in our future which in anybody’s book is a lot more important though some people will have us all believe that TV and our future are still inextricably linked .. they’re not.
We must build a future independent of TV and if TV does come knocking on the door … Let’s not all go falling over ourselves in going to answer it.
The US has, with no exaggeration, been a disaster zone with retail stores bearing the brunt of the recessive onslaught which is of course no surprise seeing as the first thing that’s gonna get burned is the retail market when disposable income has been sucked outa people’s pockets.
Europe has been pretty steady I suppose with the least developed countries in the Eastern block ironically performing really well.
France and Germany are going great guns but over here in the UK, we’ve managed to out-perform an anvil in the race to the bottom of the sea.
The UK always likes to buck trends for some reason but this is one trend that is best left un-bucked and the UK industry / paintball federations look on seemingly unable to help… Italy is kicking off well as are some South Americans nations ..
The Far East is most definitely a boom market but it hasn’t reached the necessary point on its growth curve where it can significantly help offset the downturn in the US.
Companies face a butt-wobbling juggling act as their need to invest in growing markets such as the Far East has to be balanced against having enough cash set aside for any downscaling that still needs to be done Stateside … You need to invest to stay ahead of any growth curves but cash is even more precious if your mainstay market [The US] has had the living sh!t kicked out of it.
And it is against this backdrop we now begin to hear snippets of Stateside recovery; and this ‘recovery’ comes in the form of recent sales figures .. it has to I suppose … anything else is just bullsh!t; not much point in telling the bank manager you believe sales are gonna be up next month or whatever .. you need the money in the bank to do any sort of convincing especially to people like bank managers.
After all, it was the bank manager who saw off Smart Parts dragging Billy and Adam Gardner screaming to that company dead-box in the sky even though those guys had never missed one damned payment on their loan.
In a way, that demise, although shocking to the rest of the industry, was I think, a blessing in disguise for the Brothers’ Gardner as it enabled their Phoenix company, Gog Paintball, to rise from Smart Part’s ashes and trade again … albeit on a much smaller scale.
And so, can we assume we’ve hit rock bottom and the only way is up?
Not on your Nellie!!! ….
All we can do is assume there is a possibility we’ve bottomed out and then hope for the best.
It’s actually quite ludicrous to assume we won’t bottom out but the problem has always been in knowing when we get there .. not that anybody’s in that much of a rush to get dumped on their ass but hey, at least the future’s rosier once you get there.
The number of retail stores closing in the US has slowed and there are random tales of improving sales but there doesn’t seem to be any systematic improvement going on.
Certain patterns of sales are followed when a recovery is underway and I’m afraid this is not yet happening but we can see an overall increase when compared to previous sales, ignoring of course the normal yearly variables.
Most markets respond to that amorphous notion of ‘confidence’ but that ain’t really gonna affect us at the front end of paintball because retail sales ain’t the same as stocks and shares etc ..
If mums and dads have got spare money, then some of it goes to their kids; if guys have got jobs and money in their pocket they’ll buy into their chosen pastime but all the time money’s short .. nobody’s gonna be buying paintball retail that’s for sure.
Our sport is a high adrenaline, high financed indulgence and is at the top of the pyramid of a whole raft of other sports/pastimes kids can focus upon, which are of course, a lot cheaper than paintball to play.
For paintball to begin any sort of recovery, there will have to be recoveries in many other sports before us and so any recovery ‘seen’ in paintball, we have to treat it with due scepticism if only to protect whatever money we have left.
Sooner or later we will hit rock bottom and start the difficult journey back up the ladder, we may well have got there, the point is … the last thing we need to be doing now is to get ahead of ourselves which is a recipe for disaster as it was this very mistake that helped get us here in the first place.
Tournament paintball geared its ass up for TV but it never happened and probably never will, let’s move on and learn from it.
Our industry invested heavily in that prospect and subsequently paid a huge price; we now need to invest in our future which in anybody’s book is a lot more important though some people will have us all believe that TV and our future are still inextricably linked .. they’re not.
We must build a future independent of TV and if TV does come knocking on the door … Let’s not all go falling over ourselves in going to answer it.