Uk Paintball Confused!!!

[Robbo]

The whole foundation in this country stinks because at present it just does not cater for any aspiring ballers as these guys who have posted here are exampling.
I have had many people contact me after I wrote those posts concerning the dire straits we find ourselves in because of the incompetence and myopic approach to business our site owners have.

I would love to name and shame these cowboys but it would achieve nothing as back-pocket money is the only philosophy these listen to and the irony is, if they ever managed to see outside their crumby little boxes of small time operation, they would see the money to be made if they too tried to expand their business.

One of the most successful sites in the UK is Russell Steele's Nr Bristol.
He is the owner of Shockwave and has a real love for tourney Paintball but he is also a hugely successful businessman and this expertise has allowed Russell to develop his site into one of the most user-friendly operations around.

His paintball site is a slick enterprise that reflects investment on many different levels of operation.
He holds quality of service as one of his main business tenets and he doesn’t just SAY these words, he acts upon them.

Too many of our site owners pay lip service to these words in agreeing with them but Russ runs his business along these lines.
He has flushing toilets, proper food being served up as a 2 course meal cooked by professional staff, he has playing packages that cater for all this customers, he has an on-site paintball store, he has staff that have been trained correctly, he holds walk-on days for those customers who wish to take the next step…..the list goes on….
Regrettably, he is also an exception to the rule.

It would seem sensible to me that if I were running a paintball site business and I saw how much Russ was making, I might tend to copy him but oh no, the majority of our site owners can’t see past their back pockets and ignore what he does.

Paintball needs to be developed along much more coherent lines, we need somehow to bring these cowboys to book but as things stand, we haven’t got any mechanism in place to do this and thus we rely on the site owners to run their businesses as they see fit.

Russ tends to think that if we make ‘quality of service’ as a prime tenet of operation then this would inevitably increase the numbers of people going through our sites and who could argue against this suggestion, I certainly couldn’t.
He went on to suggest the consequent increase in players would then funnel thru into our tournament scene which is still an argument that holds water but I would go further in also suggesting a pro-active philosophy whereby we encourage rental players to be made aware of the tourney scene and then go onto cater for this need.
A six monthly rental player becomes a one monthly walk-on.
Margins are less of course on paint etc but a site fee and an increased frequency of play determine a higher yield for any investment.
With both Russ’s philosophy of business and with my advocacy of pro-active education, I honestly think it would make a huge difference to all levels of paintball in the UK.

The more people I speak to, the more I am convinced that the dire straits we find ourselves in at the moment is almost completely attributable to the majority of our site owners and their philosophies of business.

One particular site owner I keep hearing about who attacks me behind my back telling people how wrong I am is quite welcome to come on here and make the points he is whispering about but he won’t and we all know why…I will fackin crucify him and I can only do that if what I am saying is correct…and it is.
I am not saying this out of arrogance, I am saying this because I have no self-interest in this and I have talked to far too many learned people within the industry lately, all of whom have helped fuel this argument, for me to be mistaken in my advocacy of what to do.
Any defence attempted by some of our site owners is borne more out of self-justification and embarrassment rather than any credible rationale.
We suck, we are cheap and we are amateurish…..end of !
I just wish we could attract more site owners like Russ into our industry and then at least we stand a chance.

 

[Panthro]

Cheers. Dave dropped ya a pm (not sure if your post was aimed at me but hey) it aint the fact that gear is limited (quite abundent actualy) nor funds its just the hole play in the woods next step sup' Air thats obvious (has been for years) but its the bridging of the gap i cant find

 

[taylorO]

well hope to see you at the next traing session down point-blank

 

[Markie C]

Pete can i ask you some thing does this happen in the u.s,do the site owner's promote supair. I just cant understand why the site owner's over here wouldnt ?. I would love to own a rec ball site with a supair site on it because i think that the recball site would pay for the supair site if you know what i mean. I know a supair site cant make the money for it to run on it's own because not every one wants to train unless you can hold tournaments there to keep all your over heads covered.


On another point do you think that it helps that certian big name site's that has no intrest with paintball but to make money do you think with them getting bigger that it would make it harder for us to promote paintball and bringing new people into it.

 

[taylorO]

point- blank did put it up for punters untill one riped a bunker so they have stopped

 

[J.C]

owen, just so you know, the sup air is very rarely put up for punters, its put up by tourny players, so they can train, nothing more. It was just a coincidence that we were training that day.

From the sites I have been to, they are very rarely into customer satisfaction and comfort.

 

[taylorO]

ohhh that clears it up coz iam sure a marshall told me that they used to put it up for punters unill one riped it

 

[Robbo]

Originally posted by markie c
Pete can i ask you some thing does this happen in the u.s,do the site owner's promote supair. I just cant understand why the site owner's over here wouldnt ?. I would love to own a rec ball site with a supair site on it because i think that the recball site would pay for the supair site if you know what i mean. I know a supair site cant make the money for it to run on it's own because not every one wants to train unless you can hold tournaments there to keep all your over heads covered.


On another point do you think that it helps that certian big name site's that has no intrest with paintball but to make money do you think with them getting bigger that it would make it harder for us to promote paintball and bringing new people into it.

The Americans promote anything that will make them money and as such a lot of site owners there do provide facilities for rental customers to go to the next level, that of walk-on status.
Obviously not all of them have Sup' Air but they don't necessarily have to, they just have to educate rental players with the 'other' side of paintball and then go on to provide appropriate facilities.

I spoke to Russ Steele for about an hour the other day and both of us were in total agreement when it came to assessing our site owners, so all those idiot site owners out there whose knee jerk defense may have been, 'Oh Robbo, doesn't even know what he's talking about blah, blah, blah', well with Russell in agreement, they are gonna be hard pushed to come up with anything that even resembles a defense that I won't laugh at.

As to why these people are like this?
I think Russ summed it up when I asked him why, he said, 'Pete, when any of our site owners make money, like if they made 100 grand one year, they go and buy a villa in Spain somewhere and blow the lot whereas I would invest half of that money back into my site'.
If you go down Russ's site, you'll see what he's talking about.

A Sup 'Air field is an add on to any site, it provides another income stream and won't make thousands on it's own but a guy called Mikey opened a site right along the road from Niall's site at Campaign and that guy was making money.
He would charge a green fee and would run about once a month and regularly had well over 50 people there.....it's a start.

As to your last point, and I think you are probably referring to Delta Force but maybe somewhat reluctant to name them, I don't give a flying fcuk who they are.
From what i have heard, they have a questionable ethos of operation but this criticism has generally come from people who have something to lose from them setting up..other site owners.

I don't like what they did with this new federation they set up, that smacks of shady operation but as to how they run their sites and promote paintball?
They get paintball out there that's for sure.
They are out and about in town centers handing out leaflets and I sometimes think some of the people who criticize them are just jealous or stand to lose from such a professional type approach to marketing their product.
As long as they take care of their customer base, I don’t give a sh!t and I have heard of some questionable practices but don’t for one second look toward these guys to help our cause, all they are interested in promoting themselves and keeping that customer base within the four walls of Delta Force and so they are really no different from every other Del Boy Site owner we have over here.
The main difference is, Delta Force actually go about marketing their products a lot more efficiently than most that takes them slightly above the average site owner we have in the UK.

To come up with a comprehensive answer to all this we need the following, we need site owners to have played tourney ball and therefore they have a vested and direct interest in promoting the next stage.
We have these people in place spotted over the UK already like Sid up in Porridge land, Chuck in Colchester, Russ in Bristol, Warren Maxwell in Ashford, Dave in Dartford, Markie C up north somewhere, Syd down in Carrot crunching land in the South West somewhere.
If we could all meet up somewhere and also attract a number of site owners who were willing to listen to a new model of operation, I would ask somebody like Dave Youngblood from Dye, Ceranski from PMI or one of the top NPS people to come and attend this meeting and they will explain the American model of paintball business to everybody.
Now if Dave YB, Billy Ceranski from PMI or Avery from NPS couldn’t attend then I would grab someone who could also represent their companies and their philosophies.

I ain’t gonna frikkin spoon feed this process no more coz the site owners need to wake up and they are the ones who will earn more money not me and if they can’t be bothered to get off their arses, then I certainly can’t be bothered to continue organizing sh!t.
If people are interested then they will get something done and I will get the necessary people to attend, if people don't bother, then I can't be bothered either.

It’s like the team improvement program I advocated a few weeks back, I can only do so much in terms of coming up with ideas and suggestions that WILL make a huge difference to our quality of play but inevitably, the teams, like our site owners, have to do something for themselves.
I’m not their frikkin mother!

 

[Red]

Nice. Highlights the exact position me, 3 of my mates, Panthro, and probably hundreds of other players find ourselves in. Moved from twice a month punterball, to walk-on's and now looking to form a team and get stuck into some tourny play.

Although after the rather impressive discourse I'm still left scratching my head as to how King Of The Hill works!!

Can completely empathize with Panthro - in that its not the funds, nor the gear being limited that's the problem. There just seems to be a chasm at the moment lacking information on the transition from woods play to sup-air.

You won't find 4 more enthusiastic players than us. Having only discovered the sport 6 months ago, we played punterball consistently with a hunger for more every weekend. So we invested in our own guns (a misinformed choice of Tippmann A5's) so we could play walk-on days. Only to turn up and be completely outgunned by guys who were popping off DM5's, Autocockers and Ego's. The only way we stood a chance against this calibre of fire power was to try and play a tactically more advanced game in the woods or face being lit up like Christmas Trees all day long! We went on to win several games which was cool as we knew it was from our play rather than our equipment.

Our last walk-on day was at Mayhem where we were introduced to a few games sup air. We were sold straight away. The speed of the game and the tactical play that is obviously required had us hooked in an instant.

We've now sold the Tippmann's (after 4 glorious outings with 'em!) and have invested in some higher end markers.

All we need to do now is work out this King Of The Hill business (anyone?), find a couple of extra men for the team and someone to take us under their wing and share their wealth of knowledge and wisdom on the sup air field!

Although realistically we're left in a transitional period deciding where to move to next. We'll probably continue playing the woodlands as we're really unsure how to make the next step and walk onto a sup air field as a team and play.

Cheers

Shady.

 

[Robbo]

Originally posted by SlimShady
.........Our last walk-on day was at Mayhem where we were introduced to a few games sup air. We were sold straight away. The speed of the game and the tactical play that is obviously required had us hooked in an instant.

We've now sold the Tippmann's (after 4 glorious outings with 'em!) and have invested in some higher end markers.

Cheers

Shady.

There speaks the future of our sport and the sort of incidence our present site owners seem so hell bent in avoiding for fear of losing their customer base....if only they would listen... if only