Nick - Niax This one reply will answer you both, Niax I don't know you (well I don’t think I do) but Nick knows well enough I do not suffer fools gladly, I don’t like greedy people and I ain’t got much time for what I would classify as our average Del Boy site owner if I am looking toward him to develop our sport.
As far as creating an incentive for these site owners (I’m amazed they can’t work it out for themselves) and spelling it out for them, well here goes :-
Now before I launch into what should be done ( a lot of which are not uniquely my ideas) I would remind people and especially our site owners that Paintball begun in the US and as such, we have a tried and tested model of business behaviours to learn from.
Now whilst the sheer number of sites out there in the US dwarfs our own, the actual number of people who attend each site is not that dissimilar from our own.
As soon as we appreciate that we can begin to see that if those guys in the US are developing the sport in the way that it should be done AND making money, then surely this must be the way to go.
Well you’d think…..
Nah, our guys ignore that model in preference to their own much more sophisticated business model (obviously learned from the Cambridge Business College of Advanced Education) of ‘Stuffing ten pound notes in ya back pocket’…nod, nod wink, wink…
The Americans develop their business by opening up options, they do this by (as Nick suggested) having an equipment outlet and also having paintball magazines available, Sup’ Air fields and walk on facilities.
At a very basic level, it opens up the possibility of the average rental of at least becoming aware of a sport outside the woodland game.
Our average visitor to the site is what I would call an ‘occasional’, not really into our sport but it’s fun to play every now and then, and if you think about it, paintball is quite expensive at the rental level if you wanna play frequently.
I am suggesting if we educate these rentals into the ‘other’ side of paintball whether it be walk-ons or tournament then we will stimulate interest that is otherwise not there.
Once we achieve this we then begin to change the face of the customer base from an ‘occasional’ rental into a more regular enthusiast and instead of turning up down the site once every six months he is gonna wanna play more regularly and if he’s got that playing option available (at an affordable cost) he is gonna use it.
Now surely I don’t have to explain any more guys as to how to turn this situation into greenbacks….
Now I wanna make something clear here, there are site owners out there who do try and promote our sport at other levels but these are few and far between and whatever any other site owner may say, whatever they may say, we cannot argue about the state we are in.....
We certainly didn’t get into this state by having the majority of our site owners working with the professional / developmental type ethic I am suggesting and so any site owner can say what he frikkin likes in a knee jerk defence of their business practices but the facts of the matter are, Brit paintball sucks and it has everything to do with the options that are available to rentals, the American model shows us this to be irrefutably true.
The next logical question has to be why don't we emulate it.
And just as I identified our tournament demographic as being inappropriate if we look toward them to produce quality players and teams, then I am now saying the average site owner we have is also the wrong demographic in that we can't look toward them to produce responsible development of our sport.
I wish we had a lot more Sid’s down here in the UK because that guy lives and breathes paintball, he uses the American blueprint as a guide, he sees the sense in it all but doesn’t have the customer base to facilitate what he so believes in, what a tragic irony that is.....
And Niax, as for stepping on these people’s toes and upsetting them……bov’d ..
