Grass roots- you hear it all of the time. Grass roots marketing, building from the grass roots level. Well paintball has been taking a long look at “grass roots” for a while now. It’s teetering on going back to where we were ten years ago. We aren’t doing it because we want to; we’re doing so because we have to. Paintball grew so fast that we forgot how we got there. Paintball was growing so fast because there were small stores and fields everywhere. They were pushing paintball promoting it and the sport grew. Almost all of the stores and fields that I was in contact with had a field or a store team. Some of them just didn’t have a team; they even sponsored a few teams here and there. Well, with all of this support we had teams and lots of them. We had so many teams that one league wasn’t big enough for them. These teams spent money so much so, that more and more people got into the manufacturing of paintball products. These companies started small and grew over time. As they got bigger and bigger then started to hire more people and acquire more and more overhead. So in order to keep growing they had to raise the price of the products. This was a short term problem to a long term solution once the market became saturated sales slowed.
For the stores and the fields, thing started to get hard- the margins got smaller and there was less and less money to be made. Of course once the stores weren’t making money they stopped sponsoring teams. Well guess what happened then? Teams started to disappear and almost overnight they were gone. The stores started to disappear as well. In fact now there are only a hand full of stores left and those are mostly closets. Well you don’t have to be a genius to know that if there aren’t any stores then there aren’t many teams. If there aren’t a bunch of players out there then the market continues to shrink. Now I know a lot of you think of tournament players are only 10-20% of the market but it’s the 80 -20 rule you make 80% of your money on 20% of you customers. A rec guy goes into the store buys a case of plaint and goes out and plays once every few months. Maybe he gets a new marker every couple of seasons. Tournament guys buy two cases of paint every week and buy a new gun every year. These are the guys who pay the bills if you own a store or a field and these are the guys we need out there again. So you captains of industry get your shit together and make it happen!
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Mike
Quoted for truth. I'm getting a little annoyed by the treatment of teams by the larger stores. It seems the focus has shifted from tournament quality equipment to cheap rec ball gear. With that shift, it seems teams are starting to lose support from the smaller stores, and being forced to pay higher prices to cover the cost of stocking low-end items they sell to these one-timers. Back in the early 2000s stores were ready and willing to support local teams in exchange for free advertising and the occasional hand running events. Now you have to jump through hoops to get any sort of deal from a lot of companies. And to make things worse, a good portion of the smaller, paintball-only stores have been driven out of business by the less knowledgeable "action sports" stores that tacked paintball supplies onto their shelves in between skateboards and snowboards.
Preach on Rich. July 22, 2010
raehl
"Free advertising"? Hah.
Mike, I don't think Rich's point was that stores were supposed to give anyone who called themselves a team free or at-cost stuff.
If teams are only willing to pay cost for stuff, who cares if they play or not? Certainly not the store - if a whole bunch of people who were only willing to pay cost or less suddenly stopped playing, doesn't matter to the store one bit.
Welcome to reality Mike. No one is going to give your team an at or below-cost deal in exchange for "free advertising" to a bunch of other people people who only want to pay cost or less for stuff. And you wonder why all these stores are going out of business - it's because they had a bunch of customers who didn't want to pay for anything! July 23, 2010
Appropriate paintball gear should be worn during play to ensure safety. Quality paintball equipment can be purchased from available online manufacturers.
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