Who Should You Buy Your Gear From?

By JOracle
5-10-2005

Paintball gear - you bet, we got everything...! Or so the claims continue. Through the eyes of your browser, most paintball companies look pretty good. But any backwoods paintball wannabe can pick up a pre-made shopping cart, spend a couple of bucks on graphic design, and with a few clicks of the mouse, instantly transform Jo Bob’s Fried Burritos & Magic Beans into “The Ultimate Online Paintball Gear Emporium”. But, if you could tour the real-life brick-and-mortar buildings of these types of companies and see them for what they REALLY are, you may not be so quick to whip out your credit card.

All paintball web stores are NOT created equal. Any mom-and-pop outfit can create a sexy home-page with lots of ‘borrowed’ pictures and cute graphics, but if you could see behind the façade of the majority of these online stores, you’d most likely discover the following.

Mom and Pop Shops
Of the thousands of paintball shops floating around online, most of these are 'Chihuahuas' pretending to be 'Great Danes' – and can’t even afford to keep any stock on hand. They don’t actually buy the paintball gun or gear you want until after you’ve placed your order and given them your credit card number. Even if you’re willing to wait a couple of weeks for your merchandise to get to ma and pa’s (a.k.a. ‘M & P’s Grand Paintball Emporium), before being shipped to you, you’re still at the mercy of the manufacturers.

When a paintball store places an order with a manufacturer or supplier, about a third of the time the supplier is out-of-stock of that item. Paintball manufacturers are notoriously inconsistent in producing their wares. Only the big stores can buy in sufficient quantity to even out the ups and downs of manufacturing. This translates into huge wait times and frequent disappointment when you buy from the little guys.

On the other hand, mom and pop shops typically have hands-on customer service. Even though they make you wait, and they keep irregular business hours, once you finally get them on the phone, they’re usually very kind and committed to your satisfaction. Many mom and pop shop owners are avid paintballers who love the sport, and they’ll talk your ear off about it. That’s actually a good thing when you’re shopping for good product advice. A lot of paintball product out there is pure crap, and mom and pop-ers will often lay it on the line to make sure you don’t buy junk.

Rambo Wannabees
Some mom and pop shops fall under the ‘Rambo Wannabe’ category. These raw meat-eating yahoos play paintball as a way to get some use out of those army-surplus camos and relive their childhood glory days of playing ‘Captain Hero’ against their baby brother and his little friends. They’re Rambo wannabees, and chances are, they don’t know squat about paintball, but they strike an impressive military pose.

Their small operation may have the same limited resources as the mom and pop shops, but they lack the passion, knowledge and experience of paintball. (But if you’re looking to fantasize about being an Army Ranger and ’exterminate’ enemies of the state, they’ll be thrilled to get on their soap box and get your heart pumping.) Unfortunately, you’ll usually end up buying 40 pounds of outdated crap-accessories that make your gun look like something really macho but gets you lit up the first time you drag it onto a real paintball field. If you want to swap war stories, call these guys. If you want to amp up your paintball game, keep looking.

Mega-stores
There are a few paintball stores that are so massive your jaw would drop if you saw their building,. These colossal buildings are fifty-thousand square foot monstrosities - chock full of paintball fantasy. They carry thousands of products and they can ship it to you just about any day and any way you want. Way back in the beginning days of these companies, perhaps people who actually played paintball worked there. However, the folks who pull and ship your orders today don’t know a Tippmann A-5 from a Tippmann Squadbuster. All they know is that you ordered one “#728923B” and two “#757739C's”. Don’t waste your time calling them for advice. You might as well call your tax accountant to find out which after-market bolt would work best in your Tippy. On the other hand, their prices are decent, their shipping is professional and their product lines are so-so. They don’t always have what you want, but they have a lot of whatever they are selling.

How About a ‘Tweener?
What would the world be like if one of those mega-stores decided to start really caring about paintball, all the way down to their Magnum Boots? What if you could get all the professionalism, precision and price of a mega-store and still have the love of the sport that you’d find at the mom and pop places? And, what if the same company built the coolest, most entertainment-rich paintball website imaginable, all for your shopping pleasure?

If that’s not a perfect description of SpecOps then we’ve been missing the boat. We’re knocking ourselves out to be the perfect internet shopping solution for scenario players. Check out our SpecOps Factory Team page to get an eyeful of our paintball-crazy bunch of guys. What we lack in looks, we make up for in experience. In fact, with over two hundred combined years of paintball experience, our company has spent more time on the field than we’ve spent sleeping (only a slight exaggeration). If the difference is experience, then we’ve got it over the other guys in spades.

Special Ops Paintball carries over eight hundred of the coolest, most innovative woodsball™ products ever invented and we constantly prowl tradeshows and internet message boards for the latest paintball news and innovations.

Our internet store boasts one of the best in-stock ratios in the industry and we do everything in our power to always have the stuff you want at the best price possible. (We know that you’re playing 'ball THIS weekend and that your stuff absolutely must be there by Friday!)

We love this sport and most of our company started playing back when Reagan was still the President. Special Ops purchased a 7-acre woods field so we can test and review new equipment and keep current with everything that’s happening in the paintball world. (In fact, we have ‘staff meetings’ there every Saturday.) We’ve been with paintball through thick-and-thin, and have tremendous respect for the sport. This company is our monument to one of the greatest sports of all time.