Tippmann and Special Ops Unite, Creating the Ultimate Woodsball Alliance

“What really chapped our hides, and prompted us to start this company in the first place, were the paintball magazines,” recalls Jayson Orvis, co-founder of Special Ops Paintball. “Three years ago, if you picked up any paintball magazine, tournament paintball ads and stories outnumbered woodsball^™ ads and stories ten-to-one.  And it was totally screw-ball.  In the real world, seventy-percent of players were woods players.  It wasn’t the magazines’ fault at all (all the magazine editors were dyed-in-the-wool woodsballers) – it was just that nobody was making cool stuff designed solely for woods play.”

So, Special Ops arose to give woodsball its due:  cutting-edge paintball technology for woodsballers by woodsballers.  In those days, when SpecOps was burning the midnight oil inventing cool gear like the air-through stock, the Dogleg, the Longbow Sniper, the Broadsword Vest and Fusion Battlewear, we often sat back and wondered what life would be like if Tippmann – the mother of all paintball companies – got behind our vision of taking woodsball to the next-level.  How cool would it be if we married our innovation to their market domination?

It’s not that Tippmann had ever been lax on innovation.  Dennis Jr. and the engineering boys of Tippmann had churned out some of the greatest inventions in the sport’s history:  the Flatline Barrel, Cyclone Feed System, Anti-Chop Technology, just to name a few.  If you ever wondered how much Tippmann actually dominates woods play, just take a stroll around any scenario game in the country. Tippmann A-5s and Custom 98s outnumber the flies – and for good reason.  The markers perform reliably with very little maintenance and are sturdy as hell.  Without question, Tippmann is deservedly the grand master of the woods paintball field.

By 2005, SpecOps had made huge strides towards recognizing and fulfilling the needs of woodsballers worldwide. Woods paintball players were finally getting high-quality mods, gear and clothing.  Then, in late 2005, SpecOps got a call from Tippmann.  The behemoth manufacturer wanted to check out the young company that was making such a big splash in the industry.  Tippmann wanted our opinion on the kind of stuff they should be developing. 

Their visit turned into a five hour, machine-gun-paced frenzy of product development brainstorming.  We came up with a truck-load of cool concepts and the Tippmann guys left with a binder full of ideas that would transform the sport in the coming years.  We were blown away with how open-minded the Tippmann guys proved to be.  The fact that Tippmann had basically invented broad swaths of the sport didn’t prevent them from knowing good ideas when they heard them.  The first date between Tippmann and SO went extremely well.

Several weeks later, Tippmann called back and asked for a second date.  “We’re thinking that we should probably take this to the next level,” suggested Pat Ehren, Tippmann VP of Sales and Marketing, “There’s a lot we could do for the sport if we worked together.” 

Our thoughts, exactly.

It would be several months before all the details would be worked out.  Both companies take great pride in their creative independence and neither company was being “bought out” by the other.  It was in the best interest of business, and the sport, to preserve the innovation of both companies while creating massive synergy between the rapidly-growing SpecOps and the well-established industry giant, Tippmann.  Both companies needed to retain the ability to develop and distribute products independently to fully meet the needs of today’s woodsball players.

At SpecOps, we were paintball players who loved our work and our environment, and the thought of morphing into a “corporation” had some employees coughing up hairballs. But fortunately, Tippmann recognized the value of our philosophy, and was totally in favor of SO preserving its grassroots, for-the-player-by-the-player ways.  It’s what had attracted Tippmann to SO in the first place. And the more we worked on projects together with Tippmann, the more the SpecOps team began to feel like we had an incredibly powerful partner who was just as passionate about woodsball as we were.

Over the last year, SpecOps engineers have been working on their line of “Fusion” products – products designed to transform killer tourney markers into blazing-fast woods ‘guns.  We call it our Blackcell line, and we’ve blurred the line between tourney and woods performance with products such as the Blackcell Ion, Ion Longbow Sniper and the T2W Stock.  Both Special Ops and Tippmann agree: even though these design initiatives aren’t focused on Tippmann markers, they should continue full-speed-ahead.  It was no one’s intention that SpecOps become a strictly “Tippmann Shop” in this relationship. Both companies needed to retain the ability to develop products independently to fully meet the needs of today’s woodsball players, so we will continue to have liberal license to continue fooling around wherever our imagination takes us.

So, in between paintball games this summer, SpecOps inked a deal with Tippmann to work together on new products, co-brand a bunch of new and old products, distribute SO products through Tippmann’s huge dealer network and to cooperate in promoting the SPPL and the Brigade.

“We can’t see into the future, but we do know what’s on deck right now.  We know what Tippmann and Special Ops have planned together.” says Orvis.  “Be prepared to be blown away.”