[commander mike]

I was thinking today. In the past we have lost companies like Smart Parts, Indian Creek Designs, WGP, etc. But new companies are still emerging to take their places. I think this is very positive considering how things might have been looking these past few years.

[Thalion]

New companies such as...???

I'm waiting.

The only one I can think of that is kinda new is GOG, which is just the Gardners coming back to life in place of Smart Parts.

EDIT: It's true, that there is a wide range of diversity, more so than in many years past. My point, however, is that since industry giants have started leaving none have taken their place. Other giants absorb any left over market the former giant had.

This post has been edited by Thalion: 19 March 2012 - 04:27 PM

[commander mike]

Aren't Vanguard and Valken relatively new companies?

[Meline]

Not really... Vanguard is the newest of the two.

I think the best sign of improvement in the paintball industry is that companies are coming out with new lines of products outside thier niches in the paintball world. Valken is coming out with a milsim marker. Tippman is launching a spool valved entry level speed ball marker. Unless the economy tanks again it should only continue to get better

[Thalion]

commander mike, on 19 March 2012 - 07:33 PM, said:

Aren't Vanguard and Valken relatively new companies?

Not really. And Valken is more like a returning company than it is a new company. The guys running Valken were around paintball a long time ago.

Meline, on 19 March 2012 - 07:53 PM, said:

Unless the economy tanks again it should only continue to get better

I'm sure it will. We're not out of the woods on this one yet.

Though I will say I am glad to see some innovation returning to paintball, for however long it lasts.

[slinkyaroo]

Valken was the old NPS owners that had a noncompetition clause after KEE bought them out. The clause has expired and they're back.

Yes there are some new companies like Creed or Zodiac but KEE is the only big player. Everybody thinks Dye is huge but in reality there's only a few employees there, less than the amount of staff at a McDonald's on a supper shift.

[The Stuntman]

Paintabll as a whole seems to have weathered the recession fairly well. Im not really suprised - Ive seen it happen before. Sure, companies come & go, but alot of the people remain the same.
I tend to think that for awhile there were almost too many PB companies competeing for a finite amount of $$$. The recession has forced the industry to slim down to the basics, which in the long term might not be a bad thing.

[Thalion]

Correction: too many companies trying to sell the same things (such as the infinite variety of stacked tube blowbacks).

I'm of the mind that there isn't such a thing as too many companies, because the larger quantity forces them to be more innovative in order to keep their $

[Minnesota Sn1p3r]

I think that all together, Paintball has done really well to ride this economic storm out.

I live in Minnesota and the local paintball store is expanding and their field is getting bigger as well. Whenever I can find the time to get out there the place is full so thats always good to see.

Also, a lot of the younger generation is still interested in doing things OUTSIDE! (surprisingly... ) What Ive noticed is that a lot of newer players either A.) Had the sport "handed down to them" by an older sibling, or B.) Wanted to shoot people and play games "like in Call of Duty, I want to play zombies" (Actual quote )

Paintball has survived because the people that play it cant get enough of it! We will make it through this storm..

[golite]

Thalion, on 20 March 2012 - 02:21 PM, said:

Correction: too many companies trying to sell the same things (such as the infinite variety of stacked tube blowbacks).

I'm of the mind that there isn't such a thing as too many companies, because the larger quantity forces them to be more innovative in order to keep their $

or just ship more !@#%#! to Walmart and Dick's (cough)JT (cough)Kingman (cough)Brass Eagle

market saturation at its best

[Dark Shadow Hunter]

Maybe as a whole it is doing ok. I know in my immediate area it has taken a major hit. My local field used to have 20 teams or more for their tournaments and they used to have 200 players show up for their woodsball big games. Slowly people stopped showing up for the events. Eventually it got to the point where the prize packages started to suffer because they could not afford the bigger packages they used to hand out. Then because the prize packages suffered even more players stopped showing up for events. Eventually they stopped doing events all together. Now many weekends they are lucky to get a 5 player group of walk-ons. Their biggest market is private rental groups and even still they are lucky to get a small private group some weekends.

Then again Michigan was in a recession before the rest of the country and if we did not hit a depression after the economy tanked we came real close.