How big a business are we?

[Buddha 3]

Okay, earlier this evening I wanted to have a good laugh, so I went to see the markers on the Brass Eagle website. On their site I stumbled across this bit about the Pursuit parks, and it mentioned that paintball is a $500.000.000 business, with approximately 6.000.000 participants (customers). To me this means that the avarage baller spends less then $100 on paintball per year ($83.33 to be exact). Not very impressive!
What this can indicate is that, as an industry, paintball is not very good at customer retention. What do I mean by this? Well, it means that people start off buying gear, and quickly lose interest in the game.
I wonder if these figures include the number of people that rent some gear for the day as part of a corporate outing or something. But even if this is the case I still find the avarage sale (500 million divided by 6 million) to be alarmingly low!
83 Bucks! That's nothing in paintball! Some people easily blow that on paint for a day!
Being a person that has a commercial background, I find these figures disturbing. It indicates, as I said, that as a business we are not doing a very good job at retaining customers. So somewhere between buying that first bit of gear, and progressing to a full blown, kick ass baller there is a huge obstacle that only a small percentage of players can get across.
Anybody out there with suggestions on where we as a business are going wrong? I have my own theories, but I'd like to hear what the rest thinks....

 

[SYTRAXZ]

uh oh my 2 cents

i think that alot of markers are over priced like this for example, it prolly only costs 400 to make an angel but they sell it for 1,500. also like 10 for the freak set and maby 2 cents for a paintball. paint ball is an expensive hobby and not many people can afford to play so there is one reason its a small buisness.

 

[OhhhNooo]

im gonna have to agree with SYTRAXZ. I have many friends who quit because basically they cant be spending so much money on paint and other things. So they start off, throwing down a lot of money. Play for about 3 months than say " wait I can use this 80 dollars for something else. Something that wont be gone in about 3 hrs(paint)." so they get into other things.

 

[Urban]

In another discusion somewhere on these hallowed pages some mentioned that rec-balling accounts for something like 98% of the people who play paintball whereas tourny and teams are 2%.

Can't speak for the rest of the world but the average price for a day rec-ballin in UK seems to be about £50-55, which includes 1000 balls. Many people playing straight booked days won't use more than 1000 balls.

So 98% spend £50-55 (about $80) and the 2% spending 100's a year on markers and extra kit won't impact the overall average figure that much.

Maybe that's why the figure seems so low?

Urban

 

[Fleisher]

I read in PB2X(sorry I just buy it for the pictures,honest) that the US has a player base of over 6 million!,most of which are rec ballers,does anybody know or could hazard a guess a figure for the UK.
The sum Urban gives at £55 seems about right for a days walk on,but UK recballers seem to spend more on kit,Impys ,Emags ,Angels etc.

 

[Richard Kirke (DUPS Rocket) UK]

uh oh my 2 cents

Originally posted by SYTRAXZ
i think that alot of markers are over priced like this for example, it prolly only costs 400 to make an angel but they sell it for 1,500. also like 10 for the freak set and maby 2 cents for a paintball. paint ball is an expensive hobby and not many people can afford to play so there is one reason its a small buisness.

Yeah but howe much does the tooling cost? How many poeple do you have to employ? And how much actual profit do you make?

I agree that the paintball industry is probably slightly price inflated, but this is probably due to its small size rather than greedyness on the industry's part (although possible, if it was practical to sell kit cheaper, somebody would begin to undercut the rest, bringing the price down).

I think that the paintball industry is just too small to really charge close to what it costs,

Just my 2 cents, but the fact remains that paintball is expensive to play, which will keep it out of the mainstream for a long time (maybe forever). On the other hand, while its small there are certain advantages, like yesterday I rang up the airsmith who serviced my marker to say that it had developed a problem, so he said pop round, and while I was there:

he fixed the problem, showed me how to fix it myself should it happen again
Milled down the pin on my ASA to my (well offically stil Budhha 3's) air system shredding o-rings when screwed in to the asa
Gave me loads of advice and a quick tech-course on the cocker
Gave me a slack hand-full of o-rings...

And the charge for over an hour of (one of?) the top airsmith in this coutry: £0.00

Incidentally the service that he gave included free parts.

This is the sort of thing you cannot get in other sports, like the friendlyness so prevalent at tournaments.

Maybe you don't feel that expensive equipment, the risk the sport being banned all the time etc is worth it, but I am not convinced

Maybe it was closer to $2...

Richard

 

[eric]

Wow, $80 for a day or recballin???. Thats a lot. When I rec ball I go about $45 bucks. Course then I shoot like 1 pod and a hopper everygame.

And lets say a day of recbaling does cost $80 and thats like 98% of the players. Do they only play once a year or something. I think that the number on the total gross for the industry is a little low.

 

[Tortoise-Licker]

uh oh my 2 cents

Originally posted by SYTRAXZ
i think that alot of markers are over priced like this for example, it prolly only costs 400 to make an angel but they sell it for 1,500. also like 10 for the freak set and maby 2 cents for a paintball. paint ball is an expensive hobby and not many people can afford to play so there is one reason its a small buisness.

Sytraxz mate I'm sorry its flame time again!!!!
You need to understand more about modern economics and Industry. When I got hold of my Spyder extra ( I know it's a lame marker, but it serves me well and I'm not a rich Kid and I have other expensive hobbies to keep going (by the way does anybody want to by over £3000 pounds worth of Citadel minutures for about £1500)), I took it into one of my buddies who is a wiz with a milling machine and lathe. After stripping it down and looking at the parts, he said that he would be lucky to get hold of the materials let alone the time that it would take in order to clone the entire marker and still make it for less then the £180 I paid for it.
You say why does it cost $1500 for a marker that costs $400 to make. Okay this is a fair point but throughout industry this happens. I used to work in a television factory and it cost us £45 in parts cost to make a 14 " t.v. and yet they knocked them out at £120 in the shops. The reason for this is because all the other overheads that are needed to get that to the shops. These include transportation from the plant to the retailer, the retailer needs to make a profit as well, the cost of development for the product, wages for the people who have made it and transported it. You also have to include the cost of Advertisement ( You think that marker manufacturers get to fill the pages of PGI with ads every month for free, and without the adverts would you still be drooling over that KAPP K2 Flame cocker without the advert). It worked out that on 14" t.vs that they were actually making a loss on each unit sold but this was supplemented by the profit that they could make on the higher end T.v.'s.
With markers you have to remember that these are made from High grade alloy's with cost a fair packet even in bulk. Okay make the marker out of plastic at a cheaper price, but then how long would a marker last? And then as richard kirke stated theres the tooling costs. When i was at school ( In 1988) we were shown around a local plastic manufacturer. They told us that the tooling costs for even a simple vacum formed bottle were around the £10k mark.
Now remember that only 2% of the paintball players are tourney players. these are the guys who are buying the high end markers. From 6 million players this is 120k people, of this 120k very few buy a new marker every year (unless your name is Ro0ster or Chip and then its a new one every couple of months) Then remember that they have the choice of markers ( Angels, Autocokers, Impys, Shockers e.t.c.) lets say that a equal amount of people prefer each marker. So thats 30 thousand people who might buy that new shiney marker every two years or so. Even if the company was making $500 profit on a marker that had cost them $400 to make and they had no over heads, they would still only make $7.5 million per year. You might say 7.5 million thats a lot of money but this might only just cover the tooling and development costs on the product. Let alone the advertising.
Then you have to remember the big cost of sponsership, this is the one thing that most teams dream of, and this all costs money.
The only way to get the cost of equipment to drop is to get more players involved in the game, weather it be at entry level recday or high level tourney. You are going to have a big surprise soon as the older players leave the game through either injury, fatigue or family commitments. As these are the guys who are buying the pricey markers and keeping the prices where they are.
So you want Angels and paint at rock bottom prices get of your arses and tell everyone about p8ntball and drag them kicking and screaming to the next recday at your local site. Because when us older players go its gonna be harsh for you young guys unless you step into the void we will leave behind.

Hell I can remember paying £1 ($1.5) for ten paintballs in the good old days.

Okay this started as a flame but when it got down to it it failed to deliver, but thats the way it goes.

 

[SYTRAXZ]

hmmmmm i can fill this void

i can fill that void.... eventually... come the end of summer even if the k2 is out of production... i will check around action village (if they still have one ill order it) and become a new aged paint vigilante on the feild. i will find a way to get my blue fade k2! If i gotta pay kapp 3000 for them to make 1 (long after tehre done being made) i will pay it. maby not this year but i will get one. and you are right not much of a flame but u had good intentions. i once had great visions of becoming an exectutive chef as an adult but then i met paintball and am wavering over the chef job or opening my own feild and stor in australia when i move there when i (in 7 years) ecome 21. i will try my best to get people go and maby be the first feild in a while to have there feild advertized on tv

 

[Dannefaerd]

You might want to re-think Australia ... the gun laws overthere are a bit over the top for paintball ...