Question on the industry : cost of manufacturing paintballs

[Lohman446]

I ask because here I might just get an answer.

50 is going to be cheaper right? At least thats the new battle cry. It uses less material

Of the cost to manufacture a paintball how much of it is material related? I mean there are other costs involved: shipping, overhead, insurance, manpower, etc.

My guess is that costs of material account for around 10% of wholesale price, I would be drastically surprised if the number was over 20%. I would not be surprised if it was even less.

Am I off on that assumption?

[maniacmechanic]

The folks that can answer this ( the manufactuers ) will never answer this , we would want cheeper paint then
I also would think materials would be reliatively cheep

[luke]

I know one thing, it's time to invest on a new lathe.

[sunshaker]

I know one thing, it's time to invest on a new lathe.

CNC with a bar puller?

[AGD]

I can tell you from the inside that it IS mostly materials. It costs about 20 bucks to make the paint and put it in the box with no profit.

AGD

[rawbutter]

The stupid part is that we (the consumers) probably won't see a huge price drop. A 50 caliber paintball is about half the size (in volume) of a 68 paintball... so theoretically we should see a significant price drop if this goes through, but it won't happen.

Want to see proof? Kingman has their new 43 caliber training paintballs.... but they charge at least $15/500 rounds. That's $60 for a case of 2000.... for paintballs that are twice as small as normal paintballs.

So, 50 caliber will be cheaper.... for the manufacturers, but they won't pass those savings onto the consumer.

[Old School 626]

I defer to Tom's specific knowledge but as a manufacturing professional I can tell you that it's not un-typical to have the direct costs of a product equal a fifth to a third of the wholesale price. One product i recently made had an overhead burden rate of 700% and now with a different business model we're looking at direct costs 70-80%.

With a reduction in the prime costs of a case of paint it's not likely we'll see the same type of reduction in the retail price. It's the same false argument that we're given with lettuce pickers, "if we have to pay folks more to pick the lettuce we'll have $5 a head lettuce!" The direct labor component of a head of lettuce is a small percentage of the end cost. All of the indirect costs and margins for all of those involved in the logistics chain remain unchanged so that if lettuce were $1 a head and direct labor was 25% of the price and we doubled the pay of the lettuce pickers then the effect on the retail price might be that the price would go to $1.25 a head. Applying this to a model where 80% of the cost of a case of paint is materials and (not trusting my rusty math) the volume change in ball size would be that the 50 cal paint is roughly 40% of a 68 cal ball so material costs should also be 40% of what they are currently *all other things being equal*. The expected change would then be $12 a case but lots of that will go to pay for new tooling & other development costs, increased margins, marketing budgets, etc. Maybe the players will see 2-$4 a case change.

/ramble mode off.

[Lohman446]

I can tell you from the inside that it IS mostly materials. It costs about 20 bucks to make the paint and put it in the box with no profit.

AGD

Thank-you, guessed wrong from the outside.

[Pyrate Jim]

Material is material.
A case of .68 paint has a basic cost per unit.
50 Cal may give more balls, but (tooling aside) the same basic costs to achieve that don't go down much.
SO 2,000 balls in .68 caliber costs the same to produce as 2,720 paintballs in .50.
That's nearly a 30% increase in production cost per unit to the manufacturer.

Paint makers want you to shoot paint that they sell. The more paint, the better.
Now they can sell 2,720 at the same markup as 2,000 of the "old" stuff.

Yes, as a player I "could" now buy an extra 720 balls in a case for the same money. I can fit more balls into my pods and carry more potential shots without dragging me down with weight.
The problem with that is I'm a pump guy. I don't care about volume, or weight. Putting extra balls in a case for the same price means that much extra I bring home.

[Reiner]

Paint makers want you to shoot paint that they sell. The more paint, the better.
Now they can sell 2,720 at the same markup as 2,000 of the "old" stuff.

But what about us fields that don't want our players to shoot more. If price the paintballs the same as an equivalent amount of .68 cal balls, I will sell the same amount of balls to my customers and also buy the same amount of balls from the wholesalers. If the wholesaler is selling more balls to me at the same price with the same mark-up, the wholesaler will make less money from me. That makes it good for me, but a bad move for the manufacturer/wholesaler.

[robo1]

Material is material.
A case of .68 paint has a basic cost per unit.
50 Cal may give more balls, but (tooling aside) the same basic costs to achieve that don't go down much.
SO 2,000 balls in .68 caliber costs the same to produce as 2,720 paintballs in .50.
That's nearly a 30% increase in production cost per unit to the manufacturer.

Paint makers want you to shoot paint that they sell. The more paint, the better.
Now they can sell 2,720 at the same markup as 2,000 of the "old" stuff.

Yes, as a player I "could" now buy an extra 720 balls in a case for the same money. I can fit more balls into my pods and carry more potential shots without dragging me down with weight.
The problem with that is I'm a pump guy. I don't care about volume, or weight. Putting extra balls in a case for the same price means that much extra I bring home.

Why would they switch to a 2720 case, when they could stick with 2000 and save on packaging? Smaller packaging also relates into shipping costs as it would cost less to ship the same number of cases.

[Gadget]

[Pyrate Jim]

Why would they switch to a 2720 case, when they could stick with 2000 and save on packaging? Smaller packaging also relates into shipping costs as it would cost less to ship the same number of cases.

It also relates to production cost. Being able to produce 30% more per unit cost means they can cut prices 20% and still show a 10% increase for themselves.

[Bolter]

This is all dependant on this final mythical fill that I suspect hasnt even been invented yet.

[Hgblues]

ya think they'll factor in the attorneys and court costs of suing their competitors into each case of paint? Or just wait and try to run the competition out of business a few years down the road with a big, scary, "we had the patent first!" international law suit?

just my theory, but, I see .50 cal as some crooked business being mass marketed by some people who set paintball back a few years, over their own greed.

As to the OT, I would guess supply and demand will have an impact on the cost of the paint. The more people on the .50 cal bandwagon, the cheaper the paint. However, with that theory, it would drive UP the cost of .68 due to less people buying .68. So, instead of a cheaper option at .50 cal, we end up with two competing paint sizes, with demand cut in half for each, thus driving the price of both paints UP a bit, instead of down.