New major brands in paintball

[paint magnet]

Been away from the sport for a while, so I was hoping someone could fill me in. Shortly before I lost track of things, there were a few big changes. As I understood it, lots of popular companies were being bought out by larger ones, resulting in the major "players," if you will, being the following companies:

K2-owned brands:
Brass Eagle
JT
ViewLoader
WorrGames (WGP)

DYE and its lower-end line, Proto (which seems to have done much better than their original attempt, Xcel)

NPS brands:
Empire
Invert
Bob Long
Draxxus/Diablo

and as much as I hate to say it,

Smart Parts. I attribute much of the consolidation to their lawsuit, along with lots of production being moved to China. I will never stop hating them.

WDP, AKA, AGD, ICD, CCI, PPS, and other well-respected companies with three-letter names were still around, in some form or other, but were not major contenders on the national/international scale. I know ICD went under shortly after moving production overseas. Planet Eclipse seems to have a much larger market share than they once did; I regarded most of their products as semi-custom because of how infrequently I saw them around here.

Stacked-tube poppet valve guns were beginning to wane in popularity, and it seems that trend has continued. Spoolers seem to be overwhelmingly more popular despite the poor air efficiency and FSDO that once plagued them.

I keep hearing about some company called "Key" ("kee?") too. What's changed since I've been out of the loop? What are all the cool kids shooting now?

[eNder159]

smart parts went out of business

[Gadget]

The cool kids are still shooting Egos as far as I know, certainly the majority of Pro teams still seem to be running with Planet Eclipse kit - either the Ego or spoolie Geo. There seems to be something of a backlash recently against PE as all of the private-label versions are just custom anodising rather than anything special.

Kee Action Sports are the biggest player in the market now - they own the Empire, JT, BT, Invert, RPS, Viewloader, Pure Energy, WGP, Extreme Rage, Diablo and Brass Eagle brands. Empire recently purchased all of Smart Parts's intellectual property.

The SP brothers now run GOG paintball I believe.

Bob Long is a separate company afaik.

WDP are now Angel Paintball Sports. Angels aren't nearly as popular as they were, which is a shame as they're still great markers - the Angel 1 I owned up until recently shot flawlessly for 4 years. They're no longer seen as cool though, so all the PBnation kids slag them off.

In terms of markers, the only thing that has made me sit up and take notice recently is the Empire Axe. It's effectively an Invert Mini with virtually all the problems ironed out. Larger, more efficient, easier to strip, venting reg/asa and best of all, cheap. Only the feedneck lets it down, great marker other than that.

Oh and how could I forget, the FUTURE OF PAINTBALL arrived. .50 cal! WOooooooo! Oh no, wait, that was a crock of ****. Richmond Italia and the Gardner bros tried to make .50 cal the next big thing towards the end of 2009. It has some advantages in terms of efficiency and amount of paint you can carry, but other than that it's inferior to .68 in every way. Combine that with the vast investment in .68 within the industry and it effectively tanked. It's still around but I've yet to see anyone using a .50 marker and the forums setup to discuss the calibre seem dead. No great loss.

[Flatliner333]

50 cal was soon beat out by 49 cal that was shortly overthrown by 48 cal which threw the industry into frenzy til everyone got fed up and started playing airsoft

[xero28]

AKA is still around, though they don't produce any new markers. They're still selling regs and what-not. PPS is about the same as it has always been. Still producing Blazers, Pyres, etc and still making some of the best regulators and accessories.

[mpsd]

You forgot about CCM and Carter too. CCM is getting what looks like higher volumes now with their new T2 and S6 / S6.5 markers. Carter is more a garage business since he left Dye.

Bob Long is also still on the market, getting bigger now once again. He released the Victory, then the new G6R Intimidator and is preparing the launch of a new top of the line pump to go against CCM, who has been dominating the high-end pump market for the past couple of years or so. There are some new rumors that he will release another two markers on the second semester but nothing more than this info as of now

And, of course, Tippmann is still on business, stronger than never with a huge line of guns and brands (US Army and the new Gryphon low end).

Kingman still sells lots and lots of Spyders although they lost some good market share. They also released their Kingman Training brand, which sells .43 cal pistols.

Lapco is selling small quantities of their new Grey Ghost (with many Phantom derived parts).

There are some new players as Avratech (who sells an improved Sterling clone) and is about to release a reviewed Nelspot 007 clone as well. Same thing for Dukie with his line of 68cal revolvers and shotguns.

RAP4 is getting bigger and bigger.

That's what I could remember but if I remember anything else, I'll post.

[cockerpunk]

NPS no longer exists, it is now called KEE. gino is no longer involved.

Valken is ginos new company, which seems to be attempting the same thing NPS did (horizonal monopoly system).

spools have hardly taken over, poppits still remain very popular, if anything i think spools have wained a bit since the matrix series pretty much ended devlopment. blowforwards seem to be the future of spool valve technology (geo, NT ...)

the lucky USA guys made there own company to market there gun called the creed. seems to kinda be working ... but i have my theory as to there future.

[paint magnet]

The SP brothers now run GOG paintball I believe.
SP went under? Best news I've heard in a while! How is GOG paintball doing? Their web page looks like one of those useless squatter sites.

Kee Action Sports are the biggest player in the market now - they own the Empire, JT, BT, Invert, RPS, Viewloader, Pure Energy, WGP, Extreme Rage, Diablo and Brass Eagle brands. Empire recently purchased all of Smart Parts's intellectual property.

Any idea whether or not they're enforcing the bogus patent? Most companies affected by the lawsuit either went out of business or aren't producing guns any more, but maybe there's still hope for a 2012 Viking

Really surprised to hear that RPS got bought out. Does this mean that there's only one major producer of paint?

NPS no longer exists, it is now called KEE. gino is no longer involved.
Valken is ginos new company, which seems to be attempting the same thing NPS did (horizonal monopoly system).

Who is gino? All NPS stuff was pretty much the same, but it was usually of decent quality.

[mpsd]

Just sum it up, Kee also owns PMI/Sheridan and Viewloader, as those companies were previously bought by JT, right?

[paint magnet]

IIRC, Brass Eagle bought ViewLoader and JT, and then K2 (the ski/board company) bought the BE/VL/JT group and WGP as well.