Boycott BE?!?!?!

[Hysperion]

no wonder they're suing odyssey, they're desperate for cash....

[lazyrider77]

i don't hate BE, my first gun was made by them. it wasn't anything special but i had a lto of fun with it. However, their elitist attitude about motorized hoppers has got to go, they are holding back advancements in paintball technology for their own profit. i don't knwo if a boycott wil work in this society, but i like the idea of sending BE a message that their practices need to stop.

[LaW]

They are not really holding back advancements because if the product comes out what will most likely happen is that they'll sue blah blah win and then start producing that product... It's kind of how they work

[Spaceman613]

And where is the precedent for this statement???

[LaW]

What'll happen i'm saying is that like BE will buy the rights to the halo or some crap like that. It's just something they'd do and is something I can see them doing....

[mac2k4]

i'm sayin the same thing as CRySyS
i bet everyone would go crazy if ya called AGD sorry cause their "super" bolt thing broke in half shootin peices of delrain down the barrell.

i know a lot of peole who would have never been introduced to paintball w/o BE. And about 15 people from the automags fan group boycotting BE won't effect any thing at all.

[2UnREal]

Just a FYI guys, our sport wouldn't be where it is if it wasn't for BE. Sure, they make horrible products but for some people that is all they can afford. And look at all the advertisements they do. They get a lot and I mean alot of people to notice our sport.

[Predater]

spyders are 80 bux. thats what all the people i know started using. ill boycot BE because i dont like the company. i dont expect it to really do anything but it maks me feel better by not buying there produckts.

[thei3ug]

The good book of capitalism states that people will buy what they need and want. Do whatever you want, there are alternatives.

But give me a break. Why should I care about them for good or bad? i don't have anything to do with them anyway.

[Panzerr]

What the heck for? Sure, BE produces pretty much nothing but cr@p, but think of it this way-how many people do you know that shot a talon or stingray or some other piece of BE junk when they started playing?? Many people wouldn't even know about paintball, if it weren't for the fact that BE has better marketing abilities than just about every other paintball manufacturer. You don't see automags sitting on the shelf at K-ame Apart or Walmart, do you? I don't care for BE, but why would you want to boycot them? They help our sport grow.

[AllAmericanMag]

I hate BE with a passion (mainly for sueing Odyssey) but I will always love my Proteus.

[raehl]

You know, this ain't going to be popular, but...

BE is successful because they do what many paintball companies do not: They act as a BUISINESS. I know it's probably not apparent to most players who don't have the "opportunity" to interact with the various facets of hte paintball industry on a regular basis, but BE is one of the few paintball companies out there capable of conducting itself "above the fray" and consistently acting in the company's best BUISINESS interest as opposed to the personal interests of the people running the company.

I work for a big engineering (computer) company. One of the first things that you learn is that it is *NOT* the best product that necessairly wins. If it were, there wouldn't be any adertising, marketing, sales, or accounting people out there - us engineers would just have a big "best product" fight and that's the one everyone would buy. That's not the way buisiness works, and that's a lesson lost on a lot of paintball "buisiness" people who view their companies more as an extension of a paintball hobby than a true buisiness.

The people in charge of BE don't play on paintball teams, don't work in the paintball media, they work to expand their market share instead of focusing on taking someone elses (thus the wal-mart thing), etc. While others busy themselves fighting for control of the paintball industry, and particularly the tournament sector, BE has focussed on taking control of, and expanding, the paintball MARKETPLACE. I understand that a lot of people are frustrated with BE's success, but that's only because they've had the foresight and will to take the steps to be successful when others have not.

Plenty of paintball companies out there would do themselves a favor if they looked at what BE has done and learned a few things.

- Chris

[MikeCouves]

Very true Chris. Look at all the people that had BE and Wal Mart markers before they got mags and such. Alot of people had bought a cheap marker and cheap stuff just to see if they liked paintball. They did help the paintball community.

Then again I don't appreciate how they bought some of the reputable companies and made the products of less quality. Then again, when BE buys a company, that company expands alot and goes into Wal Mart and Canadian Tire, which is a plus to newbies who don't know where to get all the good paintball gear.

[raehl]

Oh, and on the patent thing...

BE is suing Odyssey because they believe Odyssey is violating BE's patent. Patents cost a lot of money to get, on top of the money spent developing the product. If you don't enforce your patents, you're allowing another company to profit off of the money you spent developing the product in the first place.

As for BE doing things like discontinuing colored hoppers and the like - if the return on a separate product doesn't justify the costs in producing it, guess what - you stop producing it, whether it's "cool" or not. If you can cut manufacturing costs, you do so. This is what real buisinesses do.

Now, maybe BE has gone too far and cut manufacturing costs so much that their products are suffering, but remember, at the end of the day, it is NOT necessarily the buisiness objective to make the best product. The objective is to make the most money - which can sometimes be accomplished by selling more lesser product cheaper.

In any case, you're an informed consumer, if you don't like the product, don't buy it. If there's a market out there for better quality products, someone will come along to fill it.

- Chris

[raehl]

Right....

The point is that its ridiculous to expect BE to make products for the "serious" paintball player when they can make products for 'everyone else' and be a more successful buisiness, and I have to laugh a little bit whenever everyone gets on a webboard somewhere and implies that BE is evil or something for actually operating like a buisiness.

BE was smart. They shelled out the dough for the company which has the patents on one of the "good" ways to make a hopper. Good move for them, bad move for everyone else who didn't see that value and make the purchase themselves.

There's an interesting trend in the paintball industy as of late - consolidation. Lots of the "little" companies that produced one product are getting bought up to create complete product lines. BE is doing this, Diablo is doing this, etc. This was pretty much inevitable. You're going to see a lot more of the paintball buisiness controlled by people who don't play paintball - and that's a good thing.

- Chris