Where did AGD go wrong?

[Sandman]

AGD, never really went wrong. The original force behind AGD simply changed directions and it wasn't in the direction of paintball. For all practical purposes the company should be gone.
Dave has been producing the parts and keeping things going for years on his own.

Earlier this year Dave decided to let go a little and allow some help in building a new website and reaching out to the mag market. That's where I came in. So far the new site has been a great help and Facebook has created a nice way for us to reach customers again too. I've worked on a few new items to help excite the market and built some cool guns that look great and get people talking about mags again. I'll keep working to do more and hopefully as the economy grows back , we'll get Airgun to grow with it.

Cya

[BigEvil]

i think ...

Never assume anyone cares what you think :P

[Sandman]

One point I forgot to mention about AGD and moving forward is the commitment of time. Right now AGD doesn't produce a living for anyone. It is a part time endeavor. All the people working in the community Like Luke, BE, Cougar, Xmag, Tuna and myself at AGD all have to earn a living. Well I assume those guys do unless they are independently wealthy. I for one am not. Luckily, I am in the paintball business full time and working AGD into the formula is much less costly for me as it shares into overhead that is already covered. Dave is local and close to me and he can visit and we conspire almost everyday on getting parts and taking steps to move forward. It's not an easy task anymore working within the budget and time constraints that we both have. But we are making progress. We appreciate all the support.
Thanks!
Tim
Sandman

[RogueFactor]

The answer is multi-faceted, and requires some business acumen, a knowledge of some history and the mistakes Tom K made. Having been one of AGDs largest dealers by yearly gross sales/volume at one point, and having some business sense, its not too hard to recognize.

There is little point in saying more, its spilt milk and water under the bridge at this point. The bell cannot be unrung, it cannot be undone.

[Dayspring]

The answer is multi-faceted, and requires some business acumen, a knowledge of some history and the mistakes Tom K made. Having been one of AGDs largest dealers by yearly gross sales/volume at one point, and having some business sense, its not too hard to recognize.

There is little point in saying more, its spilt milk and water under the bridge at this point. The bell cannot be unrung, it cannot be undone.

Any more cliches?

[going_home]

[Spider-TW]

^

[ghost flanker]

Never assume anyone cares what you think :P

I understand you don't like cockerpunk, probably for good reason, but I think you're out of line here. If you think his argument is flawed, then by all means address it. But comments like this make me feel uncomfortable about being on this forum.

[Dayspring]

I understand you don't like cockerpunk, probably for good reason, but I think you're out of line here. If you think his argument is flawed, then by all means address it. But comments like this make me feel uncomfortable about being on this forum.

I see both sides on this comment. Borderline flaming? Yup. But in reality he's also right - you can't assume that somebody cares about what you (or anybody else for that matter) thinks about a subject.

[ghost flanker]

I see both sides on this comment. Borderline flaming? Yup. But in reality he's also right - you can't assume that somebody cares about what you (or anybody else for that matter) thinks about a subject.

Seriously? Don't be so disingenuous. Whether he's right or not is besides the point. Cockerpunk said nothing wrong or provoking here. Big Evil went out of his way to pull a dik move that was intended to instigate a fight on this thread, not to divulge some insightful fact about skepticism. Would you be defending that comment if it were cockerpunk who had written it, instead?

[Spider-TW]

Seriously? Don't be so disingenuous. Whether he's right or not is besides the point. Cockerpunk said nothing wrong or provoking here. Big Evil went out of his way to pull a dik move that was intended to instigate a fight on this thread, not to divulge some insightful fact about skepticism. Would you be defending that comment if it were cockerpunk who had written it, instead?

OH! You're looking for an argument! This is "Abuse". "Arguments" are down the hall.

There have been a few large arguments around here over the years that you only see little bits of, either pruned away by various parties or bled over from other forums. Some bled over to other forums.

"I think" it's pretty futile to second guess the decisions made fifteen to twenty years ago as poor or unwise. There may be some applicable business lessons in it all, but you would build your own trap by trying to guide a decision today by 20/20 vision of the past ("past performance is no guarantee....)." While SP pooped on the industry during that period, TK has never struck me as a regretful and sad panda.

[cockerpunk]

I see both sides on this comment. Borderline flaming? Yup. But in reality he's also right - you can't assume that somebody cares about what you (or anybody else for that matter) thinks about a subject.

where did i assume anyone cares what i thought?

care or don't ... no skin off my back.

thread asked a question, i answered what i thought. as any member of AO is free to do (last i checked).

[ghost flanker]

Spider-TW,

Sure, it's futile in the sense that no response within this thread is ever going to change the past, and the lessons here aren't a guarantee regarding future business decision-making (is anything?), but it's apparent that some people still find the topic interesting and want to talk about it. TK may or may not have any regrets, but some AGD fans are still confused as to how or why such a good product wasn't more... I don't know... successful? Why AGD products aren't still mounted on display walls in paintball shops across the country. Other AGD fans have their own ideas -- some wrong, some plausible -- but the whole point of this thread was to get people to share what they think.

[Spider-TW]

Spider-TW,

Sure, it's futile in the sense that no response within this thread is ever going to change the past, and the lessons here aren't a guarantee regarding future business decision-making (is anything?), but it's apparent that some people still find the topic interesting and want to talk about it. TK may or may not have any regrets, but some AGD fans are still confused as to how or why such a good product wasn't more... I don't know... successful? Why AGD products aren't still mounted on display walls in paintball shops across the country. Other AGD fans have their own ideas -- some wrong, some plausible -- but the whole point of this thread was to get people to share what they think.

Right. So, there seems to be two main themes. One is that AGD did not deviate from its fundamental designs enough with regard to quality, robustness (3k regulators), and parts compatibility. Second is the lack of early electro designs and/or failure to fully accept a non-hybrid design.

My point is that "back in the day" only a small market that read APG magazines and such were looking for a great paintball gun that worked every time you pulled the trigger and that shot consistently. Chronographs preceded automags and the CO2 markers were awful for competition. There was also zero "body of knowledge" to say (for instance) about how much pressure and volume of air a marker needed to deliver per shot and how fast can you move that. You can find pretty good guidelines for that now, if you're not looking at a successful marker already. After AGD worked through up to the level 5 and beyond in refinements, there was nothing to say that a different design would prove out as well.

On electros, solenoid valves and electronics were just getting practical. If you wanted to have one reliable marker, it wasn't going to be straight up electro-pneumatic.

Something you should also consider is; "what did SP do correctly?". Other than patent squatting, they were selling a lot of stuff. Instead of containing and working at high pressure, they just brought it down and let the marker fail if something went wrong. They designed for product failure and promoted hard. They would sell you two half-reliable markers so that you could play 70.7% of the time. It's not a business of engineering nor production, but of sales. Engineers just became a necessary "cost center" for them. It is easy to see why a talented person may not be interested in playing that game (they don't have to).

I see the parts compatibility and modularity as a unique and exploitable feature, with small run CNC and 3D printing making a lot of interesting possibilities. With a little more luck, we will have a reliable electro mechanical frame. But if any of it is going to be "big", it still needs a twitter account and some hot models.

[blackdeath1k]

∆∆∆∆. And that is why marketing was my #1 reason. Companies time and time again prove marketing can sell a crap product any day of the week over a quality product that isn't marketed. Especially in the days before modern internet.