ever wonder how much it really cost to produce any gun

[fdrsk8boarder]

white wolf i guess your kinda right, after all the money that the consumer pays you also have to think about the money that they turn around and put back into the pb world buy sponsering teams and events. lets face it, it takes a lot of money to advertise and market your product at both a large level, and even at a individual level, kinda like everyone that buys any type of gun is a walking advertisement either good or bad depending on the quality

[WARPED1]

Companies don't make much on guns. The cost is fairly high, stores don't either. The money is in paint sales and recently aftermarket parts.

[GT]

Companies don't make much on guns.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[B.A.M.]

In making the gun you must also take i account for other varible such as marketing, wages, heat, site, factory,shipping, janitors, electricity, and so on. But im sure they still make a killing in $

[TSovern]

There can't be a better money maker for the manufacturer than the timmy, can there? I find it hard to believe all cost per gun can be over $200 - $250

[WARPED1]

Manufacturers only up the price by $50-$75 bucks, I only know because I've worked in the industry.

[TSovern]

Not buying it brother, that would equate to 6% margin (gross) on a carved timmy, nobody survives on 6% gross on anything

[Muzikman]

Wapred: Being the Smart Parts fan you are. How do they make their money if it's not from guns? They don't mfg paint, and if I am not mistaken they do not even distrib any paint, so there goes your idea. Companies make money on guns, if they did not, the companies that make "Just" guns would never last. I think your example only works for a company like NPS. I am sure they make quite a bit off the paint sales.

Also, saying you work in the industry doesn't mean all that much? Where do/did you work? Some local paintball shop? The warehouse of NPS? or the front office of Smart Parts. Only one of those would put you in the know of what the profit margin is of the guns sold.

[SlartyBartFast]

Not buying it brother, that would equate to 6% margin (gross) on a carved timmy, nobody survives on 6% gross on anything

Well, TK/AGD always complained that 1400$ Xmags weren't worth the bother to sell.

It's painfully obvious that the margins in Paintball are tiny. Only the mass market manufacturers and high volume cut-rate distributers are obviously making anything approaching envious amounts of money.

The fact that the only people selling AGD products are low overhead home business and 'hobby' business types shows that the margins are low enough to scare away the normal retail crowd.

It may or may not be in the 6% area, but it's not high. Only a dealer could give you the true numbers, but I doubt they will.

I think the people making the most in paintball are the machinists and annodisers. Only in PB will people complain about the cost of things when so many will re-annodise many times and are more wowed by milling than performance.

[Muzikman]

I agree that an Xmag was not worth their time. But I think that had more to do with the complexity of the milling. I honestly think that if they made an non removable breech xmag with simple milling (but still nice) that it would not cost much more than an Emag. The fact that it took 4 hour or something to just mill the body of an Xmag is where costs come in. Machine time is not cheap (even if you own it).

That being said. I think that an RT Pro has a pretty decent profit margin. It's basically the same gun they have been building for the last 8 years. Just using aluminum instead of Stainless.

[SlartyBartFast]

That being said. I think that an RT Pro has a pretty decent profit margin. It's basically the same gun they have been building for the last 8 years. Just using aluminum instead of Stainless.

Yea. But they did do research to design the X-valve.

I always thought one of AGDs failings was the fact that they simply stayed the same price all the time. Considering the low market penetration of AGD though, I guess that the largest expense for them is overhead and financing costs as they aren't selling enough volume to cut the margin per marker closer.

But even the extreme body for AGDE was expensive (Xmag with little milling) and for whatever reason, it would seem production of a single-piece body or slug is also prohibitively expensive.

But, I never thought TK was being totally upfront there. The slug was initially explained as being round and requiring a rail because of the tooling used (Lathe and mill). Recently TK said what their supplier uses and it would seem that a one-piece body should be simple to produce.

Certainly TK was always a hands on micro-manager. When he wasn't around everything ground to a halt and when he was distracted by side projects it seems all of AGD was also sidetracked. Not a particularily successful business practice for standard production items.

Oh, well.

The fact that after some initial hickups PTP succesfully built micromags shows that the mysterious AGD precision fairies were quite solidly from the realm of mythology.

I've still got to find out how much my one-piece design would cost to mill (but it's only a rectangular block for now). Whether it would be functional depends on how accurate the accidentally released CAD drawing was.....

[Muzikman]

Well a one piece body should not be all that much more as PTP has been doing it for 10 years. I know Tom was trying to make the body and milling round to save machine time which would cut costs, but by how much, who knows.

As for the X-vavle. There was some R&D and such into it, but not too much, it's design is still based on the RT valve. One thing people forget is that the RT vavle was about 1/3 aluminum already, so it was a matter of being sure the air chamber could be made aluminum.

[spasticsquirrel]

might be posted, but master dealer price for an speed 05 is i think $815.

[Enemy]

its higher than that!! dealers do mark up cuz they need profit too but the cost at which they get their gear makes the mark up near easy to match msrp! it is just hard to match costs with places like nps and action village that get even more breaks for ordering guns by the tens to hundreds instead of by 1-5 at a time!

[SlartyBartFast]

might be posted, but master dealer price for an speed 05 is i think $815.

Which sells for 1060 on paintballgear. So, an IMMENSE markup of 30%.

At 245 per marker, how many do you need to sell to stay in business? Figure one employee at $7 an hour for 40hrs a week: $280 per week.

So, considering that you have to add taxes and paperwork costs to the employment of that employee you need to sell two guns a week just to keep your one person staff. But, the store rent and heat aren't paid for yet and you need money to put more stock on the shelves.

Yea, sounds like the stores are really ripping us off.