Well its 4 in the morning here in Afghanistan, I havent gone to bed yet, and I have to be to work in 3 hours. So logically, its time for me to convey my thoughts on an industry thats growing up, and the people in it that have no clue how or why.
First, Id like to address Smart Parts. I love this company. Shut up, all of you, I dont care what you think. They are one of the first companies that has effectively structured their business interests around the needs of the consumer. What the heck is kosmo talking about, you may ask yourself. Well its a multi part answer. It starts with everyones favorite company, Brass Eagle. This company was one of the first big players in the paintball industry, we all know that. Why were they so big? Because they looked at the market they were in and said to themselves, "How can we supply a product to this market as cheaply as possible and still make a profit?" This lead to wide stream exposure for the paintball world. Little kids could go in to their local wal-mart and pick up a Talon or a Stingray, and they could play paintball. The budget market is far and away the biggest paintball market there is, and it always will be. Well obviously, these guns were made as cheap as possible because they were simply designed to be cheap, and shoot a paintball in somethings general direction. This lead to the more passionate individuals up scale in the market, to options like AGD, WGP, WDP, and the next company in my agenda, Bob Long. For years, it was pretty much 3 or 4 players in the up scale paintball market. There was AGD with their mags, WGP with their cockers, WDP with their angels, and Smart Parts with their shoe boxes. WDP's Angels were pretty widely regarded as the ultimate marker. It provided better technology than every other marker out there, in a fairly aesthetically pleasing package. Granted, there were people out there who opted for super tuned cockers that could give these Angels a run for their money, but Angels still owned the top spot. Then Bob Long came along and said, "How can I provide something equivalent to that, but make it simpler to produce, cheaper to manufacture, and very profitable?" This lead to the timmy, a gun that was incredibly simple to manufacture by yester-years standards. It didnt have a wacky 14 way solenoid, it didnt need to be manufactured out of costly stainless steel, and its meaty aluminum body could be cosmetically altered every year, creating demand to buy a new one. This lead to a small revolution in the way many markers were created. WDP started trying to simplify their Angels to get costs down and remain competitive. WGP started offering more cosmetic variations of their guns, and eventually started adding electronics to remain competitive. Companies like ICD and Smart Parts copied the general concept with their respective entries, the Bushy and the Impulse. AGD kept plugging along with an expensive to manufacture product, finding new ways to make it even more expensive to manufacture in an attempt to keep their mag competitive. That was the way of things for a few years, new variations of a gun would come out, and some people would buy them for ridiculous prices. But the world of paintball was still firmly nestled in the clutches of the likes of Brass Eagle and Kingman, continuing to plug away with the theory of providing a functioning product for as cheap as possible. Smart Parts started suing people, people got mad, timmies kept getting wierder and wierder looking. Such was the way of life.
But then, as if Henry Ford himself were reinventing the model t, Smart Parts had an idea. It was something that industries throughout the world had understood for a long time, but for some reason it hadnt occurred to paintballers yet. They said to themselves, "Look, we need to try something new. Look at all this stuff. Things like ramping boards and infrared eyes are all the craze. People are paying a good premium for these things. But theyre not expensive. Simple electronics like this cost only a few cents to make, but people are sticking them on expensive guns to make them even more expensive, so only some people can afford to buy them. Imagine what would happen, if from the beginning, we tried to make a gun that was simple to produce, cheap to manufacture, and included the items from a high end gun like eyes, that are actually really cheap?" Aluminum is relatively cheap, but the equipment and expertise required to machine it all pretty and anodize it isnt. So why not use a simple aluminum tube to house the components, with a cosmetic plastic sleeve? And why does the grip need to be made of aluminum, thats a fairly complicated piece to machine as well. Decent plastics are just as strong anyway, and are in many ways actually much more durable. So they made a gun that is capable of holding its own with the likes of a $1000 e-mag, and figured out a way to make it cost less than $100 bucks to produce. They dont have to sell them for a grand to make a profit. And they dont have to worry about all those people they pissed off with their lawsuits. The features of this marker, and the market price of it, put it squarely within reach of average joe schmoe, who doesnt even know about SPs legal games, let alone care. Theres also about 5 million times as many average joe schmoes buying paintball guns as there are Dave Youngblood Juniors running around buying the high end stuff.
This leads me to AGD. Where, oh where, did they ever go wrong? And is it too late to right the ship? First off, where they went wrong. When the mag came out, it was a revolution. Even though it wasnt easy to manufacture, what with its oddly shaped parts made of extremely expensive stainless steel, it was an easy concept to understand, which made it easy to maintain and operate. People loved it. But that was going on 20 years ago now. It was a good concept back then, and it got AGD a fan base. But they ran it into the ground. It didnt have the competitive advantages of guns like the timmy and e-cocker. It wasnt as efficient, it couldnt be shot as fast, and it was a lot heavier. Then the eyes came out, and every other gun on the market quit chopping paintballs. So AGD set out to modernize their marker. They added lvl 10 bolts to stop the chopping. They tried E triggers, but not only did it not work overly well, but they got sued into stopping. They converted to aluminum. They tried cosmetics. They got side tracked by a million and one different side projects like the warp feed. All of this stuff was ridiculously expensive. It was also a huge mistake. Everything they had to do to the mag to make it competitive was so much more expensive than what their competitors did. Lvl 10 was not only difficult to manufacture, it was difficult to implement. All they had to do with timmys to get them to stop chopping was put $1 of electronics on it, drill a hole in the side, and slap a plastic cover over the wires. AGD was trying to put jet engines on the Hindenburg. Not that I dont respect AGD as a company, or the individuals involved. Tom had so much passion for these projects and ideas that it was truely a sight to behold. No other company in the industry could match how much AGD cared about the products they were putting out. Everyone knew this, and that is why to this day AGD survives on a reputation for putting out a quality, if not high tech, product. Thats why I think theres still a market for future products the company could put out. If AGD sat down and said to themselves like SP did, "How can we make a competitive product, starting from scratch, with the goal of keeping manufacturing costs to a minimum" it would surely sell. AGD has a reputation that far exceeds Smart Parts reputation, and that alone is a powerful marketing tool.
My worry is this: the crazy little 15 year old kids. Tom comes into this forum, asks what people want, and we tell him. And because Tom is a passionate person, he has historically listened too much. The population on this forum for the most part cannot be trusted to provide accurate market analysis. Its a bunch of kids who change what they want every 30 seconds. Even the ones who are not kids, so many of them share the passion AGD has for an innovative product that its impossible to get unbiased feedback on whether or not its a truly good idea. There arent many people on here who can speak for average joe schmoe, going to walmart looking for something that doesnt cost more than 250 bucks. Thats where the money is. Some people look at it as selling out, or maybe that devoting AGDs resources to something like that would keep them from being able to develop innovative off-the-wall ideas that nobody else would think of. But it certainly would fund it a lot better than the e-mag did.
I dont know, maybe Im wrong. Maybe Im just really tired. But I definitely respect what SP has done to the paintball industry. I hope AGD can bring their own brand of success to it. And I certainly hope anyone who says AGG dies of syphallis. But thats neither here nor there. Im going to bed.
First, Id like to address Smart Parts. I love this company. Shut up, all of you, I dont care what you think. They are one of the first companies that has effectively structured their business interests around the needs of the consumer. What the heck is kosmo talking about, you may ask yourself. Well its a multi part answer. It starts with everyones favorite company, Brass Eagle. This company was one of the first big players in the paintball industry, we all know that. Why were they so big? Because they looked at the market they were in and said to themselves, "How can we supply a product to this market as cheaply as possible and still make a profit?" This lead to wide stream exposure for the paintball world. Little kids could go in to their local wal-mart and pick up a Talon or a Stingray, and they could play paintball. The budget market is far and away the biggest paintball market there is, and it always will be. Well obviously, these guns were made as cheap as possible because they were simply designed to be cheap, and shoot a paintball in somethings general direction. This lead to the more passionate individuals up scale in the market, to options like AGD, WGP, WDP, and the next company in my agenda, Bob Long. For years, it was pretty much 3 or 4 players in the up scale paintball market. There was AGD with their mags, WGP with their cockers, WDP with their angels, and Smart Parts with their shoe boxes. WDP's Angels were pretty widely regarded as the ultimate marker. It provided better technology than every other marker out there, in a fairly aesthetically pleasing package. Granted, there were people out there who opted for super tuned cockers that could give these Angels a run for their money, but Angels still owned the top spot. Then Bob Long came along and said, "How can I provide something equivalent to that, but make it simpler to produce, cheaper to manufacture, and very profitable?" This lead to the timmy, a gun that was incredibly simple to manufacture by yester-years standards. It didnt have a wacky 14 way solenoid, it didnt need to be manufactured out of costly stainless steel, and its meaty aluminum body could be cosmetically altered every year, creating demand to buy a new one. This lead to a small revolution in the way many markers were created. WDP started trying to simplify their Angels to get costs down and remain competitive. WGP started offering more cosmetic variations of their guns, and eventually started adding electronics to remain competitive. Companies like ICD and Smart Parts copied the general concept with their respective entries, the Bushy and the Impulse. AGD kept plugging along with an expensive to manufacture product, finding new ways to make it even more expensive to manufacture in an attempt to keep their mag competitive. That was the way of things for a few years, new variations of a gun would come out, and some people would buy them for ridiculous prices. But the world of paintball was still firmly nestled in the clutches of the likes of Brass Eagle and Kingman, continuing to plug away with the theory of providing a functioning product for as cheap as possible. Smart Parts started suing people, people got mad, timmies kept getting wierder and wierder looking. Such was the way of life.
But then, as if Henry Ford himself were reinventing the model t, Smart Parts had an idea. It was something that industries throughout the world had understood for a long time, but for some reason it hadnt occurred to paintballers yet. They said to themselves, "Look, we need to try something new. Look at all this stuff. Things like ramping boards and infrared eyes are all the craze. People are paying a good premium for these things. But theyre not expensive. Simple electronics like this cost only a few cents to make, but people are sticking them on expensive guns to make them even more expensive, so only some people can afford to buy them. Imagine what would happen, if from the beginning, we tried to make a gun that was simple to produce, cheap to manufacture, and included the items from a high end gun like eyes, that are actually really cheap?" Aluminum is relatively cheap, but the equipment and expertise required to machine it all pretty and anodize it isnt. So why not use a simple aluminum tube to house the components, with a cosmetic plastic sleeve? And why does the grip need to be made of aluminum, thats a fairly complicated piece to machine as well. Decent plastics are just as strong anyway, and are in many ways actually much more durable. So they made a gun that is capable of holding its own with the likes of a $1000 e-mag, and figured out a way to make it cost less than $100 bucks to produce. They dont have to sell them for a grand to make a profit. And they dont have to worry about all those people they pissed off with their lawsuits. The features of this marker, and the market price of it, put it squarely within reach of average joe schmoe, who doesnt even know about SPs legal games, let alone care. Theres also about 5 million times as many average joe schmoes buying paintball guns as there are Dave Youngblood Juniors running around buying the high end stuff.
This leads me to AGD. Where, oh where, did they ever go wrong? And is it too late to right the ship? First off, where they went wrong. When the mag came out, it was a revolution. Even though it wasnt easy to manufacture, what with its oddly shaped parts made of extremely expensive stainless steel, it was an easy concept to understand, which made it easy to maintain and operate. People loved it. But that was going on 20 years ago now. It was a good concept back then, and it got AGD a fan base. But they ran it into the ground. It didnt have the competitive advantages of guns like the timmy and e-cocker. It wasnt as efficient, it couldnt be shot as fast, and it was a lot heavier. Then the eyes came out, and every other gun on the market quit chopping paintballs. So AGD set out to modernize their marker. They added lvl 10 bolts to stop the chopping. They tried E triggers, but not only did it not work overly well, but they got sued into stopping. They converted to aluminum. They tried cosmetics. They got side tracked by a million and one different side projects like the warp feed. All of this stuff was ridiculously expensive. It was also a huge mistake. Everything they had to do to the mag to make it competitive was so much more expensive than what their competitors did. Lvl 10 was not only difficult to manufacture, it was difficult to implement. All they had to do with timmys to get them to stop chopping was put $1 of electronics on it, drill a hole in the side, and slap a plastic cover over the wires. AGD was trying to put jet engines on the Hindenburg. Not that I dont respect AGD as a company, or the individuals involved. Tom had so much passion for these projects and ideas that it was truely a sight to behold. No other company in the industry could match how much AGD cared about the products they were putting out. Everyone knew this, and that is why to this day AGD survives on a reputation for putting out a quality, if not high tech, product. Thats why I think theres still a market for future products the company could put out. If AGD sat down and said to themselves like SP did, "How can we make a competitive product, starting from scratch, with the goal of keeping manufacturing costs to a minimum" it would surely sell. AGD has a reputation that far exceeds Smart Parts reputation, and that alone is a powerful marketing tool.
My worry is this: the crazy little 15 year old kids. Tom comes into this forum, asks what people want, and we tell him. And because Tom is a passionate person, he has historically listened too much. The population on this forum for the most part cannot be trusted to provide accurate market analysis. Its a bunch of kids who change what they want every 30 seconds. Even the ones who are not kids, so many of them share the passion AGD has for an innovative product that its impossible to get unbiased feedback on whether or not its a truly good idea. There arent many people on here who can speak for average joe schmoe, going to walmart looking for something that doesnt cost more than 250 bucks. Thats where the money is. Some people look at it as selling out, or maybe that devoting AGDs resources to something like that would keep them from being able to develop innovative off-the-wall ideas that nobody else would think of. But it certainly would fund it a lot better than the e-mag did.
I dont know, maybe Im wrong. Maybe Im just really tired. But I definitely respect what SP has done to the paintball industry. I hope AGD can bring their own brand of success to it. And I certainly hope anyone who says AGG dies of syphallis. But thats neither here nor there. Im going to bed.
- Halliday On "Will you date my valve?"
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