Getting Old!

I think I'm getting too old for this.  I just can't get excited about half the stuff players get excited about these days.  A few years ago it was Ninjas and pirates...didn't excite me.  Now it's all about Zombies....still not excited.  Sometimes it feels like the world is being run by pre-teens.

Change is in the Air

The last few posts I’ve had on here have been about 50 caliber paintball, because that is where my focus has been at the field.  That part of our business is still relatively small but it’s humming along and growing and I still predict it will be a much larger part of our business within about a year.  But I’m going to step back from that for a moment and talk about the general operations at a paintball field, regardless of caliber size.

In the past, I’ve mentioned that for a recreational paintball field, to create an environment that is enjoyable for the majority of participants, the ROF (Rate of Fire) should not be measured in bps (balls per second) but rather in balls per day or outing.  The thought being that if players are somehow restricted to how many paintballs they can shoot during their outing, an environment that is pleasing (fun) to the majority can be created and thereby a successful business model can be built around that.

I still believe that to be true, but at this point, I feel I need to modify that a bit.  I, like everyone else has opinions and I usually believe my opinion to be the right one (otherwise why have it?), but I have always prided myself in being a person that will listen to others opinions and be able to change or modify my opinions if necessary.  In other words, I try to be open-minded and not too stubborn.  I still believe that an environment needs to be created at recreational fields (especially those catering to a lot of new players – which most fields need to do) that limits the number of paintballs being shot rather than just limiting the bps.  But the formula  for ROFshould be modified from balls shot per day or outing to balls shot per time spent as a live player on the field.  That measurement would most likely be best served in balls per live minute on the field (I’ll abbreviate that as bplm – balls per live minute).

I believe the model we have at our field is a pretty good one in that regard, as far as creating an environment where the majority of participants are going to have fun.  We are open for 7 hours on Saturdays and Sundays and the average player stays approximately 5-6 hours including our lunch break.   We usually play 12-14 fifteen minute games during that time span with breaks between each game.  It’s a fairly leisurely day for our customers, probably more leisurely than found at most paintball fields.  Most of the games are not resurrection games, meaning that when shot, the player leaves the field so in reality, players are probably only active (live) players for about 60 minutes of that time.  So if our customers shoot 500 paintballs during their stay, their balls per live minute would be 500 divided by 60 or 8.3 bplm.

Our main competitor used to run his business in much the same fashion.  That is where my partner and I played most of our paintball before we started our field, so it was only natural for us to use what we were used to in our own business model.  He has however in the last few years changed his business model, probably because he felt he couldn’t compete against us well enough with the same business model.  He has chosen to shorten the overall stay of his customers and have more resurrection games, which keeps the players “live” longer.  He also dropped the price of his paintballs to about 60% of what he was charging before and what we still charge.  I don’t know exactly, but I am going to guess that his customers are probably live players on the field for approximately 90 minutes during their stay.  His entrance fees are slightly higher than ours, but with his paintball prices being lower and knowing that the average player will spend approximately the same amount of dollars regardless of price of paintballs, it wouldn’t surprise me if his average customer shoots closer to 750 paintballs.  These are just best estimates, but probably not that far off.  Using those figures, his players are shooting 750 paintballs in 90 minutes of active or live play or 8.3 bplm.  Both our field and our competitor field’s numbers are estimates, so chances are it’s not exactly equal, but even if estimates are off a little, both business models are probably producing similar environments on the field.

He has lower markup on his paintballs, but with slightly higher entry and reduced cost in labour (less open hours) his profit/player is probably not all that much different.  My gut feeling tells me it’s probably a little less, but his change in business model has created an increase in business for him, so he probably has more profit than before the change when he had fewer customers (he’s also made other changes to his facility that would be viewed as positive from many of his customer’s standpoint).

His business model and our business model are very similar in the type of environment they create, therefore we draw from basically the same customer pool.  I’ve always said there are only so many people that will play paintball, that number only changing depending on what is offered (intensity wise).  The change in overall cost, unless drastic, is not going to significantly change the numbers of players willing/wanting to play.  His increase in business has therefore affected us.  Those players have to come from somewhere and the pie, although it has grown a little bit due to other positive changes for the customer, has not grown all that much, so that means we have lost some market share.

Being open minded, I have to admit that there are some perceived advantages his business model has from the customer’s point of view, mostly having to do with time.  Time in our modern society is very important to people.  People who come to our field may feel they are getting value because for a smaller fee, they can stay longer.  However, at our competitor’s field, although players are there for a shorter time period, they are actually active or live players on the field for a longer time.  Therefore they are playing more paintball, in a similar environment.  Needing to be at the field for a shorter time period while actually playing more paintball is a positive for many people.

Industries evolve.  Paintball has definitely evolved a lot over the years.  Businesses have changed and have needed to change to survive.  When a business sees a competitor doing something that works, it’s only natural for that business to think about adopting some of those changes.  I’ve seen this coming for a while but have resisted the move because I have a feeling it will result in less profit for everyone concerned.  Once we implement changes that mimic more closely what our competitor is doing, I have no doubt that we will regain the market share that we have lost.  Our competitor will of course lose some market share.  It’s inevitable and regrettable.  I wish he could keep all his customers and we could get new customers from elsewhere, but that’s unfortunately not the way it works.  The pie is only so big.

With this post I’ve obviously given our competitor some inside information, but there really isn’t all that much he can do with it and he would quickly catch on to any changes we make anyway.  We’ll try to differentiate ourselves obviously a little as I am sure he will.  But change is acomin’.  We feel there is no choice.

Getting Involved in the Play

New paintball players come in a lot of different flavours.  Some players have no concerns or fears about the discomfort of paintball and get right into it, playing aggressively right from the start.  Then there are others who are very hesitant and have a tough time leaving the first bunker they get to or start at.  We’ve all seen new players who get to a bunker and then never stick their head out to take a look to see what is going on.  I guess the sounds around them tell them it’s not in their interest to take a peak and risk getting hit by one of those balls they hear hitting bunkers all around them.  This is most common with the younger players and female players.

The latter players often get over their initial fears after a while, usually by confirmation from their friends that “it’s not that bad”, or by actually getting hit themselves at some point and thinking that it’s not that bad.  Then there are those that never get over the fear and just stop playing, never to set foot on a paintball field again.

One of the things we are noticing with having more and more of our Low Impact Games (50 caliber), is that first time players are playing more aggressively quicker, most noticeably the younger and female players.  We are also seeing virtually no players choosing to sit out games or stop playing completely.

As we were gambling on, the decreased discomfort of being hit is getting people playing more and getting them involved in the action more quickly and more often.  Personally I think this is great.  We all know that actively participating in an activity will make it much more likely for people to continue with the activity, opposed to watching the activity from the sidelines or in this case from behind a bunker.  My guess is that this will mean that in the long run, we will end up with more people playing paintball, which is of course is what it’s all about.

Tough Guys.

We haven’t done a lot of advertising of our Low Impact (50 cal) games yet, but the odd thing is that the two paying groups we’ve had so far were both stags.  I was expecting tweens and teens to be asking for this, but apparently it’s the tough twenty and thirty something males interested in low impact paintball.  Who would have thunk it?

I Don't Get it!

Does anyone else think it's weird that the Sandana's Owner's Club is one of the busiest sub-forums on PBNATION?  http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=3988217

Our First Low Impact Paintball Game

We played our first Low Impact Game (50 caliber game) at TNT Paintball today.  Since I knew it was going to be a learning experience for us, I didn’t feel right subjecting paying customers to our little experiment, so we held a little competition through Facebook with the winners receiving a free paintball outing for themselves and three friends.  The outing included field fees, rentals, lunch, and free paintballs (250 for an afternoon session).  The players didn’t have to spend a penny, assuming they could hold themselves to the 250 paintballs.  Most couldn’t, which didn’t surprise me.  Not because I don’t think that players could play with 250 paintball during that time span, but because the whole thing was free, so spending an extra $20 or so wasn’t going to seem like a big deal, and that seems to be what most did.

But I didn’t feel too bad about it.  Usually, shooting 500 paintballs in a half day session of “regular” paintball is a little too much for the “average” player.  But with the Low Impact Paintball games, shooting 500 paintballs  in a half day didn’t seem as bad.

We had players that have played quite a lot of paintball, some that have played a few times in their life and a few who had never played.  Everyone in the game used exactly the same gear (we are using the Kingmann Opus for the time being) regardless of experience.

I watched some of the games and even jumped in on a few to experience firsthand what playing with the smaller balls would be like.  I have to say, for recreational paintball, I really didn’t feel a lot of difference other than when I got hit, it hurt less.  When hit on bare skin, it was not without any discomfort, it was just a lot less discomfort.  Everyone in the group seemed to have a good time with most of them voicing it quite enthusiastically.  One player commented that he would be able to go to work tomorrow and not have to worry about being sore.  There were a lot of comments about how this was going to be a good thing for those that were worried about the pain associated with paintball.

The only disappointing part of the day was the “no shows”.  Although in the contest I made it clear that the prize could only be used today between 12 and 4 and that if they didn’t think they could make it, they shouldn’t enter, almost half that won the prize, didn’t show up.  That once again demonstrated to me that it’s not the cost of paintball that is keeping people away.  I think for new people it is mostly fear and then in general, it’s the fact that there are just a lot of choice today in our society.  There are so many things people can choose to spend their time on, paintball is just one of many choices and gets lost among everything else.

50 Caliber Conversion Kits

So in the comment section of my last entry “Holding Back 50 Caliber Evolution” -  http://reiner-schafer.blogspot.ca/2013/02/holding-back-50-caliber-evolution.html#comment-form ) , I hinted that there was something coming down the pike that might be noteworthy; a marker providing the reliability of something like a Tippmann 98 for the 50 caliber market.  Something currently not available, but being sought by many field owners.

Well, I’ve been given permission to provide a little more info, although at this point the manufacturer has asked to remain anonymous until the official launch hopefully happening in a few short weeks.  Being released shortly will be a 50 caliber modification for 68 caliber markers including the Tippmann’s 98,the FT12 and I believe some other markers as well (the Tippmann’s are the only ones I have 100% confirmation for at this point).

It is not a typical conversion kit that requires a breach adaptor, bolt and barrel to work, rather 1 piece that adapts the gun to 50 cal.  It apparently does not even need a separate 50 caliber barrel, the stock barrel can be screwed back on after the conversion is done.  The conversion can also be reversed.  In the case of the FT12, to convert from 68 to 50 caliber, or from 50 back to 68 caliber can be done in less than a minute.  The 98 takes longer due to having to separate the clamshell body halves to get at the internals.  The price has not been confirmed, but is indicated to be much less than a separate new rental marker like the Spyder Opus.  If the modification does not affect the reliability of the Tippmann marker, we may have a winner on our hands.

 The obvious advantage from a field owner’s perspective (especially a relatively small operation field owner) is that he/she does not need to have two complete sets of guns to be able to cater to both the 50 caliber and 68 caliber market.  For someone like myself, that is still in the “trial” stages of offering 50 caliber games, I don’t have to invest nearly as much as I thought I would have to invest to give it a try, and hopefully I will have something that is more reliable than the Spyder.

I am hoping to get a prototype in my hands sometime in the next week or two and then will hopefully have a little more info.