After posting about how the Proto SLG took a price cut, here I am delivering bad news about a price increase… this time with Draxxus and Procraps paintballs and many other paintball products. Kee Action Sports, the parent company of all these products, released a press release a few weeks ago informing their customers (most of us) that there’s going to be a major price increase within the next 30 to 60 days. Their reasoning behind this action is what you’ve been hearing everywhere: Oil and our economy. KEE Action Sports is reliant upon oil for the manufacturing of their paintballs and paintball products. And as the US dollar consistently decreases, “our only practical alternative left to us is to take action on the price of many of our paintball products…”.
So basically paintball is becoming even more expensive. What’s being done about it? Well, since every paintball you shoot will soon cost you more per shot, the only alternative we can choose is to simply shoot less. The PSP recently changed their maximum allowed rate of fire from 15 BPS to 13 BPS, a good first step. A lot of price control has to do with the end consumer (that’s you and me). Theoretically, if you shoot less, demand goes down, and price goes down.
In my 8 years in paintball, I’ve constantly heard the general public complaining on how expensive the sport is. They’re right, it is; and it’s that very fact that drives most people away from paintball. With an average lifespan for a paintballer being about 2 years, something needs to be done about this. Paintball is becoming a get-in, get-out activity, which isn’t beneficial to players and businesses. To the paintball businesses out there, do what you need to do in order to survive, but remember that the real purchasing power comes from us consumers. Just don’t piss us off too much with high prices. 😉
Paintball isn’t even close to being as expensive as some other sports.
All of the people whining about this obviously haven’t been around long enough to know that prices have decreased dramatically since the sports introduction.
i thought it was vegetable oil. i dont get how that works, crud oil is going up but i dont know how vegetable oil is made but it doesnt sound like its coming from iraq. i dont understand paintball companies they want people to play paintball and try to make this sport main stream but thats not going happen when it cost at least 100 dollars a day.
Kee manufacturs many products, not just paintballs. The general manufacturing of all of their products is in some way, shape or form reliant upon oil. The price of crude oil increasing rises the prices of overall manufacturing production.
i have never played pintball before but i have always loved to shoot one and i have always wanted one of my own
i think that paintball has always been an expensive sport, and will most likely always be an expensive sport. the interesting thing is going to be seeing who will continue to play even though the paintball price hike and who will leave because of it.
well it is true that back then it was very expensive, costing round .60 cents a ball, but we weren’t shooting at 15bps, and now with ramping and all, and $75 a case, thats bout .04 cents per ball, but it’s still expensive knowing how it doesn’t exactly take one shot one kill, and paintballs don’t take don’t take much to produce at all, bout $5 a case, which is bout .003 cents per ball, a big profit right there, so the prices does not have to be that high at all, and for products, there are many other cheaper and more efficient solution to make them, if they’re going to be more expensive, please make it more durable
“$5 a case, which is bout .003 cents per ball, a big profit right there”
It may be the case thats the cost of producing but did you include + freight + warehouse (some have climate control) + marketing + administration-working force + missing production goals or overproducing and bad running productions.