VFTD would like to congratulate the ProPaintball guys on their merger talk meeting story. Nice job. Because it was indeed a secret meeting despite the fact VFTD aluded to the fact it was happening a couple of weeks ago. Which reminds me: Almost any time some sort of sensitive info leaks into the public this site is assumed to be involved. Au contraire. If VFTD burned sources and/or broke promises Mr. Curious would quickly be out of business. And to prove it to y'all I'ma tell you something about the meeting you don't know.
WHAT'S HE GONNA SAY!?! OMG!
Rumor has it that everyone involved signed a non-disclosure up front and if that is true then whoever passed information on to ProPaintball should oughta be mighty red-faced right about now assuming the details published by ProPaintball are accurate--something VFTD can neither confirm or deny. Next time some beans get spilled y'all might want to look a little closer to home.
As sensitive as the secret meeting was Mr. Curious has stumbled onto a rumor buried so deep in the industry's basement it was surely intended to never see the light of day. Assuming it's accurate. It is, in fact, so sensitive that VFTD isn't going to identify the company--but those of you not hopelessly out of the loop should know who is being referenced--and further no mention will be made of specific numbers.
Remember back in the day when Smart Parts was involved in one litigation after another mostly revolving around their ability to enforce certain patents? And the upshot was some sort of cross deal was made between SP & Dye & Angel (more or less) and everybody else ended up having to come to terms with SP and pay licensing fees in order to manufacture and sell electronic paintball markers. Or get out of the gun biz. Do you remember what happened to those patents? And do you remember a press release made regarding those patents?
Rumor has it that some gun makers have been approached and informed they will be required to pay a lump sum upfront plus a per gun licensing fee that is approx. 40% - 50% greater than SP ever demanded. (Inflation, I guess.) While the company is perfectly within its legal right to do so that would appear to contradict past public statements of intent. VFTD does not know how or if this rumor may affect any company that had agreed to terms previously with SP. In looking for additional and related info it seems that the duration of active patent protection (in this category) is twenty years which leaves a goodly number of years that the patents will remain in force--assuming annual maintenance fees are kept up to date.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
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11 comments:
ProPb kids are good at getting the news out before anyone.
F Kee right in the face. If I had money I'd file an antitrust lawsuit against them.
Thats why I refuse to support kee at all, greedy bastards
And everyone always starts by asking for the price they expect to get, right?
I guess if you do a piss-poor job of supplying the industry, and run out of all your top lines (including the ones you manufacture yourself) before the middle of the season, you have to balance the books somehow...
Anon, although running out of inventory half way through the season is not a good long term strategic business plan, having sold all the wares you obviously anticipated selling in your business plan before the season, must mean you are selling more than anticipated in which case they could not be operating in the red (unless the business plan called for them to operate in the red, but that's unlikely).
So will KEE be the new Devil in the eyes of paintballers now that Smart Parts is out of the Devil business?
Well, No Reiner.
Even if KEE did this asshattery, its leaps and BOUNDS apart what SP managed to do in terms of fucking their customers into state of mad hate.
KEE's customers are not other paintball manufacturers. KEE's customers are fields and dealers. It's unlikely they'll care too much about who pays who in patent royalties.
If KEE had taken orders and then was not able to fill orders taken, that would be one thing. But running out of inventory mid-season and not being able to take new orders isn't a bad thing at all. It shows your dealers that they better get their orders in at the start of the season or they'll miss out.
That's actually one of the problems with paintball - the expectation that dealers can, at will, order from a distributor and get product in days. Many other niche sports operate under the model that the manufacturer displays next year's product at trade show, you look at the product and decide how much of whatever you want, manufacturer then gets product manufactured, plus a little bit, and it's delivered 6-8 months later in time for the Christmas retail season. They'll have some extra product available for spot orders, but if you didn't get your order in 8 months ago you'll be out of luck.
That does two things. One, it gives the manufacturer much better information on how much stuff to make, since the retailers are basically forced to give them that information. And two, it insulates the dealers from being hit with a distributor-caused price drop when the dealer hits the end of a season, has too much product, and then dumps it on the market, undercutting anyone who bought from them earlier and is still sitting on inventory.
One thing you can say about everything KEE is out of - any retailer who has it on the shelves doesn't have to worry about KEE cutting the price on that product for later orders.
I should have made a short version: If a retailer calls KEE and they are sold out of the product the retailer wants, that's the retailer's fault, not KEE's fault. Unfortunately most paintball 'businessmen' are not informed enough to realize they caused their own problem. Although in fairness, we've conditioned paintball retailers not to sit on too much inventory because they risk the distributor cutting the price later and forcing the retailer to eat the losses.
KEE would do the industry a huge favor if they announced all orders for the 2013 product line, to be released Sept 2012, had to be in Jan 2012, and they would only make enough for those orders plus 10 or 20%. KEE knows how much to make, retailers know they won't get screwed on price cuts later.
I guess that's why they fired the head purchaser - because he was doing such a fine job...
I obviously disagree. If a manufacturer/wholesaler runs out of staple items (eg 48/3's) mid season, and is out for 8-10 weeks, that's their fault, and no-one elses. Purchasers are paid to make projections as accurately as possible. Kee projected low sales and ordered accordingly, why should anyone else be blamed for that?
Far better to sell out than be stuck with extra inventory.
Of course, you'd want to have more so you could sell more, but selling out isn't bad for KEE. It could be just the leverage they need to change the way the industry buys things.
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