Who's tried small scale paint manufacturing in the last decade?

[TF_Aloha]

Update:

Ecapnation gave me 4 brands to look into:

Hydrotec
Gap
severe
Dye (yes really)

Wow, some good reads and it looks like the same thing that's happening now with imported mystery paint has been going on for a while. Here's what I've found so far...


Severe - Never made their own paint, they were importing everything from Columbia.

DYE - Never made paint, they imported from China

Hydrotec - Made their own "paint." The founder tried to invent a new paintball but couldn't get a quality product or a financially viable manufacturing process so it went under. Good news it that the owner seemed to be successful in his later businesses so he didn't get wiped out for trying

GAP - I'm having trouble finding much about this one. I know they made good stuff and were closely tied to the Dynasty. It seems like they just couldn't beat that monster up in Canada. They were doing a ton of work just to make smaller margins than the big guys who could always beat when competing for stores.

I'm kinda thinking that independent production hasn't been nearly as common as people think. Many of the "little guys" seemed to just be selling AlibaBall or another big brand's paint in a different box.

[coyote]

The parent company of GAP (Great American Paintball) was "Soft Gelcaps West". They were near Carson City Nevada.

Alex Fraigie's father Rich was involved in ownership. The Dynasty formula was a blue shell ball, neon pink fill, banana scented orgasm. Consistently the best paint I have ever shot. The rec grade was cheaper and better than every competitor at the time.

When Sac pump day rolled around I would bring about 5 cases and sell it by the bag. If GAP did a special run of black shell it was a guaranteed sellout.

[Sdawg]

I believe GAP - Great American Paintballs - was owned by the family of Alex Fraige.

[Drcemento]

oh dear - paint discussions are my Achilles heal! especially when GAP is mentioned.

GAP was the best paint I ever ran through my gun. period. Big, round, shot through bushes, smelled like bananas - the stuff of legend these days. Early nelson or RP would be the only other comparable paint. I was living in Tahoe during its hey-day and could drive down into carson city and buy it out of the back of the factory for like $45 bucks a case. We had some epic outlaw woodball games all over Tahoe those years. and some of the shots i made with my trusty phantom are still etched in my memory.

I did recently post here about GAP possibly starting up again. - rumors have abounded here in Nor Cal and there may be some truth after I dug around a bit. I even e-mailed alex fraige about it, and surprisingly he got right back to me:

"Unfortunately we had to sell that property after my dad passed away in 2020. Kore is renting it from the new owner and I believe they are producing paint or plan to. Gap paint was the best we ever shot and certainly played a big part in the rise of Dynasty. Thanks for supporting the brand while it lasted.

Alex"

GAP was owned by his dad - not 100% how it started but the story we always heard was s that alex loved playing paintball so his dad bought or started a paintball company and sponsored dynasty during their rise in the early 2000's

it's death as I understand it was from it's habit of undercutting their own distributors by being happy to sell direct to whomever they felt like, leading to them losing those distrubutors over time and sales falling off the map

as far as anyone knows the manufactuting equipment is still there in reno. they kept the building in the family till his dad died. as they stated Kore is now renting it.
heres a bit from my previus post:

with that info i found a press release from Kore itself august 2022:

In our continued efforts to better service our customers, Kore Outdoor is opening a new West Coast distribution point. Located just outside of Carson City. The warehouse is less than 40 miles from Reno, Nevada, and will serve as a 1-day ship point from almost anywhere on the West Coast.
Kore Outdoor will continue our commitment to paintball by reinvesting in the market and should have more exciting news in the coming months
Kore Outdoor Inc., formerly known as G.I. Sportz, is the largest manufacturer of paintballs and paintball gear in the world, with origins that date back to the early 1980’s when paintball first began.
Kore is a conglomeration of some of the most prominent brands in paintball together in one company spread out over 11 locations in four countries. Our company consists of 250 full-time employees worldwide, producing billions of paintballs annually, and is famously known for our popular brands: Tippmann, Empire, JT, G.I Sportz, Spyder, Vforce and more.
Address:
Kore Outdoor
10121 hwy 50 east
Mound House, NV 89706


So the rumor could be true. Whether they make paint there or will at some point ........ it is the old GAP facility adress , GI/ Kore does sponsor Dynasty, and did bring back the banana ball, and why chose to rent that specific building in butt hole nowhere Carson when they could have rented any warehouse in Reno.......

of course just because your using the old GAP equipment doesn't mean your going to get GAP paint automatically......

I'm optimistic and prefer to hold out hope!

[coyote]

You ever a member of or play with South Tahoe Outlaws?

[markdem]

Has anyone ever gone to one of these manufacting facilities and bought paint straight off the production line? Im curious how accurate brand new stuff is in comparison to whatever we get at rental fields

[TF_Aloha]

I've shot paint out of paint trucks at World Cup before and that paint is essentially factory fresh. It's a night and day difference between that and even the same label paint shot from a store. Even after a few weeks in good storage conditions, the brittleness went down from truck-fresh, although the acuracy never did.

Paint needs to sit for a few weeks after encapsulation before it's shootable, so there's a bit of a window where it doesn't necessarily need to be at the factory to be as fresh as possible. GI Sportz (and maybe Valken now) paint trucks at NXL events are probably as good as directly out of the factory, since they don't have an overseas transport period to worry about between manufacture and the event. They actually do care about performance at those events, so their encapsulation is timed to be perfectly fresh on a specific weekend.

[Mr. Hick]

Mark: The main reason we have good luck with GI paint at AG and OSG is because we are about 6 hours by truck from the manufacturer. Dave at OSG told me that the odds of you playing with paint that is more than 2 weeks old at OSG is slim.

[sonixr7]

I still have 2 sealed bags of DYE Competition Grade from 2010 maybe.

[minimag03]

The poor quality of paint was one of the reasons I stopped playing...and that was 8 years ago. After reading this thread I'm terrified to see what I'll find whenever I return to the field...

[TF_Aloha]

Remember when they tried to get us to use .50 cal? They never gave up, they just went incremental.

I came back to playing a couple years ago after a while off and I thought either I, or my gun, was broken until I learned about how bad paint got.

[TF_Aloha]

Little update: Gino from Victory/Valken is now producing out of New Jersey as well. They're probably going to do what they usually do and just be Pepsi while Kore/GI is Coke. I'm predicting now that we'll see a bunch of new house brands and maybe some old labels come out soon. Kore figured out that making the same few paint formulas in 30 different boxes let them just switch a field to different box artwork whenever customers rioted instead of losing them to another brand. Valken should be doing the same. Anything that claims to be from the US and doesn't show the owner next to a production line in social media is going to be Valken.

[minimag03]

That sounds promising except for who's doing it lol... really tho, I hope this is true about US production, no matter who is doing it.

[Chuck E Ducky]

Never underestimate the level of sketchiness that Gino will pull. Shady like a tree and. up to something like a set of stairs.

Let’s face it paint today and for the foreseeable future is going to Suck. There is no incentive to produce good paint when it’s getting imported so cheap and most business models revolve around selling Quantity over Quality.

This year was definitely the worst I have seen for paint in as long as I can remember.

I don’t get why we can’t develop a better ball.

[DocsMachine]

Remember when they tried to get us to use .50 cal? They never gave up, they just went incremental.

-.50 cal is a great idea... when used properly. It's ideal (I'm told) when used as a "low impact" ball for very young kids just starting out.

The big problem was they were trying to sell us .50 as a replacement for .68 cal. Worse, trying to tell us obvious bulls**t like that it had the same range. That alone turned off a number of players to it.

I don’t get why we can’t develop a better ball.

-We can. It just costs more. And the vast majority of the players will buy cheap over good.

Doc.

[cockerpunk]

the thing i learned with working with paint companies ... is that the paint companies actually know shit. like they know their process handles, they know their quality, they know how to make shit. unlike most paintball gear manufactures who dont. like they know how to make excellent paint. they know how to make heavy, round, limited seam paint. its just expensive and time consuming and no one actually wants that. so they dont do it very often.

i worked with nelson and pro-caps. both were sharp as tacks IMO.

unlike my time working with gear/barrel/marker makers ... i enjoyed working with paint companies.



we also after 5+ years testing paintball equipment only found two things that really, actually, effect the outcome of a paintball game ... the talent of the player, and quality of paint. good paint will shoot straighter, shoot farther (its heavier), and have a better effective range, because it will actually break on them at range. nothing, barrels, guns, loaders, etc will have such a large effect.

[cellophane]

-We can. It just costs more. And the vast majority of the players will buy cheap over good.

we also after 5+ years testing paintball equipment only found two things that really, actually, effect the outcome of a paintball game ... the talent of the player, and quality of paint. good paint will shoot straighter, shoot farther (its heavier), and have a better effective range, because it will actually break on them at range. nothing, barrels, guns, loaders, etc will have such a large effect.

I'm apparently in the minority. I want paint that will hit and break on what I'm shooting at. For practice where I know I'm shooting 2-3 cases- not as much of an issue, but at a tournament it better hit where I need it to and break when it hits. Ideally in pink, but apparently people are lame and don't like pink paint 🙄

[martix_agent]

we also after 5+ years testing paintball equipment only found two things that really, actually, effect the outcome of a paintball game ... the talent of the player, and quality of paint. good paint will shoot straighter, shoot farther (its heavier), and have a better effective range, because it will actually break on them at range. nothing, barrels, guns, loaders, etc will have such a large effect.

yea that seems to be the general consensus among everyone. You can't fix horrible paint no matter what you do.