Paintball Magazine Paintball.Media Magazine May 2016 | Page 127
valued at 150 million bucks at one time. They were one of our
industry’s most established companies who catered mainly for
the site markets across the world with their range of site markers.
When the dust had settled on all the rumors concerning Tippmann,
Richmond emerged from the clouds of speculation, and was
standing there with a big check in one hand, and Tippmann lined
up on his chopping block in the other. His acquisition of Tippmann
surprised a lot of people. As I saw it, it didn’t seem to be a good fit
with his own company.
I’ve learned many valuable lessons in my 30 years in paintball and
this is one of them, if someone like Richmond does something
which doesn’t make sense, then the problem lies with my sense,
not his. I was therefore at a loss as to the reasons underwriting his
buyout of Tippmann. When I ended up seeing him again, I asked
him why he had bought Tippmann. His answer was as oblique as
it was revealing. He said, ‘Pete, I needed Tippmann because it
allows me to go in a direction I want to go and I couldn’t go there
without them’.
At first, I thought he’d avoided my question with a somewhat
ambiguous reply but Richmond isn’t the sort who does that. If he
doesn’t want to answer a specific question, he’ll tell you to your
face and not indulge himself with a dollop of BS. However, I’m
now looking back with 20-20 hindsight and I can see exactly what
he meant then, but I’m no businessman and so the truth between
the lines evaded me at that time. But I have to say, I still couldn’t
appreciate all the reasons for his Tippmann acquisition as a means
to an end as he was suggesting. But last year, the veil was lifted and
the full extent of Richmond’s plan was revealed.
Our industry is always playing host to rumours and it was no
different last year when a rumour began to drift around our industry
that someone was interested in buying Kee Action Sports. Rumours
are commonplace in our industry/sport and unless you can nail it
down with an admission of guilt, you have to take them with a pinch
of salt. So I’m gonna mix my metaphors and suggest, there was no
smoke without fire. And just to set the stage on this, over the last
years or so, our industry’s thousand pound gorilla had been Kee, it
was originally created as a combine company when an investment
group bought out the two biggest industry concerns at that time,
National Paintball Supply, owned by Gino Postorivo, and PMI,
owned by Jeff Perlmutter. Both of those guys are smart, real smart.
The only reason they left paintball was because in true Mafioso
style, they were made an offer they couldn’t refuse. These two
companies, and a few more besides were acquired and rolled up
into one mahoosive concern, Kee Action Sports. It then stood aloft
of all other companies and had been dominating our marketplace
up until last year.
It should now come as little surprise as to who was interested in
acquiring Kee. When I first heard the rumour, I dismissed it out of
hand because it just seemed to be a step too far especially after
Richmond had already added Tippmann to his stable of companies
the year before. I knew he had deep pockets, but I didn’t think they
were as deep as the Mariana Trench. If Tippmann was valued at
$150 million, I dread to think what Kee would have cost, but it’s
reasonable to assume it was a few bucks more than 150 mill. Well,
it just so happens, that at last year’s Millennium event in Basildon,
I went out with Richmond, Steve Baldwin and company for dinner
one night. I don’t much like poncey, nouveau cuisine restaurants
where you need a scanning electron microscope to see the food
on your plate, and when the bill comes round, and your bottom jaw
hits the table like a rocket-propelled anvil.
Anyways, I put the fear of a massive dent in my wallet and asked
Richmond if he’d closed the deal on Kee yet. He said he was a few
days away but I kinda wondered what he was up to in acquiring
Kee on top of the GI stable of companies and Tippmann. It had to
be something more than just basic acquisition. Now, the reason I
mention any of this is because now, Richmond’s sphere of control
and influence i n our industry has never been seen before. Basically,
he’s now in a position that enables him to pretty much nudge this
sport wherever he wants to. Richmond has always had pretty strong
links with Steve Baldwin’s concerns over the years, one of which
is obviously the Millennium along with the stable of companies
under the GI banner. And it is this relationship that now ties up the
Millennium with the US NXL, joint-owned by Richmond that proves
pivotal in all this.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
And so, we now home in on one of the changes that needs to
happen if we are to arrest the slide of tournament paintball, and
this change is predicated on the not unreasonable opinion that
playing tournaments is too expensive. If we address this, it can only
be good for stimulating the flow of players over to tournament play.
That’s not a bad premise but how do we bring about re-establishing
the previous flow of players into the tournament scene?
The Millennium Series has decided to come up with a new
game format this year, and with it, the hopes and aspirations of
Steve, Laurent and Richmond will play out in this overhauled
Millennium Series along with the NXL in the US. There will now
be a standardization of rules, formats and administrative hierarchy
across the paintball world under the WPSB umbrella, and hopefully,
this infrastructure will become the bedrock for our sport’s longawaited consolidation. The WPSB is a recently formed federation
to act as the focal point for all national federations that provides
the necessary incorporation across the board that our sport has
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