Paintball Magazine Paintball Magazine March 2020 Issue | Page 64

All photos this spread by Bea Youngs Paxson
Thoughts from
long time paintball
business owners...
for a real a firearm. And even now paintball
guns are so similar, that has changed things
over the years. In the beginning when we first
opened we were trying to distance ourselves
from real firearms because laws were getting
strict. l didn’t have airsoft and we started to
talk to our employees about the number of
time customers who asked about airsoft and
they said it was ‘about half’. That’s a lot. That’s
when we decided to start selling some of it. It
was a slow process, and steep learning curve
but it was something that we never figured we
would have in our store. Watching them play,
it’s like we were for paintball in the 1990’s.
And repeating some of the bad things we did
in the 2000’s.”
Denise and Darryl Hazlitt - Velocity Paintball - San Diego, CA
Denise/Darryl, if you could change one thing
since you started your business, what would
it be?
“Save your money for the bad days. Early days
were really good but later days is were rough.
Having all that money in the early times and
being conservative at that moment would
have gone a long ways for us. It got tougher in
the future... saving for a rainy day, not knowing
the rainy day would be for a long time.”
Jay Wonderly - Paintball Pro Shop aka PB Sports - Fort Wayne, IN
Name something you never expected since
Jay, if you could change one thing since you
you started your business?
“Airsoft was definitely one of those things. I started your business, what would it be?
didn’t like the realism, having guns look so “I would have been more aggressive online.
realistic -- something that could be mistaken
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