Keynote speaker Arnold Sanos
February 8-10 , 2022 , the Paintball Extravaganza was back after its Covid Pandemic break . This one was back in Washington DC , after the previous event was held in Memphis , TN .
What is the Paintball Extravaganza ? The PB EX “ is a nonbiased event to help the paintball industry grow , and provide a single location that dealers , fields and manufacturers can meet without the interruption of a tournament setting ,” as their advertising states . This is a business tradeshow which now includes laser tag , airsoft and soft gel water orbs games . This is an Industry Tradeshow , so it ’ s not packed with players ( no players are allowed ), only field , store , manufacturers owners , and staff . This is where the business of paintball gets done ( Editor ’ s note : clearly not as much this year ). Vendors do not bring items to sell to the general public , it ’ s one of each item , and size doesn ’ t matter for clothes , just show your product line . Sometimes on Thursday , the vendors might sell off their items to not have to bring it home . It ’ s all about orders , not taking home product .
There is the tradeshow floor with booths of various vendors , which is the showy part . There were many manufacturers that were not present , including some big names , this year , like many of other tradeshows , like the SHOT Show . Most of the reasons were logistics , company policy , can ’ t get their booths from other shows . Here ’ s the list : Pandemic and supply chain issues , shortage of manpower , positive Covid tests and Canadian travel restrictions . Apparently , even if you are willing to pay anyone to pick up your booth from the SHOT Show , nobody will do it for at least 4 weeks or longer . So a number of vendors had no displays or product , banners or anything . Got to give Chris and the guys at Virtue a shout out , as they had the same problem , and they went to a local Walmart and build a bunch of shelves to display their product on , the day before . HK Army had delivery issues , but Josh and Brandon soldiered on . With the loss of some long-time vendors , so went their tech classes ( and many stores and field ’ s reason for coming , for instant profit items ). When I was younger the profit from the Tech Classes alone could pay for my trip .
078 paintball . media magazine