“We want to be the field for the player. With twenty (20) combined years of experience within the sport, we want a field/pro-shop/organization that players are proud to call home. We understand how important quality products, time spent on games and the correct supporting staff affect the overall experience. We will not be the field people talk about negatively. An organization owned and operated by players, for players.” Prior to the purchase of the field, our client has been conducting market studies and researching our target demographic for this particular sport, and the future sports we would like to bring into the company as well. This will give them a better idea on where/how to advertise current and future endeavors. Also within this demographic, our client will be launching an online retail store to help better satisfy our demographic that purchases more online rather than in person. This will also roll up into our customer satisfaction study that we have been conducting at neighboring fields around Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The largest part of this sport is driven from customer satisfaction and interaction. People/players are what drive the sport. Since the sport is not as popular or commercialized as other organizations, player feedback is vital. If the consumers have a bad experience, it can become known very quickly within the “paintball community”, which a field may have a hard time or never fully recovered. Lastly, the largest and most exciting part of this acquisition is the future expansion projects. Our client is planning an analysis using the prior year’s financials to help aid the transition the park from a seasonal, to year-round operation with the addition of an indoor paintball structure. This will give their local players one of the only indoor paintball fields within the north eastern part of the state.

History of the Sport: Bob Jones, who was a sporting goods retailer, wrote an article about the game in an edition of sports illustrated about his time with a group of friends in 1981. They called the game “Survival” in which they used guns manufactured for farmers to mark cattle with gelatin capsules and fired by CO2 cylinders. The game was very crude compared to today’s standards. Soon after the article, they started selling beginner kits to the public to try and spread the game. Bob opened the first “official” paintball field in New Hampshire in 1982. He branded the game as the “national survivor game” and contracted the Nelson Paint Company to be its soul supplier of goods. Throughout 1983-1989 there has been many woods ball and speedball championships throughout the US and Canada. Big names like JT, WGP, WDP, Tippmann, LAPCO, IDC, and Smart Parts are carved the way for the sport. Most of these companies are still in business today. From 1990 until 2002 there was huge innovation within the industry. Paintball guns that were once crude pump guns reengineered from farmer’s tools now were engineered to be light, fast, 30+ balls per second firing markers. Companies like Dye, Brass Eagle, and JT pushed for the championship matches to be broadcast on ESPN. Although not very successful, many of the world cup championships were broadcast on basic cable in an effort to draw more consumers to the sport. In 2003, the sport took a downward spin. A company by the name of Smart Parts Inc. had filed a patent for many of the new technologies being used by most of the industry. They were eventually granted the patent, and began to sue everyone who they believed had infringed on their designs. This went on for a few years before Smart Parts themselves went out of business. It wasn’t until after the financial crises of 2006 hit that the sport started to recover, and had a new, youthful fan base to drive innovation, design, and sales on the products.

History of EMR/Details of the Park: EMR Paintball Park was established in 1996 and resides in New Milford, Pennsylvania. The original owner was Mike “Blue” Hanse, a very well know paintballer and public figure within the paintball community for the last 25 years. The field is home to 122 acers of farm land transformed into twenty outdoor paintball fields. The field is well known within the paintball community and houses two of the largest man made wooden castle structures made specifically for paintball; Castle Aaargh, and Castle War. The field also contains other forts, tire structures, and a built paintball city named “Tippmann Town”. Above the area with the pro shop/filling stations is a two story paintball player recreation center. This is used for player’s parties, birthdays, or other occasions. It houses couches, TV’s, ping pong tables, corn hole, and other such games. Outside of the recreation center there are some horseshoe stations, beach volley ball courts, and a man-made large swimming pond with coy fish to catch. If you are a season pass holder, or have a team that visits EMR regularly (or is your home field) you can stay in one of the thirty two bunkhouses on site for weekend getaway. These bunkhouses hold up to twenty players and include electric hook ups as well. Alongside next to the bunkhouse area there are over 100 campsites for players from all over the country to come stay in their RV or tents. Currently, the park offers six major events, and fifteen open play dates. Some of the Castle Conquest games and Western War games can see up to 1,500 players at each event. Each event also holds many local food trucks and vendors for the visitors of the park. Open play events can be individual, or groups buy in.

Business Plan/Analysis Target Demographic:
Our clients have been spending a lot of time and effort into future planning and advertisements for this park. A big contribution is the tools being used to find their target demographic/target market. Market research has shown that the majority of paintball players fall between the ages of 16-35. This is step one – find your age group for that demographic, the second step is to paint a picture of your perfect customer. This will give you your first look into where you can advertise vs. places that are not so ideal (i.e. if your demographic is children, advertisements in bars would not help your cause). Step three is to establish who will benefit the most from your offer/service. Step four is taking all that gathered information and thinking about your market. Once you get an idea of your demographic, step five is to look at your own company and resources and see what best suits your needs and constraints. The sixth step is to reconcile all that you have gathered, and look for alternatives as an option. Our clients have chosen to advertise 35-40% of their fiscal resources via social media. As mentioned later in this report, most of the age demographic uses their handheld devices or portable computers as their main source of information and news. Another 20% of their resources will be used in paper advertising (i.e. newspapers, magazines, and fliers). 20% will be used in radio broadcasting around the Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey markets. The last 20% will be allocated to any new services (Please reference Appendix G)

Launching Web Services / Pro Shop Expansion:
The new owners of the park would like to expand their services soon after the recent acquisition. One of the ways they plan to increase their services and gain more support in the paintball community is by launching a comprehensive website. The web service will be extremely important to attract and maintain support from their target market. The target market has grown up with the internet and uses the social media with many aspects of their life. A well designed website will help promote the new rebranding of the park. EMR will also want their website to be mobile friendly. Many users solely access the internet on their smart phones and/or tablets.
The features EMR would like on their website are:
- Brief History of the park & sport
- Directions/Hours/Waivers/Contact Us
- Reserve fields/Rental Information
- Events/Photos
- Lessons and Training
- Pro Shop
Developing the website will cost on average approximately $7,200 - $13,000 (www.executionists.com). The itemized breakdown of the website redesign is below:
- Planning / UX (sitemap, wireframes) – $600 – $ 2400
- Visual Design – $1200 – $2400 (some visual design elements will need to be modified due - to mobile responsive specifications)
- Programming – $3800 – $4800 (for smaller websites)
- Programming – $4800 – $9600 (for larger websites)
- Content Support/ Migration – $600 – $1200
- Client Training / Documentation – $0 – $600
- Testing and Launch – $960 – $2,400

The webpage will consist of seven (7) main screen options with quick links to help direct users to wherever they would like to go. The Pro Shop will have most of the sport’s top clothing lines and apparel. The clothing companies will include Empire, HK Army, Planet Eclipse, Valken, and many other popular brands. Another large aspect of the Pro Shop will be beginner to professional equipment. EMR believes having the correct quality equipment can increase a paintballer’s experience in a very positive way. The new owners have audited all EMR’s current suppliers and continue to bring in new suppliers as well. They established contracts with three companies to sell their products solely on their website. The contracts will include a percentage of sales (on top of EMR’s markup price) and free gear to wear and allows customers to use at the facilities. The website will use WooCommerce for Pro Shop purchases and payment to reserve fields. WooCommerce was developed by WordPress and used by many small and medium sized businesses for online purchases. WooCommerce is a free plug-in. There is no cost to EMR for the use of this payment system.
Project Management of Pro Shop/Online Retailer:
EMR has a limited Pro Shop and no online services. EMR’s new ownership would like to expand their Pro Shop services and launch a website. The first step for EMR is to understand what is needed to expand and create a website. A way they can do this is by a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). After creating the WBS, EMR needs to understand how long the task will take. They created an Activity-on-Arrow (AOA) chart. To first create the AOA diagram they need to understand how long each task will take. From there, we then can create the AOA diagram to find the critical path and adjust our strategy based on any slack we may encounter.