Thursday, July 22, 2010

Valken and G.I. Milsim Get Friendly


Some of you may remember G.I. Milsim. Some others might not, and you certainly won't be faulted for it. Many of you will know who Valken is, as they've exploded on to the paintball market with great success. Well now Valken will be distributing the elusive G.I. Milsim products to the masses in the United States. The full release can be read here.

Here's the question I put to everyone out there: Good move or bad move for Valken? Do you feel that the revolution is upon us?

7 comments:

  1. GI Milsim is SHIT ! And valken gear too... I think I will laught soon !

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think Valken might see some backlash from more of the hard-core milsim crowd that are less then impressed with the GI Milsim .50 non-sense.
    I'll be honest, it's giving me second thoughts about buying the new Valken line of camo.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A comment from the director of Valken Sports (ad verbatum):

    "Valken is 68 caliber. If you'll notice, GI Milsim is both.

    Could the reaction be the result of knowing that the owner of GI Milsim (arguably) once produced the best paintballs in the industry and now he's back at it....in both 50 and 68 caliber and Valken is his US distributor?

    If I were employed at another company, I'd definately be worried.

    Focus people."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nothing on the GI Milsim site says anything about .68, it's all .50, I'm not sure what Greg was talking about there. The comment about the other companies being worried confuses me. Sicne the only thing GIMilsim has that the others don't is .50, this seems to be Valken promoting the .50 crap Rich is trying to sell. If that's the case, this will be an epic fail on the part of Valken. Tippmann, BT, Milsig etc have nothing to be worried about with this.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think he means the other companies are worried about some guy being back at producing "the best paintballs in the industry". Although I think when paintballers sink money into gear & other purchases, the LAST thing they think about are the paintballs. Even most fields try to go as cheap as possible without having them break in the rental guns!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unless GI Milsim gets friendly with the US and Canadian governments, and convinces them to pass legislation banning .68cal, then there will be no revolution! The industry is firmly rooted in .68cal. Asking every paintballer and field owner to scrap their existing equipment and buy .50cal equipment is like trying to convince people to scrap their existing car and buy a new one just to use a different type of gasoline! Good luck to the Montrealers, but I predict this will be a very niche product line with a few dedicated users, nothing more (just like .43cal never really caught on big).

    The old axiom of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" definitely applies here. If a .50cal ball uses 10% less air and hurts 10% less, is it really worth replacing 100% of our equipment, which is already doing fine for our purposes? For a revolution in an industry, you need a revolutionary product. .50cal is NOT revolutionary, it's just SMALLER!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Considering the response Valken's been getting from this here and on various forums, you've got to wonder if they made the right decision in picking up G.I. Milsim. Even if they're just a distributor, every business move always reflects upon you and can serve to win over or alienate possible clientele.

    ReplyDelete