What do i need to open my own paintball field? Serious answers only.?

I hope you read all this, because it took me a long damn time to type it up, now my fingers hurt :S

Setting up a paintball field can be as simple or as complicated as you need, the first bit is location. Are you planning on running an indoor field or an outdoor field? Do you want to play woodsball and scenario games, or fast paced speedball games?

Ok, now you have your land, next you'll need netting. You should always have your field surrounded, if it's a big field in a remote area you may be ok just netting off areas near the "front" where your proshop and food stand and the like is. Do not skimp out on netting, don't think you can just go to Home Depot and buy some; buy paintball specific netting, most insurance companies require it specifically anyways (see below about insurance)

Next, set up the field itself, you can use inflatable bunkers, or just random stuff like pallets. Up to you.

BIG THING HERE, if you're going to take money from people to play on your field, YOU NEED INSURANCE. You need to call around to the group insurance companies and find out what it's going to cost you, it will not be cheap, and each and every player will need to sign a waver. Listen to me very, VERY carefully now: DO NOT skimp out on insurance. All it takes is one kid getting a welt that's a bit sore the next day for his mom to freak out and sue you to the stone age. Paintball has a bad enough 'rap' in the media as it is, you WILL fight an uphill battle if you don't have insurance. DO NOT OPERATE A FIELD WITHOUT INSURANCE. I REPEAT, DO NOT DO NOT DO _NOT_ RUN A FIELD WITHOUT INSURANCE

Got it? Good. Now you can get people playing on your field, but you need paint, and if you want to open a proshop you need other stuff too. Get in contact with a paintball distributor, one that sells everything, look up either Procaps Paintball or Kee Action Sports, they both manufacturer and sell a wide variety of stuff, including paint. Procaps makes its own paint too, they also own (and vastly improved) Zap's paint manufacturing, so I'm going to recommend them. Get an account setup, order a pallet of paint, you should be able to get generic whitebox paint, or field paint for less than $30.00 a case. Pallets typically have 128 cases on them, for a medium sized field a pallet should last you a month or so. As for the rest of the gear, don't go crazy in the beginning, in fact find players trying to sell their gear and offer to sell it on consignment; great way to stock your shelves without costing you anything.

You can also order guns and the like from these distributors, Procaps is setup as the only Tippmann distributor in the US aside from Tippman themselves, so if you want field rental guns nothing beats the Model 98 Custom or the Model 68. When you get setup with a rep for your region, try and see if they have any deals on reconditioned, refurbished, or rebuilt guns. They come to you in a plain white box, function fine, and are usually about $10-20 cheaper from your dealer pricing. Also push the rep to give you the middle tier pricing, being a new account he'll give you the sh*t tier pricing (I know because it's what I do for new customers) which is usually %20 more than what a big box retailer pays, plus you have crap terms (Net 30 at best, often, no discount for early pay). You can sometimes get middle tier pricing, which will be %10 off or so, plus a discount for paying early (varies vendor to vendor)

Ok, air, you'll need air to fill for your customers, contact a local Airgas location as a starting point, ask them what your prices are for tanks. Make sure when getting a CO2 tank that you absolutely positively MUST get a tank _WITH_ a dipstick, you want to make sure you're sucking the liquid CO2 off the bottom of the tank. If you get a tank without a dipstick you'll just pull the expanded gas off the top of the tank and won't be able to get more than 2-3oz of CO2 into a 9oz tank. Also make sure you have a good fill station setup and KNOW HOW TO BLOODY FILL IT. I recommend the M-10 fill station system, I know Procaps sells them, I'm not sure if Kee still does.

As for food, well you're really on your own for that, it's out of my area of expertise, but you'll need a food permit to make and sell food from your county/city inspectors unless you're just talking chips/canned drinks. Don't sell food without one. If you have to have food to start just get a cooler with some sodas, and sealed foods. It can vary from county to county, but most places won't take to much of an issue to selling sealed foods.

And as far as getting funding, about all I can recommend is talk to the SBA for a small business loan for some capital. If you want to try starting your business without getting into debt (I highly recommend you do try) then try selling advertising space on your fields netting to local businesses. Also call up local radio stations and ask if they want to hold a live event at your field, you'll probably have to give stuff away as part of a contest, but you'll get free publicity. You can look for investors, but that's a risky area and really has so many variables it's impossible to say. One option would be forgo the proshop at your field and team up with a proshop somewhere near town. He gets "his" own field and you get "your" own proshop that way, with half the investment on both ends.

Quite frankly, setting up a field on it's own isn't cheap. My personal recommendation is skip the food, skip the extra paintball gear, and buy cheap paint. Run specials that make it cheap to play at your field. Your initial investment should be as small as possible to minimize your loss in case you flop; no offense but you don't sound like you've got a lot of small business experience so don't get your head TO deep into things. In my experience, just in gear and paint alone you're looking at anywhere from $10-20,000 easily, not including land and the like; just the paintball gear itself.

If you have any other questions just drop me an email.

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I agree with everything Red said, he's absolutely right about everything. Trust him, obey him, or you'll have nasty problems, both with civil law and even criminal law (yes, there are some screwups that you can make when going into the paintball field business that can land you in jail).

Just to touch on the points he warned you about:

Not having insurance (or having inadequate insurance) means that when someone gets hurt, and someone WILL get hurt sooner or later, the owner of the field is on the hook for any lawsuit or statutory damages. Given medical costs these days, the person who sues you may well wind up owning the field you just spent (as Red estimates) $10,000-$20,000 on, plus 80% of your paycheck for the next 30-40 years. Don't skip it, don't skimp on it. DO NOT. Even if it was solely the customer's fault, courts and juries often won't know that or believe it. Being right won't save you!

Next, we have business licenses. Red didn't get into this, but many places require a license to operate a business. Not having one where the law requires it is one of those things that can land you in prison.

Related to business licenses are business taxes. You need to consult a lawyer and probably an accountant about what the local fee and tax structure is like. Tax evasion can net you 10-20 YEARS in prison.

Red mentioned food permits. In order to sell food that is not in sealed packaging, you absolutely need inspections and permits. The exact details vary from place to place, but in general, anyone who handles food or food sales needs to be tested for various communicable diseases; Anyone who fails the test cannot handle food, period. And the certification card expires, requiring a re-test to re-certify. The food storage, prep, sales and dining areas (even if the last is just a log to sit on) need to be inspected by the local health department. If they tell you to do something, you have to do it. Or else. Inspections are often not free, depending on the local laws. Depending on those local laws, you may need a food permit and inspection even for sealed packages (I know of one incident where someone got all their sealed chip bags and soda pop cans condemned because they had a dog in the place they sold from). Failure to comply with local health codes and permits and inspections can result in shockingly large fines. Not paying them and/or fixing the things an inspector tells you to fix WILL result in jail time and even bigger fines. If someone becomes seriously sick (or dies) from food you sold, even if it is sealed packaging, you may be criminally responsible (manslaughter).

All in all, you're looking at a great deal of responsibility and expenses. Opening your own field sounds cool, but you should be sure you can follow through, before you start spending money to build your business.

I don't own a business but I know from friends that own fields that you need to be out in the woods or in a secluded area away from high ways or houses. For the gear, food, and stuff make a good size shack with two sides to it and have two or three people at it. Have one side watch the gear and the other side with food and stuff and buy in bulk. Buy the guns, paint balls, CO2, food, ext in bulk. It is way cheaper. You will also need money for the land and to maintain it. Mowing, keeping insects out, and parking spots, water, bathrooms, electricity. It won't be cheap at all. Good luck!

Paintball Field Start Up Packages

Txs for all the info will check into the business licenses looks we would be good to go we have the rural area, the wooded area money can get the insurance I think we can make this work

Carol

following. i am also interested.