Dan Bonebrake got a business degree from Linfield College, then did the very thing his family hoped he wouldn’t: He started a paintball company.

Good thing he ignored their objections.

Bonebrake, along with his partner, Vince Gray, has created one of the extreme sport’s leading manufacturing companies and tournament circuits with headquarters in Salem.

Since going into business in 1994, Bonebrake and Gray have watched sales for the company’s three divisions reach close to $5 million annually.

The reason, according to the Sporting Good Manufacturers Association, is the increasing worldwide participation in paintball.

Up to 16 million people spent $390 million on paintball products in 2003.

Paintball, to the uninitiated, is an amped-up version of capture the flag. Competitive matches between two teams reward teamwork, strategy, and shooting skills.

Players fire half-inch balls of water-based paint sealed in a gelatin shell at one another at speeds upwards of 180 miles per hour.

All competitors are required to wear protective clothing that covers the body, including the head.

Bonebrake said the excitement and attraction of paintball comes from answering an age-old question he and other children have had when playing.

“I remember growing up and playing guns and yelling ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’, but eventually we went, ‘Man, this isn’t fun. How do you know if you hit him or not?’ Well, paintball brought that to us and it was very addictive.”

So addictive that Bonebrake and Gray now have three paintball playing facilities, known as Warpaint Paintball Fields, in the Salem area.

The other two branches of the pair’s empire are Bonebrake Airsmithing, a paintball gun modifying business, and the Xtreme Paintball Sports League.

The XPSL is a five-city amateur West Coast competition tour of more than 250 teams consisting of seven-man crews from Canada to San Diego.

In August, the XPSL had its first local tour stop at its new five-field outdoor facility next to Volcanoes Stadium in Keizer.

Major sponsorships from clothing and equipment manufacturers are even financially supporting professional teams, turning a once weekend hobby into big business.

“It’s getting just unbelievable,” Bonebrake said. “We give away retail prize packages worth $100,000 now.”

Two weeks ago at an event in Las Vegas, Bonebrake gave away 14 Sony home entertainment systems to members of winning teams.

Fox Sports has even begun televising professional events in places such as Orlando and Los Angeles.

Lee Ingram’s son, Rocky Knuth, is a member of the sixth-ranked team in the world, the Albany-based Naughty Dogs.

Ingram and his wife, Sherry, own the Albany Outdoor Paintball facility and have seen what once was a side business turn into more than a full-time devotion.

“I retired from HP a few months back and now I’m concentrating on growing this business,” said Ingram. “In the last year, I’ve seen more 10- to 13-year-old players than previous nine years combined.”

Word of mouth and a proliferation of Web sites devoted to paintball have spread the sport’s gospel like wildfire.

But perhaps surprisingly, nothing might have helped the industry more than when Wal-Mart started carrying paintball guns, Bonebrake said.

“At first everyone said, ‘Oh no, Wal-Mart is getting into paintball, they’re going to shut us all down,’” said Bonebrake.

“But then, like 10 times the amount of people started to get into paintball, and since Wal-Mart doesn’t carry the higher-end equipment, those seasoned and experienced players that wanted a better product started looking elsewhere to companies like us.”

Today, current sales estimates by SGMA’s Recreational Market Report show about 200,000 paintball guns being sold per month.

Gray, Bonebrake’s partner, expects the figure to increase with time.

He added that unlike other alternative sports, like skateboarding, where adults typically grow out of the sport, paintball is becoming an activity that families are passing down to their children.

“The proof of that is when I go to tournaments and I see dads in their 30s and 40s playing, and their kids are on younger teams,” Gray said. “It’s a cyclical thing.”

Souce: flagpull.com

good story

Another example of a small american business making it happen.

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