We recently connected with Ryan Greenspan and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
Over the course of the last several years, we have dealt with everything from R&D roadblocks to vendor issues and everything in between. I am a partner in a paintball gun manufacturing business called Field One Paintball. We manufacture high end, electro-pneumatic machines that require a great deal of ingenuity. We pride ourselves on manufacturing in the US and that has become more and more difficult. We own two of our own machines that are run nonstop, but in order to scale up, we have run into a problem; the cost of machine time and anodizing (the process of adding color to raw aluminum) in the US has sky rocketed. More recently, as military contracts and medical device manufacturing are awarded to more and more US machine shops, the price of machine time has gone up substantially. This, along with aluminum costs have made things increasingly difficult. One thing that we have done in order to help offset machine time and costs is to handle in house polishing and learning new anodizing techniques to streamline that aspect of the manufacturing side. We have a good amount of game planning left in order to become more lean and to ramp up production, but small steps, at times, lead to leaps and bounds once you get over the humps.

Ryan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Ryan Greenspan and I am a world champion professional paintball player. My team, San Diego Dynasty, and I have won more tournaments than any other team in the history of the sport. We are currently in our 21st season on the pro circuit and we have just recently won back to back world championships. Five years ago, we took over a high end paintball marker manufacturer and created one of the most high end, competitive paintball markers on the planet. We design, machine and assemble everything in the US and we handle all of the research and development. We have recently launched an exclusive members only fan club experience that we sold out in hours. The club consists of members from all over the world and grants them access to exclusive events. We also ship out a curated gift package each month. The package is a great way to show our appreciation as well as to try our hand at soft goods manufacturing.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses
I touched on this briefly in the previous answers, but we acquired a defunct manufacturer within our industry and rebranded and revamped the product. We phased out the previous product line and created something unique, new and far superior. The business of electro-pneumatic engineering is very complex and our team is very proud of the work that we have created. We’re in the process of creating a second iteration of our world champion winning marker. We also have designs being drawn up for another high end competitive maker to add an additional product line.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
this is a great question. We built up our reputation based on skill alone. We definitely had a great amount of luck to be in the right place at the right time, but at the same time, we had the skill to get us to where we are. We are the most successful team in the history of our sport and with that and the acquisition of a high end brand, we were able to take the next steps in the evolution of our sport.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.fieldonepaintball.com
• Instagram: @ryangreenspan
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryangreenspan18/
• Twitter: @ryangreenspan
• Youtube: Youtube.com/ryandynasty