Interview with MOATI of Special Ops Paintball

After my interview with S-Thunder I put it to you guys who you'd like interviewed, and MOATI was mentioned. So as promised...

MOATI, the new proprietor of Special Ops Paintball was kind enough to answer a few questions for me...

First off, a congratulations is in order for your purchase of Special Ops Paintball! Would you care to give everyone a quick rundown of how this came about and what it means?

In October of 2009, Tiger Stripe Paintball which was doing business as Special Ops Paintball closed it's doors. I quickly formed Extreme Stitchworks with plans to continue making soft goods for paintball. I leased the Special Ops brand and went forward. Over the next 9 months, we started to make several items that were outside the realm of paintball. At the same time, "Special Ops" seemed to be dwindling away. When the opportunity arose to actually purchase the brand and all the websites associated with it, I couldn't pass it up. So I shut down Extreme Stitchworks, secured some financial backing, and started a new company called M-Tech (MOATI Technologies) with a dba of Special Ops Paintball. M-Tech will present all of our non-paintball products and I have the opportunity to bring Special Ops back from the dead.

In what kind of direction will you be taking Special Ops Paintball?

Back to its glory days. The plan is to bring back all the things that made Spec Ops great but to do it in a way that ensures it can support itself. We will continue to do soft goods of course including custom products but we will also bring back hard goods, resale items, videos, and mini-movies. We will also be working tirelessly to build the Spec Ops community back up and to grow and support the sport of paintball.

Who is the team at Special Ops currently?

We're running as thin as possible right now with everybody doing everything they can within the company. Right now I have, in addition to my cut and sew team...

- Myself

- Brady "B-Dazl" Coleman (sales and customer service and creative)

- Josh "Donnie" Orvis (shipping/receiving)

- Greg "DeweyDB" Johnson (creative)

- Travis "Nexus Rex" Cable (IT)

In addition, we've secured a machine shop to handle hard goods and I've got a group of people acting primarily as consultants for R&D purposes.

Now if you meant the paintball team, that would be...

- Myself

- B-Dazl

- Josh "Donnie" Orvis

- Josh "J-Mac" Maclee

- Preston "Dirty P" Coleman

- Cameron Gleave

- Candice "Candy" Gleave

And then we could have any number of "guest" team members joining us from time to time.

What have been some of Special Ops' hardships in the past year?

I'd say the hardest thing over the past year has been cash flow. I was basically financing everything myself and that made for some very tough times and made it difficult to get certain materials and develop products the way we would have liked to.  This issue has been greatly alleviated now.

Will Extreme Stitchworks products still be available through Special Ops Paintball?

For now, yes but we will be getting those lines going on their own over the next few months.

Anything else you'd like to add?

My vision is for Spec Ops to once again become the place that people go for information and entertainment as well as to purchase their paintball gear. I want it to be a place that players can consider their own and that they can point new players to and know that they will be welcome and well informed. To do this, I need feedback from players. Many say that Spec Ops is what got them started in paintball...I'd like to hear specifics of how that happened so we can continue. Growth of the sport and support of the players is the primary goal of the new Special Ops Paintball.

What do you think of the new direction Special Ops Paintball is going in? What kind of products have you bought from them in the past and what are you looking forward to in the future from them?

On a final note, who should I bother next?