Paintball Journal

“Lucky is restructuring and going to be operated out of the UK.”

In fact it has been funded through its expansion to date by UK investment and there is no intent or action to abandon the US paintball community. We are moving to strengthen our product lines and capabilities to deliver good products and good service to the paintball community.

Please have patience with us through this process and look forward to a revitalised Lucky website until then please contact the UK site for product or questions. We hope that the paintball community will continue to support Lucky as it has done in the past.”

My Commentary

AKA No more Lucky PB in the US. This smacks of shadiness, but more facts should come out soon before we jump to conclusions. All US employees of Lucky were let go as of early March. This obviously was not a move made by the US end of Lucky, so we can’t blame anyone but the higher-ups in the UK for the cessation of US distribution, albeit a possibly temporary halt. This is unfortunate, because Lucky was fast becoming one of the most respected and loved paintball companies out there.

What’s really weird is the lack of warning. No dealers were warned, no one knew this was coming. For direct quotes, read on.

On March 10th an employee of Lucky EU said:

“Orders pending will be shipped someone will be in touch with you regarding your order,
If you have emailed in expect an email today,
People who have sent guns in for install or repair someone will be in touch with you asap.

Lucky products will be available in the USA we just have to do some reorganisation we are working on it as fast as we can so we will be able to offer an even better service in the future.”

On March 11th, a possible fraudulent post, but worth reading:

“Lucky products will be available from the USA shortly, it would make no sense to ship from the UK. The online store is closed so we can concentrate on restocking product and completing current orders. This was done to save the lucky brand it was either restructure or lose it forever. We were preparing a mail out to to customers and dealers but the store was shut down before we had chance. We apologise for all the inconvenience and the problems this has caused but we are working hard to sort it out.”

On March 13th, a former employee:

“Anyway, I was one of the latest hires at Lucky. I was their Art Director. I made all the ads and graphics, the new logo. Made all the banners that went up at the shows. In short, I poured my heart into Lucky. I worked late almost every night in the 4 or 5 months I was there, just so I could do my part to make Lucky awesome. I truly believed in Lucky, and never imagined what was to happen in such a short time. I can’t go on in too much detail, but all of us in the U.S. were totally screwed. Myself and some of the other Marketing guys were the screwed big-time, but eventually, it happened to EVERYONE in the Lucky US. Our English investors stopped paying us, asked us to work for free, were slow to give us any info, and left us high and dry. They basically left us all up a creek. And as bad as I feel I got it, finding myself suddenly without pay and without other money owed to me, the man who started Lucky got it even worse.

Normally I wouldn’t share this kind of info publicly, but these guys in England who say they’re going to keep Lucky open, are awful people. They’re messing with FAMILIES and capitalizing off of other peoples blood sweat and tears. I don’t believe that they’re really going to sell Lucky and keep it going in the UK (they don’t have the experience or know-how - they’re just some non-paintball guys who think they can take our work and make it elsewhere). But if they do - DON’T EVEN THINK OF SUPPORTING THEM. If one of the reasons you liked Lucky was their philosophy on paintball, please don’t continue to buy Lucky products (if they continue selling them).

The only thing these Lucky UK guys deserve is to be made to feel HIGHLY uncomfortable if they ever show their face at a paintball event.

I’m not sure if this is a legal post, or if it’s too “inside baseball” for this site, but it’s here for a little while. I hope this message gets out.

Please have some forgiveness for the Lucky US guys. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think most of us had nothing but the best intentions. We truly did our best, made some mistakes, tried to always get better. We truly believed our own philosophy. I was shocked at how quickly it was destroyed. A valuable life lesson to me.”

Aaron from Lucky PB US made a statement later that day, it’s available at the end of this story:
http://www.pageofrob.com/ripluckypb.html . I can’t vouch for the story’s accuracy.

On March 14th, the former director of Marketing for Lucky said:

“Here is the guy you all need to contact to get your money.

PBn name: The Old Mang
Skype: the.old.mang
Mob: +44 (0) 7707 676111

It is the same guy I’m contacting to get my money. We all got screwed over by this. Lots of great talk from the UK side but either way American employees weren’t even told they were let go and some are still owed money.

Hopefully Michael Stephenson (from Lucky UK) can come through like he has promised and get us all our money back. This would include dealers, customers, and American ex-employees.

Wish it didn’t work out this way but it did. Feel free to let them know what you think.

Sonny Lopez

(Formerly the Lucky Paintball Marketing Director)”

Later that day:

“In May 2006 Aaron Stephens approached Evolve Paintball with a plan whereby we as Evolve Paintball were asked to invest a maximum of $300,000 into Aaron’s Company whereby the venture “Lucky” would be cash flow positive in September 2006 and would have produced and be selling one marker by September 2006 with a second marker to be produced and selling by November 2006.

We agreed and provided the funding directly to Aaron’s Company with no strings attached and without Evolve even being a signatory on the US bank account. Aaron had, from the beginning, total control over the running of the Company including product design, product marketing, human resources, and choice of suppliers.

We did not have and still do not have control in any other way than the funding which we have fulfilled beyond his requirements.
By the end of September we had invested $ 268,436.67 with no sight of cash flow positive on the horizon and no markers! Up to today we have invested $591,309.88 This amount does not include the costs of the UK operation which we have been absorbing in the UK.

Also in September Aaron’s Company had been producing and selling a tank regulator that he was told to cease and desist by the party that owned the patent. At this time Aaron sold the Lucky Brand and all its assets to a Company that was formed with Aaron. Again from the beginning of this Company Aaron was made the Business Manager and with it he had and still has total control of the Company.

In January the partners flew to Chicago to discuss with Aaron the problems of the overrun and non delivery of the products promised. This meeting unfortunately ended abruptly and with no resolution and therefore no further funding to date.

We still believe in the Lucky Brand and Aaron’s design capabilities but without a solid plan we could not see how we could put more money in without a plan. With the hope that we would see a plan we proceeded to secure a further investment from the UK to continue the building of the Lucky brand and in particular the markers.

We must reiterate that Aaron is the Business Manager of the Company in Chicago and has total control. We have provided the funding he stated he required and much more! We are now left with the US Web store closed down by Aaron, difficulty in sorting out customers’ issues and insufficient access to the data, but we are trying to resolve all customer issues.

We are customer orientated and want to do our best for the customer. We can only ask those that truly want to resolve these issues to help us and bear with us through this difficult time.

We are providing you with this information to make your own decision about “Lucky” but we cannot and will not get into debates about hearsay!

These are the facts that we believe and that we are willing to substantiate when necessary.

We will do everything in our power to deal one by one with the customers’ issues and needs and only ask you to judge us from today on.

Obviously it is you the customer that will either allow Lucky to become what it should have become or kill it. We hope you will give us the opportunity to at least try and deliver the Lucky brand and its service to you.

Michael Stephenson - Group General Manager – GHC LTD

We will not be posting any further comments after this post but will be focussing on the needs of our customers.

You can contact ussales@luckyeurope.co.uk for product sales or tech@luckyeurope.co.uk for Tech enquiries.

If you wish to contact me then please do so by emailing me michael@exitile.com.”

And still later:

“Even though we said we would not reply we ask you to read our post and please understand that we did not close down the web store, we actually offered to meet the bills for it through this period.

We understand the importance of the US market and it’s prominence in the Paintball World but we are left scrambling cleaning up someone else mess.

We did not hire any of the staff in Chicago or anywhere else in the US this was solely Aaron’s choice and responsibility. We certainly do not want anyone to suffer and if we can put the pieces together, we have already made it clear that we intend to take care of those that Aaron has not!

Aaron demanded to have control and hold all the responsibility and make all the decisions himself and now people make it seem that we are the bad guys for not investing further money in a venture without a plan. Aaron was informed in early January that there was no further money without a plan and now conveniently it is the investors/partners fault.

So if the customers especially Edmond Dantes who states:

“Your customers, sir, are right here. Their needs are laid out here. Their desires are spoken here. I fear this is an indication of future business practices. Turning away from responding to your customers is not a very effective way of focusing on their needs”

Feel the need to contact us then please see the amended original post with contact emails.

Likewise Edmond Dantes States:

“This entire episode has been very poorly managed in the view of this observer. I believe you will have a very long road back if you are able to recover the trust of the community.”

Then that should be addressed to the person who managed it and took unilateral actions without relevant discussion with partners.

BTW Edmond Dantes my name is Michael Stephenson pray sir what is yours or is there a need for you to hide you identity?”