English
The name MAXS has been a household name for many paintballers over the last 20 years. No other provider has shaped the European paintball scene so lastingly in the past and also changed it to some extent. – But what became of MAXS Sport? Why is this provider no longer available today? In our Paintball Sports Blog series about competitors and rivals from the scene, we give you the answers to many questions that players and teams have been burning under their nails for a long time.
The MAXS company was originally founded under the CMC Sportwaffen label in Friedberg , which is in tranquil Hesse near Frankfurt.
CMC was one of the first paintball dealers in German-speaking countries and quickly made a name for itself with a large range and attractive prices.
Over time, the company grew and so the big players from the USA became aware of CMC. There was a cooperation with the then world's leading supplier of paintball protective masks, the brand JT Paintball.
In the course of the cooperation, CMC Sportwaffen became JT Europe GmbH, which focused on wholesale and of course sold the products of the JT brand.
However, in order to remain active in the end customer business, MAXS Sport Managing Director Manfred Ulrich founded MAXS Sport GmbH .
Due to the good market situation and excellent contacts in the area of manufacturers and dealers, MAXS made it to the top of European paintball retailers within a few years. In the meantime, the company had well over 40 employees and 7 locations throughout Europe.
However, the headquarters of MAXS Sport remained in Friedberg, Hesse.
After many successful years that the company MAXS spent at the top of the European paintball industry, what inevitably had to follow followed. The market began to change, individual countries and markets were restructured and other brands and suppliers pushed into the market. The seemingly untouchable giant MAXS Sport , which one never thought could falter, was too big and inert to adapt quickly enough to the changing market. And so it finally came about that MAXS Sport lost its monopoly on the market and had to accept losses in the operative business.
The ailing conglomerate MAXS had its hands full to maintain its market position and not slip any further. But when there were a few bad years in European paintball and the market got a good deal rougher, even these efforts were no longer enough in the end.
MAXS Sport was on the brink of collapse, and so it happened that in 2016 one of the biggest players on the market, the US company GI Sportz, which had been one of the main suppliers of MAXS Sport for many years, came on the scene and made a takeover made offer. As a result, the MAXS brand disappeared from the scene and the headquarters in Friedberg became the headquarters of GI Sportz Europe .
