[MadMax]

sorry frank...

Well, I'm back. Great timing on Madbulls part. I go away for a stag trip and come back to this.

The game is afoot. I've finally got some competition on my turf.

To clear the air, hats off to Madbull. **wtf?! is Carl on drugs?!**

On close inspection of MB's product pictures, I find that MB is going with a significantly different design from my adaptor. MB is offering an adaptor which does not have a moving tank valve probe. My adaptor has a mag probe and a tank probe which moves in unison (they're integrated into a common part). Madbull has a fixed tank probe which leads to a valve integrated into the mag filling probe.

It's a design concept which I first landed on before the launch of my product. I refined the concept to a simpler integrated single piece mag and tank probe to make the design more elegant.

While Madbull is capitalizing on my difficult task of proliferating the fact that green gas is propane, they did not rip off my adaptor design outright.

Why am I defending Madbull?

It's the right thing to do. I don't want people to slag them as unprincipled ripoff manufactures. While Madbull could have whipped out a pair of calipers and duplicated my product, they went their own way and designed their own product using different operating principles. Unfortunately the inventive bit about my propane adaptor was mostly coming to the realization that green gas was propane rather than the design of the gas fitting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm damn annoyed that they're competing with me. Offering adaptors at $15USD is going to crush my profit margins. It'll be hard for me to afford new product design with my flagship product pinched like this. I would have liked to have paid off my injection mould before they did this at least. Offering adaptors at $15 is silly when a disposable can of green gas costs $12USD (or $30 in Canada).

The timing is difficult for me as I've just started another injection mould for another product I've finished developing. It's going to be tough as I'm already pretty stretched financially.

So what does that mean for Airsoft Innovations?

First I'm going to buy me some Irish Whiskey. Then I'm getting back to work. I'm going to have to reprice my adaptor and work out ways to put even more value into my product to retain my market share. I've looked intensely at the issues of propane adaptors longer than anyone. I can get through this. Who knows, maybe having a competition will be healthy for me. It's certainly a new learning experience for me.

Thanks for your support of my work and my company. I will continue to strive to develop innovative new products for airsofters. It's the namesake of Airsoft Innovations.