Printed Tent Interview Virtue Paintball
Promotional Dealings – How a Branded Tent Impacts Performance
Custom printing is one of Celina’s signature offerings – allowing us to put your brand, your image, or your design right onto the tents or products you use. With so much that printing can add to any occasion, we sat down with Chris Williams of VIRTUE Paintball to get some first-hand user feedback.
Chris Williams:
My name is Chris Williams and I’m the Vice President of the global VIRTUE Paintball brand, which is one of the leading companies in the paintball action sports industry. I’m 36 years old, have an amazing wife and 4 beautiful children. The last few years I’ve lived in Vienna fulltime as I’m also the managing director for our European subsidiary, which we’ve setup recently under the same name.
VIRTUE Paintball is best known for producing high performance driven goggles and feeding systems (commonly referred to as loaders or hoppers) for competitive paintball athletes and frequent recreational enthusiasts. We also produce a whole range of equipment from paintballs themselves and protective soft goods to playing gear, and we’ve even developed a low end rental and entry line under the brand BASE Paintball.
How integral to your installation was having a custom-printed tent?
Chris Williams:
A custom printed tent was absolutely necessary for us. Our industry is very competitive, and while we pride ourselves on the fact that our products offer superior performance and reliability, in paintball style is 50% of the game. If it doesn’t look good, people won’t buy it. So we needed a strong visual component to our tent.
When you decided to search for a printed tent, what drew you to Celina?
Chris Williams:
I’ve been running outdoor hospitality centers and tradeshows in the paintball industry for almost twenty years now – I have experience with every kind of tent out there. Celina has the perfect combination of customization and durability that we needed for our application. We needed a heavy duty canopy that could be printed exactly how we wanted. The fact that Celina is competitively priced, and has a website that makes comparing different products easy, is also a huge plus.
Why do you feel your printed tent is a better fit than a standard white tent would be?
Chris Williams:
Primarily because it’s such a tremendous value. We use our canopies for several years at trade shows that are very expensive to attend, in terms of time spend, sponsorship fees and the cost of personnel. When the cost of a branded canopy versus a plain white tent is factored into the overall budget across several years, it would be foolish for us to use a plain white tent. There are a lot of other reasons to brand a tent; one reason is just because we want to look better than the next guy!
We have a lot of people who are put off by the costs associated with a printed versus a plain white or colored-vinyl tent. How did you approach that decision?
Chris Williams:
We’re not one of these big companies sponsoring NASCAR or something; our industry is pretty niche, and we have to be careful how we spend our marketing dollars. But we view our hospitality center as an extension of the product we’re selling to our customers. I’ve actually had customers at events comment to me that they know our products must be quality because of the attention to detail that we put into our physical display at events.
What advice do you have for anything looking to buy tents in the future?
Chris Williams:
CW: Get a JackJaw for removing stakes! It’s one of our favorite tools. Also, try to incorporate some white in the design of the canopy. Don’t fall for the trap that just because you can print all over, you should saturate the canopy in printing. Our first canopy had a lot of black which looked great, but when you walked into our tent on hot days it had that same feeling you get when you open the oven and all the hot air rushes out at you!