Paintball Central is a rapidly growing paintball retailer that expanded to five stores. Its outdated MS-DOS system caused inventory and reporting issues like high shrinkage. It implemented Microsoft Business Solutions Retail Management System, which provided accurate inventory tracking, customizable reporting, and targeted marketing. This solved inventory problems, reduced shrinkage by $8,000 per quarter, and cut inventory costs by 25%. The system's customer database allowed Paintball Central to guide mailings based on purchase history, increasing new revenue.

1. Microsoft Business Solutions Retail Management System
Customer Solution Case Study
Paintball Central Corrals Inventory, Targets
Mailings, and Splatters Competition
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Retail
Customer Profile
Based in Greensboro, North Carolina,
Paintball Central is the Southeast’s largest
paintball retailer, having grown to five
stores and a top-ranked sports park in its
first 6 years of operation.
Business Situation
Operating a rapidly growing business with
an outmoded system that could not
properly count inventory or issue accurate
reports caused uncertainty, over- and
under-stocking, and high shrinkage rates.
Solution
Microsoft® Business Solutions Retail
Management System provides fast and
accurate inventory, instant and reliable
reporting, targeted mailing capabilities, and
customizable POS.
Benefits
Inventory tracking saves $8,000 a
quarter in shrinkage
Inventory costs down 25 percent
Easily creates highly specific reports
Customer history guides mailings
Customizable POS buttons speed
checkout
“The ability of Microsoft Retail Management System
to help us bring in new money has been
immeasurable.”
Linc Anderson, Operations Manager, Paintball Central
With a rapidly growing business of five retail stores and a state-of-
the-art sports facility, Paintball Central is the largest retailer of its
kind in the Southeast. “To keep up with demand and capture a
critical market share, we had to run fast,” says Operations Manager
Linc Anderson. “And our MS-DOS®-based system was misfiring at
every turn.”
Being unable to accurately track inventory had repercussions
throughout the company. “We didn’t know how much we had, much
less where it was,” Anderson says, “so we over- and under-ordered.
And we bought aspirin two bottles at a time. Shrinkage was huge.”
Once Microsoft® Business Solutions Retail Management System
was installed, things became predictable. “Now we can track
everything correctly. Our purchasing decisions are sound, and
shrinkage is down ten points, for starters,” says Anderson. “With
hemorrhaging controlled, we can pull the trigger on expansion.”

2. Situation
Founded in 1998 by Rob Staudinger in an old
house that he and his crew converted to a
store, Paintball Central (PBC) in Greensboro,
North Carolina, has quickly expanded into the
Southeast’s largest paintball retailer, with six
locations, including a paintball playing park.
PBC sells 5,000 inventory items including
merchandise, admissions, gear rentals,
product packages for beginners, gun
technical services, and maintenance.
With nine playing fields, company-owned PBC
Sports Park is one of the largest paintball
playing facilities in the Southeast and was
ranked “6th Best Paintball Field to Play”
nationally by Paintball Game International.
“We’re in negotiations to open a second
paintball park just south of Charlotte, North
Carolina, by April,” says Linc Anderson,
Operations Manager, Paintball Central. “This
park will house a full-line retail pro shop and
five scenario paintball fields.” There are plans
for further expansion in 2006. PBC is also
home to TheMatrixCenter.com, an Internet
store specializing in paintball guns and
markers. The company currently employs 10
full-time employees and 35 part-time staff.
Unlike golf or tennis pro shops, where an
established customer base can provide
reliable traffic, stores catering to paintball
enthusiasts are on the cutting edge of a
growing market. They must attract the early
loyalty of rapidly expanding armies of new
recruits to the game using newsletters,
mailers, local radio, and the company’s
extensive Web site.
“We create more demand, we market the
sport, the fun of paintball, and the
excitement,” says Anderson. “Yet, this
industry has been growing faster than we can
easily hold on. As it grows, we have to
increase our market share. That raises our
marketing budget higher than most—usually
10 to 12 percent of gross.”
The National X-Ball League (NXL) is produced
by Dick Clark Production and currently sports
a roster of 10 professional teams. Paintball
Central is home to NXL’s Baltimore Trauma,
and employs two-thirds of that team’s line-up.
An Old System Falters
Pressure to capitalize on the sport’s
popularity was revealing weaknesses in PBC
systems and procedures. “Our old system
was MS-DOS®-based. It was hard to use, so it
was misused and not used. “We wanted to
upgrade to a Windows®-based version of our
old MS-DOS-based, non-Microsoft® retail
software, but the developer of that software
wanted far too much money to upgrade it
from the MS-DOS-based version to the
Windows-based version.”
The old system’s inflexibility shackled many
departments. “Because we had only a flat-file
database, you could only search by item
number. You couldn’t sort a list of items by
name or description or easily query the files.
We had no way to transfer or synchronize
between stores,” Anderson says.
Because it was harder to find an item in the
price book than to define a new one, staff
entering new merchandise often gave on-
hand items a new SKU. “We had so many
‘new’ items entered that our system was
running out of item numbers,” says Anderson.
“Quantities on hand were falsely reported as
low or high, and reports often told us we’d
sold more units than we’d purchased—a
negative quantity in stock. You can’t make
smart decisions on numbers like that.”
A common result of weak retail inventory
knowledge is rampant shrinkage. “Shrinkage
was embarrassingly high, but our reporting
was so bad that we couldn’t tell what were
reporting errors, mistaken entries, everyday
“Even carrying these
tremendously attractive
items, we shrank
shrinkage ten full points
to about six percent.
That saved us $8,000 a
quarter!”
Linc Anderson, Operations Manager, Paintball
Central
Founder/CEO Rob Staudinger
still competes professionally.

3. loss and breakage, or midnight acquisition,”
says Anderson. “Theft could have been higher
or lower than our estimates. All we knew was
that, when we reached for it, it wasn’t there
to sell.”
Solution
When it was time to find a point-of-sale
system, Anderson compiled a detailed list of
retail system vendors and applications. “We
evaluated solutions that ranged from
QuickBooks Point-of-Sale to Retail Pro,” he
says. “The first factor was ease of use and
integration with other Microsoft applications.
The second was my earlier positive dealings
with the Microsoft Business Solutions group.
“In my Web design business and through
earlier experience as technology manager for
a local Microsoft Certified Partner, I was well
acquainted with Microsoft data portability
and Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000. Since
Microsoft [Business Solutions] Retail
Management System is based on SQL Server
[2000], I didn’t have to think twice. I
recommended it.”
The decision process took two weeks of
intense comparisons. Then Paintball Central
committed to Microsoft Retail Management
System and installed it in February 2002.
Quick, Easy Installation
“Installation was surprisingly easy,” says
Anderson. “I started with two stores after
closing, and was finished with installation
and configuration seven hours later.”
Training was a breeze. “The system is very
easy to learn on your own but, with our high
traffic, we wanted everyone really sharp and
able to handle anything. So our IT manager,
Tyler Humphrey, gives each new employee
four one-hour classes. Those who’ve done it
really know what they’re doing.”
Currently all employees use the Microsoft
Business Solutions Retail Management
System Store Operations software for POS,
and managers take advantage of Microsoft
Business Solutions Retail Management
System Headquarters software for
management of customer information,
employees, and inventory. Additionally
inventory distribution warehouse staff use
Microsoft Retail Management System
Headquarters software, which lets them
centrally monitor and manage the details of
many stores as if on site in each one.
Microsoft Retail Management System also
streamlines financial reporting. “Once a
week, store managers e-mail IT an exported
batch file of sales, customers, and stock
changes,” Tyler Humphrey, IT Manager,
Paintball Central says,” It’s a slam-dunk to
put that into QuickBooks.”
A Steady Partner
Thanks to Microsoft Certified Partner NuRol
Corporation, Anderson never had to worry
about technical loose ends. “From software
and training and support to POS peripherals
like barcode scanners, cash drawers and
“Streamlining
purchasing and
reordering helped us
reduce carrying costs
more than 25 percent!”
Linc Anderson, Operations Manager, Paintball
Central
Winston-Salem, NC is home to
one of six fully loaded stores.

4. receipt printers, our Microsoft Partner NuRol
was a ‘one stop shop’ for everything we
needed,” he says.
“NuRol helped our staff learn the system and
were helpful in the startup phase when we
were getting acclimated. They taught us some
ins and outs of retail.”
Benefits
Inventory problems eased within a week.
“With Microsoft Retail Management System,
we can track everything correctly, and since
all of our data is easy to find, see and report
on, we can trust our numbers and know
which areas need action.”
This included handling the stores’ high
shrinkage. “Even carrying these tremendously
attractive items, we shrank shrinkage ten full
points to about six percent,” says Anderson.
“That saved us $8,000 a quarter!”
Other inventory-based problems waved the
white flag. “Physical inventory counts, the
inventory transfers between stores,
purchasing, receiving—essentially every
process our managers perform on a daily
basis—is now faster and more accurate with
Microsoft Retail Management System,” says
Anderson. “Items are defined once, and
tracked through sales and re-order
accurately.”
Customizable buttons on the POS window got
instant use “for discounts, for external
programs and to launch Web-based forms for
submitting data to our corporate office,”
Anderson says. “These speed up checkout at
the cash wrap, but also shorten managerial
tasks and free up our best store staff to work
with customers. And the integrated credit
card processing via Citibank speeds up every
transactions.”
Fast, Accurate Reporting
Microsoft Retail Management System quickly
generated custom reports that saved time
and money in sales tracking and thus re-
ordering. “Where reporting was nearly absent
in our old system and sales reports were
particularly archaic with no breakdowns, no
detail, and no flexibility,” Anderson says, “now
I run really penetrating reports and queries.”
Their new found reporting tools make their
inventory mix a better fit to more predictable
sales. “Streamlining purchasing and
reordering helped us reduce carrying costs by
more than 25 percent!” he says.
General Manager Jonathan Whitley uses the
system’s Active Reports features to track
employee timecards, purchases, and
discount sales. “Active [Reports] has become
a major tool in tracking our employees, too,”
Whitley says.
“As an IT guy myself, I get tremendous power
from the system’s Active Reports tool,”
Anderson says. “Rather than paying outside
consultants to build custom reports, I start
from the pre-defined reports in the system,
“…since all of our data is
easy to find, see and
report on, we can trust
our numbers and know
which areas need
action.”
Linc Anderson, Operations Manager, Paintball
Central
Easily configured POS buttons
prompt unique screens and
tools.
“We know the last time
a customer visited a
store, total money spent
and saved by discounts,
and so on. We target e-
mails by buying habits,
ZIP Code, or types of
merchandise bought.”
Linc Anderson, Operations Manager, Paintball
Central

5. then modify them to give us anything we
need. I have about 50 custom-tailored
reports that we use to better summarize data
unique to our organization.”
“We use this data to focus our mailings and
their content based on the customer’s buying
habits. We do an excellent job of name
capture at the POS, of cash management,
and inventory tracking. Most impressively, to
date we’ve opened each new store not by
borrowing, but through our own cash flow.”
Attracting New Money
Microsoft Retail Management System’s ability
to create more business through intelligent
use of its features greatly accelerated PBC’s
return on investment. “The ability of Microsoft
Retail Management System to help us bring
in new money has been immeasurable!”
Anderson says.
“We are really utilizing our customer
database. We know the last time a customer
visited a store, total money spent and saved
by discounts, and so on. We target e-mail by
buying habits, zip code, or types of
merchandise bought. This gives us pinpoint
results from marketing efforts.”
Anderson uses a marketing tool from the
Microsoft bCentralTM small business portal—
now Microsoft Small Business Center—called
Microsoft List Builder as an e-mailer. He says,
“It’s simple to make a report to export
selected sets of information from the system,
format it into a Microsoft [Office] Excel [2003]
file, and List Builder sucks it in, cleans it, and
gives us an efficient list.
“For quality control, we use a selective
mailing to find out why a customer hasn’t
stopped by in a few months. We run a report
by last date visited, or by a comparative
report showing if purchases have dropped
off. Was someone here discourteous? Were
we out of their favorite gear? Did they get
married or move? We want to know.
“A lot of things have to go right to make a
company grow like ours is doing,” says
Anderson. “That requires knowing a million
details and comparisons. This system
acquires the data, and lets you print it out in
data formats [reports] you design. That’s the
ammo a retailer needs to stay on target.”
NXL Baltimore Trauma
player in full protective gear

6. Microsoft Business Solutions Retail
Management System
Microsoft Business Solutions Retail
Management System offers a complete store
automation solution for small and medium-
sized retailers, streamlining point-of-sale
(POS), customer service, and store inventory
management, and providing real-time access
to key business metrics. Microsoft Retail
Management System is a comprehensive
solution for single-store and multi-store
retailers that empowers independent
proprietors, store managers, and cashiers
through affordable and easy-to-use
automation. Microsoft Retail Management
System has the flexibility and scalability to
grow with a retailer’s business. It works with
the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft
Windows Small Business Server, and leading
financial applications to provide end-to-end
support from the cash register to the back
office.
For more information about Microsoft Retail
Management System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/pos
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-
2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-
hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about NuRol
Corporation products and services, call
(404) 352-3587 or visit the Web site at:
www.NuRol.com
For more information about Paintball
Central products and services, call (336)
458-0060 or visit the Web site at:
www.pballcentral.com
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, bCentral, and Windows, are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the
United States and/or other countries. The names of actual
companies and products mentioned herein may be the
trademarks of their respective owners.
Document published January 2005
Software and Services
Products
− Microsoft Office Professional Edition
2003
− Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
− Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Solutions
− Microsoft Business Solutions Retail
Management System
Third-Party Software
− Intuit QuickBooks Professional
Hardware
Dell PowerEdge server
Dell Dimension desktop registers
Partner
NuRol Corporation