Partnership between Crosman and Spartan Imports

For anyone who hasn't heard, Crosman has partnered with Spartan Imports.
Any speculation on what will happen because of this?
The article makes it pretty clear that Crosman will be a distributor for Spartan Imports (for those of you who don't know, S.I. is the sole distributor of Classic Army in the US, and they also import TM, RS, Madbull, and a whole lot more).
I think that we'll start to see Classic Army guns in Dicks sporting goods and the like, but probably with a hefty price increase off of MSRP. Whether or not we'll have 10-year-olds running around with CA15's in back yards is kind of hard to tell at this point, but I'm thinking that it's a possibility.

EDIT: More news...
http://www.crosman.com/blogs/croswords/?p=37
http://www.crosman.com/blogs/croswords/?p=48
http://www.crosman.com/mediacenter/news%20releases/asg%20agreement/ASG%20Agreement.pdf

That might not be a good thing, a bunch of 10 y/o kids running around urban areas with realistic looking armalites and the like. Could potentially hurt airsoft.

^Well, now that I think about it, I don't think that many 10yo's have $250-$300 to spend on airsoft.
You've already got the CYMA AK, JG M4, and CYMA M14 in Dicks under the AfterMath rebrand, and you don't see many of those.

but if Dicks/Sports Authority actually gets a hold of CA/TM/etc guns they're not gonna charge MSRP, it'll be like $500 for a M15A4 (i've seen this before). How many soccer moms are gonna buy there kids a $500 airsoft gun over $20 spring pistol? I think that Dicks and the like will just have a bunch of these sitting around not selling, unless they lower prices, in which case I will shop there

I believe that this would be terrible, it would be nice to have easy access to a good brand airsoft gun, but that mean the backyard airsofts would have more of an oppertunity to ruin the sport

If you read all of the articles, it seems like Crosman will be just a distributor, not a rebrander. At the SHOT show pictures, you see a CA display case, not a display case full of CA's rebranded by Crosman.
If they're just a distributor selling CA branded as CA, I think they'll probably keep the prices near MSRP.

My guess is that when all the airsoft stores do their annual price drop on CA's, like for instance when the CA SAW went from like $1000 down to $600 or the M15A4 went from $400 to $275, Dicks will keep them at $1000 and $400. just my .02

Dirkastan wrote:My guess is that when all the airsoft stores do their annual price drop on CA's, like for instance when the CA SAW went from like $1000 down to $600 or the M15A4 went from $400 to $275, Dicks will keep them at $1000 and $400. just my .02

I think that the price drops on the CA SAW was because of the A&K SAW.
But since this is a deal between Spartan and Crosman, not CA and Crosman, that's just one more middle man, and higher prices.

this is what happened to paintball, partially. What mainly happened, proball.

Honestly backyard airsoft is going to kill the sport unless these stores strictly maintain the 18 ^ limit. Even then you still have some adults that act like complete toddlers around guns.

As it stands, Crosman has only licensed the plastic body version of the Classic Army Sportline guns. Two M15(M4) carbine models and Two MP5 models. No bb's, no full metal, or anything else at this point. The plastic Sportline guns are in the same category as the plastic JG/ECHO and CYMA guns. They have metal gearboxes and gears, but the majority of the rest of the gun is the ABS plastic. They are good guns for the money. Currently the SRP is $189.00 for the package including gun, battery, charger, sling, glasses, etc. The Minimum Advertised Price, or MAP, is $159.95, which is what you'll see at most Airsoft stores. I have an CA Sportline MP5 and M15A4(M4) that I use as loner guns, and they are holding up great with all the abuse a loner gun receives.

This doesn't mean that if this endeavor is profitable, that Crosman won't check into adding more models in the future. For now the basic "fabric" of the local airsoft store is still intact though this has the potential of taking sales from the JG/CYMA market. We'll have to wait and see what Crosman decides to charge.

The only problems is the stupid parents that will spend that much for a replica gun and the stupid kids will run around shooting at each other...

I sure hope little kids wont get their hands on these. It would have a terrible effects on the airsoft community. Even the new 3 shot shotgun with a little modification could look like a real one.

it would be cool if you could go to Walmart and buy a couple uprades though, but it could have its downsides.