Smart Rivals

CHAPTER 5

Manage Frenemies

To be, or not to be,” pondered Hamlet over four hundred years ago. Today, many traditional retailers find themselves grappling with a comparable question: “To sell, or not to sell (on Amazon).”

X Fire Paintball & Airsoft (X Fire), a retailer of paintball guns and supplies based in Auburn, Massachusetts, for over twenty-five years, saw a significant surge in sales once it began selling on Amazon in 2012. Online sales constituted 80 percent of the company’s total sales. Steve Herbert Sr. and Steve Herbert Jr., the father-and-son ownership team, found that the benefits greatly outweighed the fees that X Fire had to pay Amazon.¹ Like a thousand other paintball dealers, Amazon has helped the company expand their customer ...