Today, Hard Air Magazine brings you this official history of JSB Match Diabolo. All serious airgunners know the brand and many of its products. But the story of how the company grew from from the idea of one man – Josef Schulz – in a small Czech town to become a global benchmark in airgun ammunition is not so well known.
Every successful company has its origin story. In the case of JSB Match Diabolo, that story begins not in a corporate office or research center, but in the steelworks of Bohumín during the late 1970s.
Bohumín is a small town of around 20,000 inhabitants in the Czech Republic. It’s in the East of the country, close to the border with Poland. The company is still based there today.
The History of JSB Match Diabolo – Background
Margita Ciglerová, one of the company’s very first employees, remembers meeting Josef Schulz in 1978 while working at Železárny a drátovny Bohumín – the town’s steel works. Schulz worked there as a photographer responsible for political and commercial promotion. Remember the “Iron Curtain” was still in place across Europe in these years.
However Josef’s technical background as an auto electrician and his natural engineering talent quickly became apparent. Outside of work, his greatest passion was competitive pistol shooting. Originally a competitor, he later also became a successful coach.
Below. Josef (right rear) and his shooting team around 1985.
At the time, serious airgun shooters across Czechoslovakia faced a constant problem: high-quality pellets were nearly impossible to obtain. Josef Schulz decided to change that. Around 1987–1988, while still employed full-time at the steelworks, he began experimenting with pellet production by manually resizing pellets manufactured by Kovohutě Příbram, another Czech company.
What started as a hobby soon evolved into an obsession!
Despite balancing work, competitive shooting, coaching young athletes, helping build a modern electronic shooting range, and caring for his ill mother alongside his wife, Schulz continued refining his ideas. Together with engineer Aleš Šíma, who also worked at the Bohumín factory, he designed the prototype of the first automatic machine capable of manufacturing precision airgun pellets.
The History of JSB Match Diabolo – The Company Begins
The political changes of 1989 opened entirely new opportunities. For the first time, travel to Western Europe became possible, and Schulz sought financing to turn his dream into reality.
Help came from an aunt living in West Germany, who loaned him the initial capital needed to launch production. Combined with a government subsidy intended to support new job creation, Josef Schulz officially founded the company “Josef Schulz – JSB Match Diabolo” in mid-1991.
The early years were anything but easy. The subsidy required the company to employ seven workers by January 1992, even though the production machinery was still unfinished and no pellets had yet been sold! Schulz himself was the only person capable of operating the prototype manufacturing system.
Below. The former shooting range where the factory is located today.
Many of the first employees were shooters and friends from the local shooting community. One of them, Jiří Pražan, remains part of the company today.
Margita Ciglerová vividly recalls the moment when, after another sleepless night spent troubleshooting the machinery, Josef Schulz proudly presented the first box of imperfect yet highly promising pellets. It was a turning point that symbolized the beginning of what would eventually become one of the world’s most respected pellet brands.
In 1992, the company attempted its first international promotion at the Olympic Games in Barcelona. The plan was ambitious: distribute pellets to shooters free of charge and let the product speak for itself.
The trip, however, became an adventure filled with problems. During the journey, the team discovered mixed pellet head sizes inside the tins and desperately searched across Spain for a micrometer to sort them properly—despite speaking virtually no foreign languages.
In the end, they never even reached the competition venue. The entire effort appeared to end in failure.
But fortune eventually turned in their favor…
Below. JSB attending their first IWA show in Nuremberg, 1993.
The History of JSB Match Diabolo – The First Big Break
A key breakthrough came thanks to Jiří Strakoš, a respected gun shop owner from the Czech city of Ostrava who believed in the quality of Schulz’s pellets.
Through personal connections in Germany, JSB was introduced to Holme, owner of one of Bavaria’s leading shooting sports retailers. He became the company’s first international customer and invited JSB to exhibit at the IWA trade show, the world’s premier exhibition for shooting sports and outdoor equipment.
Below. JSB has been a fixture at the IWA OutdoorClassics Show ever since. Being good Czechs, they always have draft beer – genuine Pils from Plzeň (Pislen), of course – available to visitors!
That exposure proved transformative. British airgun manufacturers soon approached Josef Schulz with requests for a new type of pellet featuring a domed head design. Up until then, JSB had focused primarily on flat-headed Match pellets for Olympic shooters and pointed Straton pellets for hobby shooters.
Schulz agreed to develop the new design, later known worldwide as the Exact and Exact Jumbo series.
The agreement came with one critical condition: the customer had to purchase JSB’s existing inventory, freeing the cash flow necessary for further expansion. The deal was made, and within a remarkably short time the new pellets reached the market.
Their accuracy and consistency surpassed much of the available competition at the time, and demand quickly outpaced production capacity.
The History of JSB Match Diabolo – To The Present Day
From there, the reputation of Bohumín-made pellets spread rapidly throughout Europe and eventually overseas.
The company expanded production, hired additional employees, and continuously broadened its product portfolio. Today there’s so many products that Hard Air Magazine devoted a whole post to listing them!
By 2008, at the age of 65, Josef Schulz began considering retirement, which led to the creation of JSB Match Diabolo a.s. The new company assumed all manufacturing operations and employees, continuing production in the very same location where it had originally begun.
Today, JSB Match Diabolo employs approximately 90 people and remains one of the most respected names in precision airgun ammunition worldwide.
What began as one man’s determination to solve a problem for fellow shooters has grown into a globally recognized standard of quality—while still retaining the craftsmanship, innovation, and passion that defined its earliest days.
I would like to thank Pavel Kolebač, the Managing Director of the company, for his profound assistance in the compilation of this history of JSB Match Diabolo.
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