AITAH for considering taking a sponsership
To keep things brief. I compete in “dynamic long range shooting” competitions. Myself and several people I have grown close to compete at decently high levels. Well a part of competing is often promoting products for companies through sponsorship. Either a heavily discount product, or products over time usually. Everything adds up to help cut down on costs of competing. At the start of this year I got offered a my first sponsorship opportunity, which would be with a Cerakote Custom shop. For those curious, Cerakote is a very durable paint that allows you a fair bit of freedom for designs and still offers protection for the product. In my case my competition rifle. So the deal would have been I get a fancy new coating on my rifle with some fancy designs for pretty much cost. I would then just tag this company in any of my competition posts and tell people this company did the work. Sounded like a good offer to me.
I have a friend who started doing custom cerakote as a side hustle out of his garage last year. Since I wanted to be a supportive friend and previously worked part time spraying Cerakote for a custom shop, I offered to give this friend loads of advice and help him get started. Things got slightly weird between us when I asked if I could come spray my own rifle at his place sometime. Essentially he was hurt I did not want to pay him to do it for me. But then we settled that if I payed him $X I could come rent his set-up and spray my own rifle at his place sometime. Which I debated on for a while, but held off because I was in the process of opening my own business, so competition wise it was convenient but I had no time to come spray.
So when this opportunity came up to have this certified pro shop do the work for me. I was very intrigued. Especially since this person does fairly intricate work with a laser to layer the cerakote. Which is not something my friend has as an offering. So I asked my friend if he would be mad at me if I took the opportunity. Turns out the answer is yes and even though I asked before hand and never followed through. He is very upset at the idea of me even asking as he helped show support my business when I opened with a small purchase. So because this shop is a half hour drive from him he started making comparisons to promoting similar business’ to mine in the area instead of my shop. Even though I have already been within the industry of my business for 6 years and he is not trying to make more than just his ammo money with his cerakote. The work he is doing is also not on the same level as this custom shop. Not wanting to put my friend down as he has learnt to do decent basic coatings. But everything is 1 tone with maybe the occasional super simple secondary tone. Up until this opportunity he was asking for my advice on a lot of patterns/designs. But now he is super upset at me over considering the opportunity. Which was several months ago and he is still mad. So was I out of line and is this wrong of me to have considered it? Or is he over reacting?
If needed I can try to provide as un-biased of information as I can in the comments.