So you want to start a yoyo club

So I went to write a new blog post on starting a yoyo club then remembered that I already had done so and shared it on yoyo skills years ago, here is a link to that post.


I also discovered Chris Allen did a much better job, so I encourage you to click here to check out his article as well!¸


Ack!  How do I start a yoyo club???

There are 3 things you need.  Time, time, and…time!

Yo-yoers are much like cats.  It’s easy to catch their attention, not so much to get them to keep coming back on their own.  To have a successful club, you need a location, and someone to be there, at a specific time, on a regular and consistent basis.  This might mean once a month or once a week, but it needs to be consistent. If you love to yoyo, and want to find some yo-yoer friends, then this needs to be you!  Once you have that, finding (or creating) yo-yoers, and building a community of them becomes a matter of time and patience.

Location can be tricky.  I’m going to use the Vancouver club as an example, as it is what I have experience with it.  When I joined the club there were three or four guys that met a couple times a month or so in a local mall.  I joined up, and in the exuberance of learning a new skill started pushing for weekly meets.  This caused a problem: mall security didn’t agree with our agenda.  Luckily I found a kind-hearted mall cop who suggested I go talk to mall management and see if I could work out a deal.  I did, and, we did!We had achieved a steady time and position, which made it possible to tell anyone we spotted with a yoyo  to “come to the club, we meet every Saturday”.  Every Saturday for 2 years I appeared at said time in said location to maintain our presence and be there for the club. It may sound like a lot of responsibility, but really it was a blast.  Some weeks only one or two people showed up, others we had 20+!


If your local mall doesn’t have agreeable management, or it’s the case that you don’t really dig on throwing your-yo in a mall, take a look around your community.  If your mind is drawing a blank, here are just a few starter ideas:

-A member’s house (transit accessible, and if you have underage kids in the club make it clear that parents are required to attend)

-Sometimes elementary schools will let you use their gym (say hello to increased membership by welcoming the students)

-Community rec centers (again, offer demos or lessons free in exchange)

-Undercover parking garages

-The empty bandstand in the park

-Local toy stores  (offer a weekly demo for customers)

-The covered area near the local skate park (skaters and yo-yoers are a good crossover, but you may run into issues with language if you draw younger kids)

- Pretty much anywhere you can fit a dozen people yoyoing without too much risk of an innocent bystander getting a yoyo related injury.


As you can tell, for a hobby like yo-yoing there are more than a few potential locations, something I had to keep in mind while the Vancouver club was between venues a few years back. Our amicably managed mall came under construction.  We met in a local park for a while, but when fall hit that didn’t work.  Luckily I stumbled upon multi-purpose space (a former fish market).  We went by one day to check it out and stayed to yoyo for a while.  Not only was it not a problem, but the management came out and asked if we wanted to meet there on a regular basis!  They are a very community event oriented place and have been very welcoming.


A final note on location, some venues have liability concerns; offer to sign a waiver.  If they don’t have one, message me, I’ll forward you the one we use.  Both locations we’ve been at have required one.


Location and time accomplished? Excellent, next spread the word.


Facebook, Yoyoexpert forums and poster in public libraries inviting people to join are a great places to start.  By hunting around dollar stores, you will find at one that carries yo-yos that beginners can cut their teeth on which aren’t complete garbage.  Buy one, play it for a bit, then if it’s good, go back and buy 20.  Then go hang out in a park and invite people to come try.  At this point you can give your dollar store yo-yos away, sell them (if the city by-laws allow it), or tell people where to buy them. 


It’s the twenty first century and your new friends probably have access to the internet, so if you find yourself with some keeners, print off cards with links to  information about your club and a site to learn beginner tricks (www.mryoyothrower.com, hint hint).  If you want to be fancy, there are plenty of online sites that will print you business cards for free (plus cost of shipping), or just print on regular paper, cut them out, and glue them to construction paper.


A few things that the Vancouver Club has done to build its yo-yo community are:

Attending local Farmer’s Markets: If you talk to the management and offer to come entertain for free, the are usually happy to let you. I have never left a market with less than ten people who are over the top excited about the prospect of learning to yoyo.  Often the markets will offer to pay you, or let you sell your beginner yoyos.

Starting them young: If you have free time during the week, start talking to Elementary Schools and offer to come in and do a demo, or run a lunch time club.  This worked beautifully for the Vancouver Club.

Go where there are already communities, make them your own: Offer to do a demo at local community centres, cultural centres, after school care centres, churches, and just about anywhere else that people come together.Most of these types of places are desperate for events, I’ve even received the occasional bit of money as a thank you for doing this.

The best ‘trick’ of all: Carry a beginner yoyo with you everywhere and let people try it out, isn’t that how you started?

It can be hugely rewarding to build up a yoyo club.  Having somewhere to go on a weekly basis where you are surrounded by people smiling, having fun and being positive is a wonderful thing.  Its a good feeling to think you helped create this community of hobbyists.  It’s also a fair bit of work, but then most things worth doing are.

-Mr. Yoyothrower

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The Future of Online Retail

I’ve had a few conversations lately with different online skill toy retailers. What I’ve been hearing is something I’ve been experiencing as well. It’s becoming harder to make an online skill toy retail store work. There are a number of challenges, old and new that are faced by online retailers.
Inventory choices are the biggest challenge. It’s very difficult to decide what to stock. 

1. Competition: Do I only stock major brands that have brand recognition? If I do, then I’m competing directly with every other online retailer to sell a product that doesn’t have limited availability. Or do I focus on smaller hard to find products? Then I’m in the position of doing the leg work to help a new or small brand get recognition that they can’t do themselves on the off chance their stuff will sell. It’s hard because I want to support start up brands, but have limited funds to tie up in products.

2. Unpredictability of sales: I have had products from one supplier sell out in a weekend, only to have their next release sit on the shelf for months. No idea why.

3. Shipping and volume: Generally the markup for retail is 40% in the yoyo world. Which is less than half of what you are seeing if you go buy a pair of shoes at a retail store.
What doesn’t get taken into account with that number is overhead.
-cost of freight to the online store
-taxes, duties, paypal fees
-cost of running the website
-shipping costs (very few yoyo retailers actually charge what it costs to ship including labour and packaging)
-promotional costs

4. Dead stock: When I order skill toys for the store, I have to do the mental math of “If I buy 10, at a 40% markup minus shipping and taxes I need to sell 6 or 7 to break even”. If I only sell 4 initially then I’m sitting on funds that could have gone elsewhere, and often are sitting on my credit card accruing interest.

5. Employees: Do I do it all myself or hire help? I don’t have any actual Employees, but I occasionally hire one of the kids from the local club to come in and help with small jobs. I have paid graphic designers for imagery and support for promotional strategies. The bonus packs that go into every box that ships out have a cost that varies. The concrete costs of the bags, stickers and candy are easy, but the time it takes me to package them together is harder. It’s tricky to work all of that into the cost of yoyos, but it is yet another chip away at the 40%.

I think the biggest challenge going forward is that it is so much easier to sell products online than it was even 5 years ago. I recently switched the store over to Shopify because of how complex yet simple it is. All of the finances, inventory control and shipping are in the Same place.
This means that manufacturers large and small are more likely to sell direct. Their fans are (quite reasonably) more likely to buy direct rather than through a retailer because they want to support the creative end. But it makes choosing what to stock a challenge. I happily stock MonkeyfingeR design begleri because their initial releases include retailers. Aroundsquare releases direct first then sells to online retailers, which makes it harder to move their products. Both brands have solid followings that will buy direct first before they look to Return Top Shop. This is pretty consistent across the board.

So where to next? I’m finding myself in a position of having a few brands I know can sell, a few products that I am willing to spend time promoting and sticking to those. I know I can sell yoyos that retail for under $30. Over that, brand recognition is required, and a scarcity market (sells out quickly elsewhere) helps.
Do I put money into bringing more brands in to draw customers? Or do I put that money into creating original products with Rain City Skills? Do I switch tracks and put more time and energy into building the local yoyo scene through school demos and public workshops? Or do I need to put some money and time into advertising?
Either way, it’s a learning experience that I’m really enjoying!
Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.
-Jeremy “Mr Yoyothrower” McKay


How to Run a Yoyo Contest

Yoyo contest organizing. 
If you have ever organized a contest, my hat is off to you. It’s not an easy thing. Even the smallest local contest organizer has a lot of responsibility. It’s not a thankless job, the people that attend are always very appreciative, but as far as recognition outside of that, not much happens (and if you are running the World Championship you usually get a pile of negativity). Having said that, this article isn’t about complaining, it’s about giving you a realistic outline of what goes into running a contest. Who knows, you might actually want to run one after reading this! At the very least you might look at approaching the local contest organizer and offering to help out.
For anyone who has attended a contest, you know there are some things to expect. You can generally expect qualified judges and a stage. You can expect to see vendor tables where you can do some shopping , a practice area and somewhere to sit. There’s a sound system for the music and nowadays there is an expectation of a live stream, or at least high quality video is posted to youtube afterward. There are prizes, often a raffle. A good contest usually has access to food and drink as well. You also might notice the banner with the sponsor’s logos on it. Generally this is all put together a handful of people, headed up by a single person.

The Columbia Theatre hosted the 2016 Canadian Nationals.

So what are the key steps needed to pull a contest together?
1. Venue. First step is finding a venue. This is varying degrees of difficult based on the date you choose. It's best to try to give your attendees at least 2-3 months notice to make any travel accessories. For this contest I usually use an elementary school gymnasium. Because I am a teacher I can generally get a really good rate at my schoool, around $500 for the day. That usually includes the sound system, tables and chairs. I have to add on event insurance though, which is another $125. Often some local parents will volunteer to go to Costco and provide a snack table and charge enough to recover costs.
Total $625

2. Judges – This is always the 2nd thing I look for. There is no point in going any farther if there are no judges available. I can usually scrabble together enough people from the local community to judge smaller contests, although its usually a case of some of the 1a players judge the open division and junior division. I always try to pay judges at least something, since it’s a pretty boring way to spend your day when you could be yoyoing. Another element is having a volunteer to run the judges table and process the scores they generate into final scores.. I luckily have a parent of a local yoyo champ that is heavily involved and handles this.
So tack on a minimum of $50 per judge, usually for around 4 people minimum.
$200

Chris Mikulin at the judges table at Western Canadian Regionals 2013

​3. Sponsors – With a smaller contest most of the time the best you can get from sponsors is product donations. Occasionally one or two will add a bit of cash, but for the most part they provide the prizes and raffle prizes. They don’t give away something for nothing either, there is an expectation that they are getting advertising, so someone (usually me) has to put the time into facebook, Instagram, reddit and anywhere else to give them public thank you announcements. There is a cost here, generally aroud $150 for the stage banner.
$150 Plus time.

4. Trophies/medals. – For smaller contests I usually go with certificates that I can print at home due to the high cost/low return of a small contest. This gives me the freedom to make up some awards as well (funniest yoyo trick, future professional dog walker, etc)

5. Sounds/video – For a smaller contest this is usually a pair of volunteer jobs. Someone to run a laptop that the players music is loaded into (usually in the morning the day of the event). I have a decent video camera and usually can get a volunteer to run it. Then I have to put the hours in at home to edit and upload the videos with the sponsors logos at the beginning. I usually am able to give the volunteers something from the sponsor donations as a thank you
Cost: A lot of time and sponsor donated products.

2016 Canadian Nationals 1a winners

I can speak to contests up to the size of a small national contest. I’ve run BC provincials, Western Canadian Regionals and Canadian Nationals. To some degree the work involved is the same, just in gradually increasing scale.


BC provincials
I usually treat this as a fun, small contest with the intent of providing a venue for competitiors to hone their stage skills, but mostly as a place for newer yoyoers to have fun and come together to play with yoyo. I organize a couple standard divisions (1a junior, 1a pro, open/X division). Scattered in there are various mini contests (sleeper, rock the baby showdown, walk the dog race). ​

Chris Mikulin at the judges table at Western Canadian Regionals 2013

Beyond that most of what is needed is volunteers – an MC, registration desk, raffle ticket sales, setup crew. It’s a big job to put together even a small contest. My hard costs for a small contest are usually just under $1000CAD. It’s a stretch to get that back between limited sponsor cash, raffle and registration fees. Sometimes I do, sometimes I just have to cover the additional costs myself. The upside to running a store at the event is that my table profits are usually at least close to enough to cover the difference

Here is a sample breakdown for Western Canadian Regionals and Canadian Nationals.
For the most part I treat these two the same. I’m usually either running one or the other as Canadian Natinoals alternates east coast/west coast. So When I’m not running nationals, WCR serves as a replacement west coast contest for those that can’t travel.
As far as the main tasks go they are usually close to the same, with scaled up costs. A larger/nicer venue is needed, everything else costs a little more. ​

1. Venue – Cost varies from 1000-2000 for the venue rental. Best nationals I’ve held cost 1600 plus 150 for the venue rental. It had the benefit of a kitchen staff so food and drink were included. It also required a lot more setup/teardown but players are usually willing to show up early and help with that.
2. Judges – You can’t run a larger contest just with local volunteers so I usually have to call out for people with more experience. This year I was luckey enough to get some volunteers from the USA to drive up for the contest. They were kind enough to do the job for $50 each and a place to stay. Total cost was $250

3. For a national contest we are usually able to get more cash sponsorship, sometimes up to a total of $1000. The banner cost goes up as you need a bigger one for a bigger stage, so usually around $200 for that. ​

​4. Trophies – for nationals a good quality trophy is required. 2016’s organizer was able to get something cool from a sponsor, 2017 I spent about $250 for all the divisions to get a 1st place trophy and 2nd and 3rd place medals for each event.
5. MC – for a bigger contest I budget at least $100 for this.
6. Sound and video – I’ve been lucky enough to get a volunteer for this.
All in Canadian Nationals can be run from $2000-$2500

Canada is small beans in the yoyo world. Our community is limited by geography and access to yoyos (The word yoyo is trademarked). Step outside and things get bigger. A few years ago the Vancouver group considered putting in a bid to host worlds’. We ended up deciding it wasn’t feasible due to cost. Getting a large enough venue and covering all of the associated costs was going to end up requiring somewhere between $100 000 and $140 000. No one around here had the cash for that, and we didn’t feel confident we would be able to recoup the costs.

I don't know what costs are for contests outside of Canada, but they probably vary based on size and location. If you life in a major city, venue costs will be likely be a lot higher than a small town.

Steve Brown recently replied to a question on Facebook regarding contest costs by providing a per minute cost breakdown of a couple contests he runs which maker for interesting reading.
I've quoted them below.

“It varies wildly from one event to the next. Worlds 2016 cost roughly $2800/hour to run, which is about $47/minute. Considering that a player who is doing a 1-minute freestyle takes up about 3+ minutes of contest time, then consider that they are getting like a 65% discount. ;) And that's assuming that you are not charging for the administrative time leading up to the event.”

“For contrast, Ohio States cost about $183/hour to run last year, not including administrative time before the event. Adding admin time would probably bump that to about $300/hour.”

​For a 6 hour Canadian Nationals that works out to about $400 per hour or around $6.50 per hour.
Food for thought for sure. I think I’ll leave the massive contests to the people who have the knowledge and skill set to organize something that large, but I’m content to keep running our small Canadian events. More than anything what makes it possible is the huge amount of local support I have from parents and yoyoers alike. When I am putting on an event all I have to do is post “I need someone to do _______ at the contest” and I always get a volunteer. Yoyo is not a major sport. I don’t see it ever becoming a major sport. Volunteers will always be what makes our happy little corner of nerdsville run. 

If you have made it through this article, feel free to join in the comments. I’d love to hear either your experiences running a contest, or a shout out for volunteers that have made your corner of the yoyo world a better place!

So You Want to Make a Yoyo

The yoyo community is a relatively small one. With a niche hobby, the suppliers of hardware tend to be more closely connected to customers and as a result are more closely inspected and analyzed than in a bigger one. But for many people the process of running a yoyo company is a mystery.

This article is going to focus largely on where my experience sits. The ‘boutique’ yoyo brand. 

For those of you other than my 6 fans who may not know my history, over the last 8 years I’ve been involved with 3 yoyo brands. I started as a sponsored player with MonkeyfingeR Design out of Calgary (Canada) as a sponsored player. From there I moved onto quasi-manager of King Yo Star Canada. It was an weird position, it wasn’t my brand (It was owned by a toy store owner in China) but I had full authority on promotion, sales and sponsorship outside of China. By the end I had a lot of say over the design as well. Currently I’m running my own brand (Rain City Skills) as the full on head honcho. Between King Yo Star and Rain City skills I’ve now got 9 yoyo releases under my belt.

Let’s spend a moment at the top of the yoyo industry with the giants like Duncan, Yoyofactory and Magic Yoyo. These brands have the spending power to make large runs of yoyos and distribute them around the world. This allows them the option of lower costs and higher profit margins (when making anything, the more you buy the lower the per unit price). It also allows them to work with injection moulded plastics which have a really high initial investment rate but a really good return if you can move enough volume (I’m talking 10 000 units or more). This goes with their brand recognition and reach into actual retail stores. They have employees working for them (although it’s still yoyos, so not a huge number). With financial resources comes the ability to advertise more widely through sponsoring contests and sponsoring the top players, and particularly by advertising to beginners, creating lifelong customers.

Smaller brands are a different story. These are usually one-person operations run by someone who works a full time job to pay the bills and designs/makes/sells yoyos as a passion. They are often designing yoyos themselves and having batches of 50-100 made at a time, doing all of the assembly, packaging and advertising themselves. They don’t usually have the budget to hire people to do work for them, or to spend the big bucks to do google and Facebook ads, so it all comes down to making personal connections with individuals and with groups in the community through various social media outlets.

Having said all of that, in both cases the process of creating and selling yoyos is generally the same. There are a lot of half-truths about the costs of making yoyos that float around. I am not going to list off exact hard costs because every yoyo has a different price to make, based on difficulty of design (time on the machine), quantity made, the anodizing, where you have it made and so on. Below is a list of the costs that go into getting a yoyo to market that are a ballpark average based on my experiences and those of others I’ve talked to.


DIRECT COSTS

1. Design - most people don’t have the time and energy to learn the complex software required to design yoyos. The result is that you usually need to hire someone else to do the job. Some companies that machine yoyos will offer to take your drawing and convert it for you as part of the prototyping cost. One Drop is an example, and from what they told me they have received everything from detailed and accurate digital drawings to sketches on a napkin. Often times though you are looking at paying a professional for the design or at the very least trading a couple of the finished product in exchange.


Above: Various prototypes from my personal collection.

2. Prototype - This cost can range depending on where you are making the yoyos, but it is a key step. What the design looks like on paper is often drastically different than what it looks like in reality. As well there is no way to tell from a drawing how it’s going to feel on the string. Often makers have to do 2 or even 3 runs of prototypes to get that weight and balance right, and that adds to the overall cost of the yoyo run, especially if you are only making the minimum order (which is usually 100). If a prototype run costs $500, that’s $5 per yoyo. Cost aside, the #1 lesson I’ve learned being involved in over a dozen releases and designs over the years is that if you think you need to do another prototype, you really should. Every time I’ve decided not to because of cost I’ve regretted it.


3. Machining - This cost again varies based on where you are producing (China VS USA), complexity of design (simple is usually faster/cheaper) and quantity made in a run (500 vs 100). A lot of the cost involved is in setting up and programming the machine. Shops calculate costs by the machine hour. If your design is simple and they can pump out 10 parts in an hour it’ll be cheaper than if they can only do 4. Material can be a factor as well, Titanium takes a lot longer per part to create so combined with the cost of the raw materials it’s a lot more costly to create.

4. Finish and anodizing - Polished, blasted, tumbled or ? Again, it comes down to time. Polished is cheaper than blasted or any of the other alternatives because it takes less time. You have to clean and polish the parts before you anodize anyway. Adding a step to the process usually adds cost (again usually based on quantity)
Colour? Single colour anodizing is obviously cheaper than multiple colours. Anodizing is a post all to itself, but suffice to say it’s a time intensive process with a fair bit of materials and electricity cost (you can’t forget in all of this the shop is factoring power) If you are working with a Chinese manufacturer a single colour is often included or a very small cost because they do it in house. 
If you are machining in North America you are looking at significant additional costs ($20 per yoyo isn’t unreasonably for a 3-4 colour splash from a reputable shop). 
For the most part there is a minimum order as well, usually around 25 yoyos per colourway (although you can do less, the cost just goes up a lot).

HIDDEN COSTS

One of the challenges is that there are many costs that aren't directly about creating the parts of the yoyo.

1. Shipping.  This cost can’t be emphasized enough.  Here is a list of things that need to be shipped to get the yoyo run made.  Yoyos are heavy, and shipping is charged by weight, so shipping 100 yoyos around is expensive!
​       -prototypes - to you from the shop, then to players to test.
​       -anodizing - shipping from the machine shop to the anodizer back to you.  If you are making them in China those are usually hidden costs, you’ll             just pay the freight to you, but if the shop is incurring costs you are paying for them.
​       -bearings, pads and axles - if you are machining in china you can usually get the shop to source them for you and include with your yoyos, but they​     ​          are added weight and you are paying either way.
​       -boxes - you can avoid shipping on these if you go to a physical store near you, but it’s often cheaper to order bulk online and you have a better ​      ​    ​           chance of finding something that will help your brand stick out.
​       -stickers - same as with boxes.
​       -throws to team members - The small brands main source of testing and advertising
​       -throws to reviewers - Again, key piece of advertising
       -assorted accessories included (string, carry bag, etc)

2.  Packaging. Are you going to ship in a specialty box? Including a carry bag?  Smaller brands have to set this up for every different yoyo to help them stand out.  Bigger brands like YYF can afford to use the same box for most throws, cutting costs by buying 1000’s at a time.  If you are a smaller brand trying to make your mark, you might choose one of the more unique options to help sell the product.  If you are trying to make an extreme low budget throw, a clear plastic box that costs you pennies, hoping the price point is enough to sell the throw.

3. Stickers - You have design costs.  If you are like me and have no artistic talent, it costs money to get a sticker design.  I have found an artist whose style I like an who works with me until I’m happy, and he’s worth every penny of the ~$100 per piece of art I spend. The cost of the actual stickers can vary, again due to quantity made.  As with everything else cost of setup is the biggest piece once the printers are running the difference between 100 and 10000 is a fraction of the difference between 0 and 100.  You can usually get 1000 of a sticker printed for about $50

4. Advertising - This is the big one people don’t think about.  Out of a run of 100 yoyos, maybe 80 actually get sold.  The biggest way to advertise a yoyo is to have people play with it.  ​
-Your average small brand has around 5 players representing them, so you send them a minimum of 1 throw each (more if they are competing with it).  
-Next you have reviewers.  At least 1, sometimes more (I sent 4 gamers to reviewers).  
-Contest sponsorship.  Smaller contests will allow you to donate product or a combination of product and cash, so you are looking at 2-5 throws from each run, and at least 200-400 cash per year just to sponsor one or two contests.  You might pass up this advertising venue, but I’ve always received my biggest bump of ‘fans’ and the associated sales after I attend a contest, even if I don’t have a table.
-For the larger brands there is also the cost of direct advertising on youtube, Facebook or google ads.  

FINALLY: THE MATH

So lets throw some imaginary math at this to put it in a bit of perspective.  I’m going to pick some numbers that are a reasonable ‘average’ price for the various steps involved (Numbers in USD).  These will be based on a short run of 100 yoyos made in China, with a medium complicated design.  These are average costs, you can do all of this cheaper by cutting corners, and you can spend more for quality and branding.
1. Prototype run - $400 per run (shipped), we’ll assume only 1 prototype was needed = $4.00
2. Yoyo parts - $15 per yoyo.  $1500 for the run.
3. Axle - $0.20
4. Bearing -$1.50 (decent quality budget bearing)
5. Pads $1 per pair (sourced through an existing company, not custom made) 
6. Anodizing (in china) $4 per yoyo for 3 colour splash
7. String $0.15
8. Shipping to North America $120/100 = $1.2 (includes customs duties)
9. Simple boxes $0.50
10. Custom Sticker Art 100 = $1 each
11. Sticker printing (1000 is usually the best value) $50 (shipped) = $0.5 each yoyo
12. Carry Bag $1.5 (Incl shipping from China)

Total that up you get a cost of $30.75 per yoyo.

Lets account for 1 for the owner, 5 for the team, 1 for review and 3 for contest sponsorship.  That’s $321.
Divide by the remaining 90 adds $3.57 per yoyo, bumping costs up to
$34.32 per yoyo.  

OK.   Next bit of math - Finding a price.  If you are selling direct and not retailing at all you get to make a bit of money, but it’s more work to sell through the run.  If you choose to retail here is your math.

Most retailers ask for a minimum of wholesale x 1.7.  For some it’s closer to wholesale x2 (which is a standard minimum markup in any industry, yoyo retailers take a smaller cut than most businesses).  Going with the minimum.

34.32 x 1.7 = $58.34. 

That’s your retail price if you aren’t going to make a penny on the yoyo.  For retail stores I usually try to give myself $5 as a minimum, so new math:

40.7 x 1.7 = $66.84

If you have a look back up, we started with raw parts costing only $15, $20 anodized.  At the end of this adventure the brand owner earned $5 per yoyo on a maximum of 90 yoyos which gives you $450.  If you have ever tuned a yoyo you know how much time is involved in assembly of the 100 throws, add in packing them up, all of the design, testing, social media work and that’s peanuts.

Move to North America?  Add $20 per yoyo at least.  Have to do a 2nd or 3rd prototype?  $5-$10 more per yoyo.  Bi-metal or Titanium? Sponsoring a high level player or want a spot at the big kids table sponsoring nationals or worlds?  The costs keep going up.

Yes, you can get things made cheaper, the fact that there are metal throws on the market for under $40 tells you that.  If you can afford to make 1000 yoyos the price can drop as low as $5USD for the parts, that’s how you can find aluminum yoyos on EBay for under $10, but can you sell that many? What is displayed above is not an unreasonable set of numbers for a short run of made in China yoyos from a reputable, quality controlled shop.  

So there. One persons averaged numbers on how yoyos are made.  One of the wonderful things about the internet is that you can find just about any information.  If you are thinking of making your own yoyos, I wholeheartedly suggest you do some research and see if it’s something you want to pursue.  Companies like Magic Yoyo, Vosun and FPM all do yoyos on demand, or if you want to stay in North America hit up One Drop or Foxland Precision and get some prices.  

Feel free to comment or hit me up at mryoyothrower@gmail.com if you have questions on any of this!

Rain City Skills Gamer - Round 2

Round 2 of the hugely popular “Gamer! The first run of themed ‘splash’ colourways sold out in a weekend, so by popular demand we did a second run!

I like to stay tuned in to the community online and one piece of feedback that was overwhelming was a desire to have a beadblasted finish, so we added that. I also opted for a slightly thicker but better quality carry case that should hold all your accessories.

For the second run we chose 3 new games and 1 repeat from the first run.

The repeat is the “Space Invader” colour. The first time around the anodizer forgot a colour, and I wanted it just right, so the 2nd run includes 3 colours of aliens!

The Hero in honour of The Legend of Zelda, another game which has occupied many, many hours of my life! 
It’s Dangerous to go alone! Take This!

The Plumber in honour of Nintendo’s flagship gaming franchise, the Super Mario Brothers! Yes, we’ve left out Luigi, but I was an only child growing up so all I played was player 1 ;)

Finally, I can’t take the credit for this one. This colourway came back from the anodizer differen’t than I’d originally planned, so I asked facebook. Overwhelmingly the response was for a World of Warcraft themed throw. Specifically...
Leeeeeeeeeerooooooooooy...Jaaaaaaaaannkiiiiiiiiins
Check out the video and if you have ever played the game seriously you’ll be face in hands sighing, becuase we’ve all raided with a Leroy.

If you missed the story of the Gamer yoyo and how it came aboutclick here to read up. The first run actually had 500 yoyos in it, most of which were earmarked for schools and a charity project Free Hinton of Eternal throw works with.

Since people seem to like their solid colours, I’ve decided to release a small quantity of what remained from the first 500 as mix/match colours. These are not bead blasted as they came from the first run. To the left is all the combos you can make with green!

Where to shop:
www.returntopshop.com
www.yoyoexpert.com
www.yoyosam.com

Rain City Skills 'Gamer' Round 3

The Gamer has been something of a phenomenon. When J. Free Hinton of Eternal Throw and I first envisioned this throw it was with the intention of making an affordable beginner yoyo that would fit well in kids hands and would be affordable enough for us to sell at contests to beginners. Free works with a charity Called “Bikers Against Child Abuse” that helps children that have been in abusive situations. He wanted yoyos that he could afford to give to this kids. I wanted them for use in the schools I work with.

The design came from the intent to have a beginner yoyo, combined with a desire to pay tribute to the Tom Khun SB2, the first serious metal ball bearing yoyo. Justin Scott Larson is the brain behind the technical side of the design, having wanted to make just this yoyo for years!

What ended up happening was fortunate timing. When the first run was released, slimline yoyos were in fashion and there was a demand from the yoyo community for more! We made 500 to start (that was the only way to keep the price down) and out of those 400 were solid colours earmarked for Free and I to use with kids. The other 100 were splash editions that I loaded up with extras to sell in stores. Those sold out immediatly. So we did a 2nd run of splash colours that moved almost as fast!

1 year later, 600 gamers are out in the world and demand is still there, so I bring you round 3 of the gamer! 4 new colours themed after video games, Megaman, Rampage, Pokemon, Super Mario and a fade colourway we decided to call ‘in game currency’.

Each package comes with the following:
1 gamer yoyo with an unresponsive ‘c’ bearing installed
1 hard shell zip up case
2 spare sets of Rain Pads
A slim bearing for responsive play
A pair of lego pieces that attach to the hubs
A bottle of thick lube to tweak your responsiveness, or to make the Full size bearing semi-responsive
A really cool keychain multi-tool/string cutter

This throw is a passion project, not a cash grab. It’s priced at a low $44.99 to make it accessible to everyone. I want every yoyoer to have this in their case, to enjoy and to share with any beginners they see. Walk the dog, shoot the moon, or throw an unresponsive bearing in and practice your toughest combo, I guarantee your tricks will clean up fast practicing with this throw!

The Gamer will be available September 20th at www.returntopshop.com, www.yoyoexpert.com and www.yoyosam.com!