are Rain City Skills has been a big bucket of experimenting for me. I have learned a lot about running a business, connecting with people and managing suppliers! This will be a brief recap of what's come before, most of which is in various other blog articles in detail that I will link you to. If you are just here to read about the new "Showgirl" yoyo, scroll down a bit!
A high quality throw, but more importantly it provided an epic unboxing experience. The throw came packed in a glass mason jar (so hipster) and wrapped in a hemp carry bag. We included 3 sets of Lego pieces at different weights so you could tweak your center weight. 1/3 every three even came with a Lego minifigure! So, while this throw broke the bank, it started to build the idea of Rain City.
Our 2nd yoyo release on the other hand was a smash. The gamer sold like hot cakes, to the point where I had to do a 2nd run of a yoyo for the first time ever! I did not expect the popularity of the design. I had asked Justin for a design that would be very beginner friendly and reasonably inexpensive to machine for the kids I work with in schools. It was also an opportunity to let Justin Scott Larson have his dream yoyo. It turned out it was a perfect combination of the right design for the time, a great theme and a lot of fun. We did a total of 8 splash colourways themed around popular video games (Samus, Space Invader, Legendary Trio, Madden, Space Invader II, The Hero (link), The Plumber and Leeeeerooooooyyyy Jaaaaannnkiinnnnns (WOW). I did a writeup on the whole story, check it out here. Our 2nd (and 3rd, 4th, and 5th) begleri releases did better than the first, and were another experiment. I followed up on something the begleri community had been asking for, a monthly mystery box. I offered a discount 4 month package, or the option of buying each month after the subscribers received their boxes. When we started the only design we had firmly planed was the updated fidget slingers for september. We mixed up the materials, Stainless Steel, Brass, Copper and Aluminum. Justin Scott Larson and I had a blast coming up with fun and interesting ideas for the 4-month run and learned a lot. In the end it wasn’t a money maker (I underpriced what I offered, and we last minute decided to do the D20 which cost twice as much as the rest). What it did do was work as fantastic advertising. It gave me a chance to really get into the begleri community and connect with players, a chance to find out what people liked and didn’t like and to get to know who they were. I wrote up the story on each bead, you can read them here. Left to Right: Fidget Slinger, September (Fidget SLinger 2.0), October, November (D20) and December (Canadian FOrest).
One of the best parts with the BEHgleri was the community buy in. 2 members took up the call to design a fantastic sticker played with the fact that the design looked a little like a hamburger that I had printed (Travis Techinsky and Chris McCauley) which turned out great. I sent them each 100 and a gamer yoyo as a thank you, and all the pre-order BEHgleri came with a 10 pack of stickers. To round out the theme I found zip pouches that had a picture of a hamburger printed on them! This was such fun that we are definitly going to do it again! The SHowgirlFinally we come to the "Showgirl" The story behind this one is neat. After the gamer was a hit, I put out a poll in a couple facebook groups to decide what next to do with the yoyo side of things. I got a number of responses. I toyed with the idea of a Titanium gamer, and let others make suggestions. The 2 most common responses were "Classic 'O' shape" and "Make something weird". The something weird is definitely still going to happen, but the idea of an "O" shape appealed to me. Going back a couple months, in November I got contacted by a community member Troy Butner who was looking for a handful of people to help him fund a prototype run of his dream yoyo. He had no ambitions to start a brand, he just really wanted to make this yoyo. He got a dozen or so people together and ordered the throw. He did a great job of keeping everyone informed throughout the process and discussing colours and other ideas. Early Jan, I received my copy. Just looking at it, I was in love. 1 throw and I knew this was the next yoyo Rain City needed to make, so I asked Troy if he'd be interested in partnering to do a full retail run. He was overjoyed! The best part, he already had a Rain City worthy name! The Showgirl.
Once we got the on design adjustment made it was time to pick colours! Troy really wanted a throw that referenced roses, so the 3 colour bouquet of shades of red called "Curtain Call" was born. A curtain call is the part of a show when the performers are all called back to the stage to take a bow and the stage is showered with roses! At least that's how it works in the movies. For the rest of the colours I put our artistic director Mrs. Yoyothrower to the task. She reached out to the local burlesque community for suggestions and we got some great ones! We settled on 3 more colourways. The Red/Black/Gold splash that is "Cabaret", reflecting what is often the preferred colours for a high class performance space. The Purple/Silver Orange is an explosion of colour called "Atomic Bombshell". A 4th colourway called "Va Va Voom" suffered from one of the challenges of the business, people going on holidays!. The anno shop had some difficulty creating the effect we wanted, so rather than rush it we decided to wait until after Lunar New year to get the last 25 done in a different anno shop. Of course while we awaited the actual machining and anno of the yoyo came the part I like best, crafting the unboxing experience! I went to a local crafting store that always has tonnes of odds and ends and weird things. I found lengths of what can only be called mini feather boa! So i grabbed 30 meters in 4 different colours.
For the Lego Troy and I hunted and found some gemstones and little roses that were perfect. Each colourway will come with it's own combination of parts. For the packaging we went with a classic black box. Releasing on Valentines day meant the dollar store was full of sparkly things! So on the boxes went glittery heart stickers and patterned rhinestone stickers. To round it all off I managed to find a zip up case that had a rose printed on it! It will ship with a 10 pack of string in it, but it's also big enough to carry your Showgirl around in style! The showgirl is now available at Return Top Shop, grab yours while they last!
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