The Costs of yoyo contestsYoyo 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.
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.
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.
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.
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! As a little bonus, use the code “contestblog” to get 15% off any new “Vosun”, or "Magic Yoyo toys between now and October 31st!
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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.
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
hidden costsOne 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)
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 mathSo 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 [email protected] if you have questions on any of this! |
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