They actually made a company called A-Return Top (A-rt). The other company is called Amplified Return Tops (ART).
LaMonte, would it be ok if they only used the name A-Return Top? Or if I decided to create a brand and call it Aaron’s Return Tops? I don’t know if that was ever mentioned or asked? And I’m asking that in earnest, not trying to start anything.
What would have made it ok is if they had taken me seriously and understood my concern. To be abundantly clear AaronW, the conversation never evolved that far. Had it, I most likely would have given that a good deal of thought, more than I have at this point in time.
Heh, I’ve only seen “class” from you. 
Yes, but these yoyos are purchased and discussed heavily online, where everything is inevitably abbreviated as an acronym. The name is the branding and anybody in a small industry like this would have to know they’d be mucking up all the work that was done by the other company to represent and distinguish themselves. My first reaction was it sounded more like something a company in China selling knockoff Shouts would name themselves, not a new company with a unique vision started by well-known people in the hobby.
It really made me wonder how in touch with the community they are.
Does One Drop machine all of A-rt’s yo-yos?
Yes
It’s been talked about before, but acronyms are duplicated all the time, and not a real argument for a company. You can’t stop someone from changing their name because the letters form an acronym like someone else does.
I’ve mentioned it before, and not trying to step on LaMonte’s toes. But if you go to Shop>Brands here on YYE you’ll find him listed as Amplified, his logo says Amplified, his website has it as Amplified. All the branding/advertising I’ve seen say Amplified Return Tops. Then you’ll find ART in parenthesis, or flat out saying ART for short, or just forum talk using ART. Where Jensen & Chuck have used the exact opposite formula, they’ve used A/rt for their name, website, advertising, etc., and then said it stands for A/Return Top.
The only exception are the wooden yoyos. Those are made by hand by Jensen, and use the One Drop Cabal/Rally guts.
I want to make it known that I wish no ill will their way. I hope they have a fun Easter weekend. I wasn’t angry when I typed this.
Yoyoexpert made the decision to list my brand as Amplified on this website. I didn’t have any part in that. The shout drop here was around the time of when Jensen and Charles were rolling out their thing, and I’m not sure if that had anything to do with their decision. BUT if you read the Shout description, you’ll see that the acronym is there.
After the initial controversy with Jensen and Charles, I made the deliberate private decision to start using Amplified/Amplified Return Tops for most of my branding. If they weren’t going to work to avoid confusion, I would have to. When forced in a corner, I’m not the type of person to just stay there.
ART, the acronym, was always part of what I did, but never EVERYTHING I did. I guess that’s what made it easy to snatch.
Picture this:
You’re waking up on a nice beautiful morning and notice something is oddly out of place. You can’t put your finger on it, but something is wrong. You look out the window and see two “famous” guys running off with your thumbs. They cut off your thumbs and are now on their way to a foreign country to use a picture of your thumbs as the logo for their brand new business venture. Not only that, but they make your thumbs the center of everything they do. On all of their merch- pics of your thumbs. First thing you see in their videos- pics of your thumbs. Their profile pics on social media- pics of your thumbs. etc.
Can you survive without your thumbs? Yes.
Does this make your thumbs a non-essential part of your body? No.
When I saw that my thumbs had been taken and I wouldn’t be getting them back, I decided to see if I could survive without them. I’m not a delusionally confrontational person. They made the conscious decision to do wrong by me and will no’t reverse it. I’m not going to waste the rest of my life battling their celebrity.
This thread isn’t about me. I won’t be addressing any further takes on me/my company here. If anyone has anything they want to say to me they can do so via PM.
This whole rant sounds woefully possessive. I hate to sound like this. I just don’t know any other way to help people understand.
It can be parsed to what degree it’s acceptable or unacceptable, but the underlying fact remains that if they didn’t know it would step on some of the work Amplified has already done and limit his company’s marketing options and brand differentiation going forward, they really should have.
They very much knew they were stepping on toes. They also made it pretty clear how little they cared for an established brand in the small yoyo world. Chuck is one of my favorite players, but the whole way the brand was born leaves a nasty taste in my mouth and makes it very easy to “change the channel” to someone a bit more understanding and respectful.
Poor tact, bad business practices, and blatant disrespect so someone who did nothing to deserve getting trampled.
Bottom line? I see ART and I think Amplified. I see A-RT and I think of an ideological ripoff to a good person which makes me think of Amplified again. Either way, Amplified will *always be ART to me. the other ones, i just shake my head shamefully and move along.
Just curious how you know that they knew they were stepping on toes, or how they made it clear?
Neither Jensen or Chuck frequent the forums, which was the main source of info for Amplified. So how would they know?
DELETED THIS PREVIOUS PART OF MY POST, I HAD SOME INFORMATION INCORRECT, SHOULDVE VERIFIED INSTEAD OF GOING OFF OF MY MEMORY. MY APOLOGIES
I believe the whole thing happened on Facebook or something, and I think five months was enough of a period for a manufacturer to become known, if not established.
From what I have been seeing on this thread, a thoroughly avoidable, unpleasant exchange took place that was not justifiable in any way and was marked by disregard and disrespect. I have seen informative posts on this thread, but I think that at this point, people have their opinions and will not be changing them.
The saddest thing about this whole thing from what I’ve gathered is that we lost a great member of our small yoyo community because of a unkind reaction to a lighthearted, or at least un malevolent post by that person. I really hope everyone can continue to express their views respectfully, without driving any person out of this forum, hobby, or community.
There is no A-RT in my collection nor will there be. I’m glad for that and wish them no ill.
As far as gambit, I feel it’s a bit strong to say he acted over the top with such a small snip of the information to support the opinion, and it just wouldn’t be right to air that info in public. Gambit has always been straight forward, valuable forum member, and a great guy. Just my opinion, no disrespect.
Your response reminded me of the discussion around conflict minerals in phones. It’s bothered a segment of the consumer phone market enough that “conflict-free” phones have begun to spring up as an alternative. In the world of yoyoing, you have what you might call controversy yoyos. It’s one reason I like to play OD yoyos, because they make controversy-free yoyos, made in the USA by people who love and respect the hobby. Not only how a yoyo performs, but how the company that made it performs and behaves, really does matter, especially in a small hobby like this. It’s a shame because a yoyo should get the chance to speak for itself, and I’m sure A-RT’s lineup is great, but there will always be this cloud of controversy surrounding them in the minds of some, myself included.
OD does all of A/rt’s machining, so wouldn’t that make them part of the controversy?
Because they run their company in probably the most awesome least drama inducing way.
The problems people have with A-RT is the way Chuck and Jensen have gone about running the company.
Most people really like their skill and throws, it’s just the personality(might not be the right word) of the company that people are bothered by.
They talk about it being about art and how they are opposed to competition, but then they’ve stepped on a couple people in the process of building the company. That seems counter intuitive.
Also, One Drop and Foxland Precision are basically the only people who make throws in the USA.
So, not a lot of companies are doing it. One Drop is also the only US company that makes their own yoyos in the USA. That kind of over site through the entire production process is important to a lot of people. It also allows them a lot of freedom witch has lead to less drama.
And, they are just cool guys who have worked really hard to support the community.
I’ve yet to see a giveaway or competition that didn’t have prizes from YYE and One Drop.
Conversely, I’ve never seen A-RT give away something that wasn’t for self promotion.
Giveaways are almost always self promotion. That isn’t a bad thing. You give something away and it’s better marketing and advertising than anything else you could ever do.
But I also know that those companies, including A-RT, have given away many items that people never heard about. No fanfare, just giving things away because they wanted to.
Not commenting on the rest of the post, because I’m not quite sure what that had to do with the previous two posts.
To me here is what all of this boils down to, and afterwards I’m going to try not comment again on this topic, because as I’ve mentioned before I have nothing against LaMonte or any of you commenting here either, and don’t want to make it seem that I do 
My views come from almost 20 years of Marketing/Sales/Consulting experience. I would have suggested that Amplified Return Tops used ART way more than what it was. Looking through the forums here, and Instagram the company is referred to as Amplified much more than it is ART. Buggot from my research has referred to Amplified Return Tops as ART more than any other person I’ve found, outside of LaMonte’s hashtags. But T-Shirts, Buttons, Logo Artwork, etc is all Amplified Return Tops. A simple fix on all of these things would’ve been to add a #ART somewhere on these, or to also have some ART artwork made up. Now if LaMonte registered the name as Amplified Return Tops and ART we would be having a completely different conversation.
On the flipside, A/Return Top did the exact opposite. They went with A/rt from the beginning of making their company official. They referred to their company as A/rt always, with A/Return Top being secondary. Did they know about Amplified Return Tops? Most likely not, if you know Charles and Jensen you’d know that. So I’d find it extremely hard to believe that they saw Amplified/ART and said lets take that name.
I watched the drama on Facebook, none of that was Jensen or Charles but Chase, who although is “associated” with them, as their friend, is not part of their company. I’ll agree associates can be just as bad and harmful. Charles & Jensen both apologized for all of what happened and both reached out to Gambit to not only apologize but to also try to work with him. Gambit’s response, well we can’t comment on that because we don’t know internally what was going on with Gambit at the time to make him react the way he did, anything we say would only be personal views and speculation.
As to LaMonte’s conversation with them the only people that know what went on with that is LaMonte, Jensen and Charles.
From a professional stand point I understand and can relate to LaMonte’s frustrations as I’ve had it happen to me in the past as well. But a lot of what I mentioned above is what I have realized in my own ventures, I needed to be more blatant and specific with my marketing in those situations.
I know it may seem that I’m against Amplified Return Tops, but that just isn’t the case at all. I’ve just been looking at it and commenting on it all from a professional sales, marketing and consultant standpoint. In fact I saw on Amplified’s Instagram that he had a CAD for a yoyo called the Static, that looked really good to me, hope that one comes down the line someday
So that’s that, I hope you all have a great day!
I should have been more clear about the giveaways. I haven’t seen them contribute to an contests or giveaways that were not something they specifically started and ran themselves.
IE- How YYE and OD always support contests and things.
The rest of the post was in reference as to why OD isn’t also caught up in the controversy.
All they do is the machining, and people have issues with the way the company is run, not the actual yoyos–from what I can tell.