This is something I have wondered for a long time. What is the dollar-value of the world-wide yo-yo market?
Researching this is hard since “yo-yo market” is an actual economic term for a market that is oscillating in value. Since most companies are small - there is no reliable information available.
Anyone know? Anyone have an ‘informed opinion’?
Very small. Not 9 figures. Duncan/YYF are the “market”
As far as top revenue, I will make some assumptions that are likely obvious but who knows, I might be way off the mark.
Duncan and yoyofactory probably land in the top tier. You did say global though and I live in the USA and I know their is a large market in other parts of the world, so I could be wildly off.
Next tier, my guess would be Onedrop, CLYW and yoyorecreation.
If we are going net profit of the whole industry, I would guess $5 million a year, with 75 percent going to the companies mentioned above. That’s a complete guess, again, I can be wildly off.
From insiders, this is a good guess. But we can not exclude the Chineese Manufaturers or Amazon. This then gets even bigger.
The YoYo market is tiny but I would hedge a bet magic YoYo is the biggest right now…
Well, I’m yet to find a single Yoyo store where I live so unfortunately idk how big a Yoyo market would be 
As I understand though; the yoyo market is not a large one at least in the NA. Elsewhere (Asia) it may be bigger.
I totally forgot about magicyoyo, and yeah, I’m willing to bet they are up their with Duncan and yoyofactory
Definitely bigger than just 3 companies… (MagicYoyo, YYFactory, Duncan).
There are more yoyo sellers than there are manufacturers. You cant completely exclude yoyofriends, C3 and one drop and anyone else manufacturing.
Then you have the sellers that commission yoyos from them. Much smaller, but definitely a piece of the pie.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am extremely ignorant on the subject. I don’t have the slightest clue on the profits and market share of the top companies.
I venture to say a lot of the smaller mom and pop type companies are just a labor of love with a very small return and treat it as a side project for the love of the hobby.
Ive been curious about this too. I bet the Global market is bigger than the Hardcore Enthusiasts think ,as it is still a popular known toy the spans multiple generations. The Asian and India markets alone support more brands and shops that never see American buyers. If the big 3 were publicly traded there would be more financial data. I looked at some of my A-RT order #s and tried to determine their purchase volume between some of my orders form over the years, I guesstimated they grossed over $200K in a few year period. Thats just one private boutique brand. We can all do the the math, a 100 $100 yoyos = $10k. Some of you all might have that in your own collections. There wouldn’t be as many shops if there wasn’t any money in it.
Nothing in YoYo is going to have a stock ticker or a company a large investor would be willing to back. It’s all just to niche.
Remember YoYo is a sub market under toys…
Don’t get me wrong these companies are amazing and some of them are probably decently profitable but they all still qualify as small business even yyf. Duncan only gets to the corporate table (Vosun too) because they are a subsidiary of a larger firm.
There’s a reason manufacturers treat YoYo like a side gig and most have other more profitable ventures that take priority and the bearing manufacturer market is entirely based on sizing that’s for other verticals. Even our bearings aren’t specific to YoYo.
I just don’t see that. Big box stores have mostly stopped selling yo-yos and mom and pop shops and specialty stores don’t sell them much either. It’s just too much of a niche. Even if they did it would be very beginner oriented
Don’t get me wrong I would love to be wrong or see another big boom it would be so cool to walk into a kite shop at the beach again and see popular YoYo’s on a shelf
There are some obvious things like magicyoyos sales are surely enormous, but we know given the quality of their yoyos and cost of manufacturing that their profits per unit are likely very low and yoyoing is just a tiny hobby so it seems hard to believe they are generating a huge amount of volume even including Amazon impulse buys.
Some boutique companies make ton a per drop, but often have very few drops per year, so their overall profit is very low even if the owner’s dollars per hour made are very high.
Meanwhile YYF may often be producing at roughly magicyoyo prices while still selling at a reasonably high volume, but they have advertising costs, legal costs, a team to support, social media to run, they do engraving in-house, etc.
Duncan has the nostalgia of every person over 35 knowing the name of the brand, every store that sells any kind of yoyos selling Duncans at the bare minimum, being very willing to support programs for kids, having progressively leaned more and more into competition oriented yoyos, etc
Some info I gleaned from chatting with Steve @ CLYW on Discord about this topic a little while ago (I assume he doesn’t mind me sharing this as it was on a public server)… here’s some relevant quotes from a few questions I was asking him:
Magic YoYo probably move more yo-yos than Duncan and YoYoFactory combined. Same for Auldey. But sales are also very cyclical and the larger companies aren’t always pushing yo-yos since they aren’t their only product line.
The people who mention Caribou and One Drop as any significant part of “the yoyo market” are obviously only considering boutique yoyo companies since neither of us is any real size or scale.
I think if people realized how small the specialty yoyo market was they would be a little more amazed that the IYYF and NYYL exist at all lol
I would say if you stacked up alllll the boutique yoyo companies in the US [non-Duncan/YYF] it’s maybe $1-$2 mil gross sales, depending on the year.
And then he went on to say he can’t speak on the revenues/data of either Duncan or YYF as he has been associated with them in the past, is still friends with both companies and respects their private business, which is totally fair. Just thought I’d share some nuggets from someone who is actually operating a long time, successful, boutique yoyo company and has been at a couple of the big ones previously in their career.
Yeah look at Duncan I mostly only see marketing for the outdoor toys.
Part of my assumption is that Duncan is the only widely available yoyo that you can just go buy 15 of at Target for a kids birthday party and that this sort of thing accounts for a pretty significant amount of profits that 0 other companies can get. Then their programs for kids. Plus how popular competition models like the GTR-JS, Yoshicuda X or hoardable models like the FH One are for people like us make it seem like Duncan is ticking all the boxes to get the money from every direction
I have 0 doubt that Magicyoyo sells the most yoyos, it just seems like they would need to sell the most yoyos by an absolutely astronomical margin to outprofit Duncan/YYF based on how low Magicyoyo’s profit margins must be.
Just saw the quotes of Steve Brown and totally forgot Auldey existed which it barely does in the US but that’s very fair too. Yes, it definitely would make sense if Duncan/YYF/MYY/Auldey was like 80%+ of the market
I think y’all might be forgetting MagicYoyo not only manufactures their own yoyos, they manufacture yoyos for other brands.
Its damn near impossible to get a US based manufacturer to do yoyos for you unless you are already a well established brand. You basically have to go to China, and MagicYoyo is one of the biggest most capable companies.
It is hard to imagine they arent on par with any other yoyo company. Plus, they are the best yoyos available on Amazon.
It doesnt really work like this. The cost of designing, manufacturing prototype runs, machining full final runs, anodizing, shipping and distributing probably eats up a most of that profit per yoyo. So in the end they may be earning just a sliver of that in actual profit. Say they profit at a 20% margin, that would mean they paid around $8,000 to earn $10,000 (these are complete guesses btw).
And that is ONLY if they sell out.
All we can assume are Gross earnings, to many variables and insider information. Ive heard that MYY can wholesale Bi-Metals around $12 a unit and that was a few years ago.
Is everyone that actually machines yoyos basically working with the same quality 6061 aluminum and larger manufacturers are just getting a better deal due to bulk buying, or is their better quality 6061 that costs more and lesser quality 6061 that costs less (I know I am extremely ignorant but someone in the know, please amuse me.)
I know the aluminum is just a small part of the cost in machining a yoyo, likely is very expensive to run the machines let alone the initial cost of buying them. I’m just curious if companies that are able to sell yoyos for dirt cheap are using the same quality aluminum as companies that are more boutique