Happy New Year friends!
Thank you so much for supporting us all these years and in 2015. Without your support, we literally would not be here. We appreciate that you are continuing to help keep the option for USA made yo-yos a reality.
This was an interesting year at One Drop. Our big project was moving our shop to a new location. It took 6 months and a lot of work to get this done. It was a huge challenge to move while keeping our normal operations up and for the most part we accomplished this. Moving did set our yo-yo production back a bit, but it was worth it because the new shop is an improvement in every way which means that 2016 is shaping up to be an awesome year for us and we have big plans.
In 2015 we released the Seven Summits, the Downbeat, the Citizen, the Rebirth, the Terrarian and the Vanguard. Given how much we worked on our move, we feel good about that lineup and we expect to do much more in 2016. Here is a recap of our new releases in 2015:
Seven Summits: This was a great way to retire the Summit and these have definitely become collectibles. Changing the alloy and the design at the same time while still trying to keep the essence of the original was a new experiment which, based on the feedback we received, was very successful. We will probably revisit this idea in the future.
Downbeat: The first thought we had for the Downbeat was a mood: how it feels to be relaxing and having fun with friends. The design was an attempt to capture this mood and the result was a reminder that yo-yoing at it’s core is about playing and having fun.
Citizen: This was our long waited follow-up the Sovereign, which was our first titanium yoyo released in 2010. We are extremely proud of the Citizen and consider it our finest work to date.
Rebirth: We are committed to making signature yo-yos for members of our amazing team with the design coming from each player. The Rebirth is the signature yo-yo of Ryosuke Kawamura, who was the first player on our team from Japan. Ryosuke is a huge fan of our classic yo-yos (namely the various Projects) and his signature yo-yo was a “rebirth” of those yoyos done with all the modern considerations.
Terrarian: One of our continuing goals is to help spread yo-yoing and to bring new people into the hobby. Our collaboration with video game developer Re-Logic had a huge impact on spreading yo-yoing. As well, I’m sure many yo-yoers were also introduced to the game Terraria. We are all indebted to the owner of Terraria, Andrew Spinks, for suggesting the collaboration. He loves yo-yoing and his primary goal in trying to work with us on this was to spread the love of yo-yoing. If you haven’t tried Terraria, show him some support and pick up a copy if you are into sandbox games. Terraria is considered amongst the great sandbox games along with Minecraft. The first run of the Terrarian yo-yo sold out really fast. We have been a bit delayed in releasing the second run because production was interrupted when we physically moved our machines. Expect to see many more Terrarians in existing colorways and many new colorways starting in January.
Vanguard: In our constant quest to provide the maximum value we pushed the envelope and released the Vanguard. At $49 MSRP for a made in the USA metal yo-yo, we are happy to provide an affordable alternative to the mass of Chinese made metal yo-yos on the market. We will releasing other models in this price range to make sure that those who want to support independent North American manufacturing have plenty of options to choose from.
Here is what we are planning to do in 2016:
Spread the love: We will continue to make it a high priority to try and find ways to promote modern yo-yoing outside of the community and hopefully bring in new people. It is also a high priority for us to support our community and as always we will be sponsoring as many events and contests as possible. As well, we continue to machine some of your favorite yoyos for other independent brands.
Remain accessible: Our literal and figurative doors are always open to the community. We LOVE getting visitors at our shop and everyone is always welcome to come hang out and see what we do. And with all the other ways to interact online, we are here hoping to hear from you if you desire to ask questions or chat.
Value: We have always tried to provide maximum value, and 2016 will be no exception to this. Because we have our own machines, we are able to constantly improve what we are doing with the goal of those improvements benefiting the community with ever increasing value, quality and innovation.
Support the retailers: All One Drop yo-yos are sold through our amazing retail partners. We couldn’t do this without them and we are firmly committed to supporting their efforts.
Bi-Metal: As you might have seen, we have been working on these. Progress has been a little slow because of the move, but also because we want to make sure that when we do this, we do it right. Any modern yo-yo requires extremely high precision in order to be balanced and adding an extra piece to each half makes this already difficult task, much more challenging. We are working on finding the best way to do this and we feel we are innovating. Research and development takes time but our goal is to release a bi-metal(or two) in 2016.
Benchmark Series 2016: For past Benchmark Series, the idea was to “benchmark” the main ideas that happened in our community that year. So for example, the Benchmark 2014s were released in late 2014 and then mostly in 2015. We decided to change the idea and “skip a year” and release the new Benchmark Series in the early part of the year and name it for that year (essentially slightly changing the naming convention and delaying release a few months). The Benchmarks have evolved to be a series of standard shaped Side Effect yo-yos that we always want to have available and that get refreshed each year. We are still in the design phase on these so there is no detail to be released yet on what they are going to be.
Signature yo-yos: We will be releasing at least one signature yo-yo for sure, and probably more. The first one to release will be for JT Nickel and it will be a 7075 competition oriented throw. We are working hard to get the retail price as low as possible. JT loves the prototype and with a few small adjustments, it’s just about ready to go.
Titanium: We are very encouraged by what we learned in making the Citizen and are excited to make another Titanium yo-yo in 2016. Our schedule will be tight but we will do everything we can do pull this off - probably with Side Effects.
From Shawn, David and the entire One Drop crew,
Happy throwing!
