Starting a yoyo company?

[unklesteve (Steve Brown)]

@jjtpark

If you missed this point, then I’ll mention it again-- my primary motive is not money. It’s my last year in high school and I’ve come to realize that I never got to do anything that truly appealed to me. I found the idea of producing yoyos as a way for me to kill two birds with one stone: do something that interests me and try and earn some money to pay off tuition. While it is true that I haven’t planned anything long term yet, this is because it was a mere spark of an idea. I have access to a lathe, and a mill, and people who understand the machines better than I do. I have general ideas as well as some materials (not full cylinders of aluminum like another poster mentioned, but accessible material). With what I have, I was simply curious to see if going off on this venture was worth the risk and time. Perhaps it’s my fault if I presented myself in a poor way, but I would prefer you not put me in such a condescending light.

I’m not being condescending, I’m saying that based on what I know about running a yoyo business (spoiler: lots) and based on what you’ve said here so far, this doesn’t sound like a good idea.

The people who succeed in this industry generally do it one of two ways: they have a distinct and singular vision and are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that vision, or they are willing to rip off anyone and everyone and race to the bottom. In the middle are a lot of people who are kinda “meh” and aren’t really contributing much and are making small runs that more or less break even. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, based on what you’ve posted so far you’re best case scenario is to land somewhere in the middle.

It’s 10x as much work as you think, the scrap rate averages out to be around 25% per run (assuming you get lucky and an anodizer doesn’t destroy the entire run), and no matter how much you know about making a yoyo if you don’t market it right it’s going to sit on shelves forever.

If you wholesale it, you’re eliminating most of your profit, so your best option is to sell direct. So now you need to spend months building a brand identity, creating a website and online store, creating a social media presence, generating brand-specific content, gaining a following, building awareness, just so that you can release what? 100 yoyos? By this point you’re in the hole for 6 months of your time and thousands of dollars.

This isn’t taking into account any of the other things that you need to be dealing with in your life: family, friends, school, etc.

If you sell half your run, you’ve now made a slim profit that, when you amortize out the man-hours you’ve put into it, puts you somewhere around $2/hr at best.

So if you want to start a yoyo company because you’ve always wanted to start a yoyo company and you have this idea that is just eating you alive inside and you have to get it out into the world for the pure satisfaction of making it happen? Do it up.

If you want to start a yoyo company because it seems like a nifty way to make a couple grand and you’re pretty sure that people are gonna spend their time helping you figure it out, you are wasting your time.