Why I support them since you are asking for reasons:
-Yes they are well made, and the quality control is great
-Yes they have nice designs
-Yes there are other companies that make perfectly fine yoyos,
almost every modern yoyo can do a large portion of tricks
-Yes they are “expensive,” but not close to what I have paid for all my Japanese imports
But the main reason is I support keeping that company and the vibe they bring to yoyoing around.
I enjoy the players, I enjoy the humor,the videos, the tutorials, I enjoy the aesthetic in its entirety.
Perfect example of this (in my eyes) is my $250 g-shock watch compared to my dads $6000 Rolex. His just tells time. Mine has a stopwatch, timer, alarm clock, thermometer, compass, lunar graph, and world time. Why is his so much more expencive? why is it worth more? because thats what people are willing to pay for a name brand that may or may not tell time a tenth of a second more on track than mine. Personally, I wouldn’t spend real money on a rolex OR a CLYW, because to me, value is based on functionality rather than reputation or name brand.
I think you misunderstand me. The reason I don’t personally love CLYW throws is because they’re simply more expensive than lots of yoyos that outperform them. Personally I don’t feel the need to buy a yoyo for $135.00 that has a cool paint job and performs marginally better than a $35.00 yoyo. I don’t feel I’ve surpassed any yoyo, but rather I feel maybe I dont have what it takes to appreciate the marginal difference between the performance of a CLYW over a YYF or YoYofficer throw
The problem is there are a lot of sweeping generalisations going on here. Why make the statement ‘CLYW doesn’t perform much better than Yoyofactory’, when they have so many completely different yoyos…?
Does a Puffin out-perform a Proton? No.
Does a BVM2 out-perform a Supernova lite? Yes.
Does a Bonfire out-perform a 7075 Genesis? No.
Does a Chief out-perform a Skyline or Boss? Yes.
Heck, from my experience pretty much every CLYW out-performs the Ricochet, and that thing was like $200…
Rather than people lumping together multiple shapes and sizes of yoyos under one ‘brand’, they need to be looked at in the context of individual yoyos.
Look at the Cliff for instance. The thing is a peculiar yoyo and I’ve never thrown anything else like it. So is $150 too much to spend of a throw so unique and (in my opinion) enjoyable? I personally don’t think so. Likewise with the original Puffin, uniquely shaped and great fun, I’ve yet to find a cheaper alternative that offers exactly what the Puffin does.
The fact is that as far as ‘performance’ is concerned, it all comes down to design, not company. I personally could go out right now and make a yoyo that was 75g of pure rim weight, and it would probably ‘out-perform’ pretty much every throw by YYF, Onedrop and CLYW. Performance is not the be-all-and-end-all of how good a yoyo is, otherwise we’d all be throwing Yoyorecreation DreadnaughtGs.
For me, the ‘worth’ of a yoyo is directly correlative to how much I enjoy the yoyo. I love the Cliff, Puffin and BVM2 so as far as I’m concerned they’re worth the price tag. On the flipside I wasn’t really a fan of the Chief, Arctic Circle or Bonfire, so personally, no, I wouldn’t pay that much for them again.
If you shell out $150 for a Puffin that you love playing, and then $40 for a ‘better performing’ Shutter that you don’t really enjoy, which one is truly worth the money?
These watch comparisons are in a different league than comparing a Chief to a Shutter, with minimal relevance. Watch collectors know that mechanical movements will never be as accurate as a $20 Timex. That’s simply not the only criteria to people who collect watches. A hand assembled in-house movement is a piece of art, the same as any other art. If you do not see value in rare paintings over Hobby Lobby prints, then you probably do not understand what makes a person spend thousands on a watch. For some people, a watch that tells time is a good watch, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but to say that the only purpose of a $3000 watch is to show off is completely inaccurate. Out of all the expensive watches out there, aside from Rolex and a couple others, the average person would not be able to identify them anyway.
"Well, from an outside perspective I’ve always loved Caribou Lodge because I think they make the most interesting products that play the best. I love the aesthetics, the design, the story, and I think it all comes together really well. The branding is just kinda like…the coolest thing to me in the industry. I like that they support local economies and they always put quality first. And from an inside perspective, on a more personal level, I love Caribou Lodge because of the people that are behind it. They’re all my friends now, so y’know, I can only say good things about them. It’s just really a couple of guys making what they love and getting to share it with other people.
-Charles The Great
I took the liberty of italicizing the points he made that I particularly agreed with. Caribou Lodge is an honest and wholesome company that truly does just want to make the customer happy. In order to make the customer happy, they might have to put a larger price-tag on their items. And honestly, I’m fine with that.
Your main argument seems to be that there is no point in purchasing CLYW products when you could instead purchase YYF products that play the same for a much lower price. The truth is that you get what you pay for. If you think any 40 dollar throw will play like a 140 dollar throw, quiet frankly, you’ve lost it. That being said, YYF makes some fine products, but none of their lower end return tops will play like Avalanches, Chiefs, or Arctic Circles. What you are failing to see is that CLYW prices their Yoyos at 100+ dollars because, truthfully, they are better yoyos than 40 dollar ones. If you still need convincing, I recommend you pick up a Shutter and give a good throw. Lay down some of your illest, best combos. Now do the same with ANY CLYW Yoyo. I think you’ll see, feel, and understand the difference. And if you don’t, I suppose that’s your loss.
Yeah…I’m gonna be honest and say that personally I don’t feel like there is much of a difference in performance, if any, between the current CLYW lineup and something like the Shutter or Cypher…coming from someone who is more likely to purchase a 2nd Puffin 2 or a Scout when they release before purchasing any currently available retail YYF.
The real question you need to answer for yourself is why or if are you willing to spend in excess of $100 on a yoyo, or even that much for that matter. Brand is immaterial to the discussion.
