Staying on topic:
It appears that YYF is a division of another company, apparently Rapid Plastics, Inc., and Arizona Corporation, based on the boxes many of the yoyos come in. But it would appear based on numbers and models that unlike some of the other companies, a large amount of effort is put into YYF.
Duncan, although a name brand we’ve all known for years, is actually owned by a company called Flambeau Plastics, which apparently happened in the 1960’s, which is most likely before the time of nearly everyone on this forum. But even Flambeau is a company under the Nordic Group of Companies, Ltd. I mention this because that despite the fact that you can see Duncan yoyos from brick and mortar stores hanging on pegs to online yoyo stores such as YYE and in great quantities, it’s not one of their biggest divisions. What’s interesting is that I have several plastic storage boxes, and they are all made by Flambeau.
I don’t think there’s enough money to just go off and do it stand-alone on large scale for now. I think the risk it too great. It makes more sense to control it by being under someone else’s “umbrella” and then the amount of accepted risk can be distributed across the entire company.
I’d have to agree with Icthus, mainly because he knows more than I do based on his background. Companies go where the dollars are, that’s just plain good business. They’ll make their high dollar parts and “bread and butter” items to meet and barely exceed demand(it doesn’t always make sense to have giant amounts of over-runs these days) since that’s what keeps the business running. They’ll use down time or short windows to make stuff like yoyos.
Taking it a step further:
There are companies such as Orange County Choppers(yes, from American Chopper), who, instead of buying certain parts, chose to invest in equipment and machinery to make their own parts, mostly so they would have a side business at first of making motorcycle(or other vehicle) equipment parts, but later on, to save costs on their production bikes. How well this has worked for them I do not know since I see them still using someone else’s “off the shelf parts” to build their bikes. If you can press out 20 fenders in an hour(is that even realistic?) or tank halves and then sell them, that tends to be easy money. Similarly, there was a lot of commotion on the American Chopper show about them buying their own frame jig so they could make their own frames. However, after a few shows, I’ve yet to see them use it and all I see are frames being shipped in all the time. I guess it was cheaper just to buy them than to train people to make then AND have the people to make them.
I’d be interested to see the price break-down and logic behind why a yoyo costs so much though, mostly out of curiosity. I mean, at the upper end, we’re talking 69 grams of metal. How much can that cost? But similarly, I know there are different aluminum alloys(is that the correct term?) and that can effect price as well. Metal and machining aren’t my areas of expertise. I’m just nosy.