Does anyone know what is going on with Yoyofactory? It seems like they are in a bit of decline. The low-end stuff is all the same; and their high-end models are; well, not high-end. They hardly show up on amazon.com when I search on “yo-yo”.
A few months ago they sold a ton of inventory at low prices and I was anticipating a refresh. I have yet to see that as we enter the Christmas buying season. New models like the Moz seem to come and go with no real marketing or brand awareness which is unusual. The ‘Miracle’ seems to be redesigned for every release which hardly inspires a $160 purchase. Hunter Feuerstein’s new throw was barely a blip.
Are they keeping a low-profile for now because of the Ben and Evan thing? Or, is there more to it?
They are making a lot of really wide yoyos for influencers to sell direct
8 Likes
fradiger
(the world is a beautiful cat and i must meow meow meow)
3
They seem to have no issue continuing to work with both Evan and Angelo, so that alone makes me not buy their products.
I agree with you that YYF seems to be declining outside of that though, they are usually always innovating in one or more ways, but recently things have been dreadfully slow from their camp. I wanted to try the Moz but it came and went without any real marketing as well, and it was the last release from YYF I was interested in. I don’t understand why they continue to release these competition yoyos at breakneck pricepoints and they aren’t using 7000 series aluminum. Not to pit companies against eachother, but for example (and there are multiple) W!ld can do this and undercut them at presumably much smaller run sizes while iterating much faster in their designs.
They teased 3d printed guts/spacers for 3d printing yoyos I think over a year ago now and we haven’t heard a blip about it. Feels like they have pivoted very aggressively into influencer marketing and it just… doesn’t speak to me at all.
Like at this point the only thing saving YYF from being purely irrelevant is influencers, litigation, and patents.
I personally feel like their quality overall has been going downhill since like 2018 or so. Not sure why.
Also they have gone after the beginners and marketed more towards the non Yoyo audience (dna, bullseye, ect.) not a bad thing it’s just not what I’m looking for.
So true. I’m glad I got to witness the glory days of YYF.
Every empire has an end
I missed this influencer saga tho. What happened with Evan and Angelo? Heard there was some racist remarks being thrown about.
Not trying to rehash old drama I just don’t know the facts
4 Likes
fradiger
(the world is a beautiful cat and i must meow meow meow)
7
the facts as i know them:
Evan and Angelo made posts with KKK members on social media
they got called out
the posts got deleted
Adrian Velez messaged YYF Ben about it, Ben responded with a lynching joke (to my understanding without having the full context of what Evan/Angelo were up to)
Evan dies on the hill defending it in a 1 hour Instagram live as having a ‘tough conversation’ with people to understand their beliefs, rants about cancel culture, YYF sent a live message during this that they were terminating his sponsorship
community riot + outrage, few of the YYF team members leave, everyone gets slaps on the wrists
there’s… a lot more layers and lots of damage control everywhere
Extreme Tariff$ and Intellectual property theft from the Chinese stealing their proprietary ideas for free, has just sucked the Life out of their distribution hub that was never a real YoYoFactory!
YYF should take a play out the One Drop playbook for an authentic come back some day.
Having said that, Gentry did buy a Lotus super car recently…Wow! Congrats Gentry:)
I really don’t have a clue, just pure speculation.
Overheard evan talking about the incident at worlds with someone… he still thinks everyone misconstrued his message so it’s good to know that years later he still doesn’t understand what was wrong with trying to make videos with KKK members
Yo-yos. What an interesting niche to get political/woke with your audience about
Coming back to the game this year left me feeling sag about YYF. The quality, the buzz, the image has taken a dive.
YYF of course holds its corner of the industry well, thinking of beginner outreach.
i’ve noticed this too, i think most of their work is going towards marketing to beginners/younger people, but that’s only from what i’ve seen on social media. I feel that the more advanced yo-yos (Moz, Starlight, etc.) are kind of secondary right now, wonder why
I have only played the sage which is produced by them so I cannot really comment on their quality but…
A. I am sick of all the shutter reruns.
B.Enough with the dna/godspeed crap.
C. I do not think it is a good bang for the back. Their yoyos are mostly 6061 and way overpriced given the aluminium used.
D. Their obsession or focus if you like with beginner, dna stuff seems like a paradox if you think that they sponsor some of the best players atm. Kim brothers, gentry, akitoshi, etc. Spend all that marketing money on top talent to sell dna yoyos or reruns of a 10 year old model… Then again, it might be more profitable business wise to sell 10 arrows /5 shutters than 2 miracles.
It does not make sense to me that they sponsor the top competitors and at the same time the beginner, casual oriented influencers. Then again, it might not be a “one or the other” situation, but rather a “why not both?”.
Speaking as a consumer, there is no way I ll pay 150 euros for the miracle when I can buy a dressel designs connection at 115 or a clyw klondike for 135.
Same thing for a shutter bimetal compared to any yoyofriends or c3 bimetal of the same price.
8 Likes
JeiCheetah
(J̵̡̥̦̳̗͎̤̯̟͓̞͔͔̻́͛͐̒͋̔̈́͂̃͝ͅͅ E I H W Δ N̸̢̢̡͙͖̝̩̟͎̹̻͔̳͕̙̗̈̆̆͋̈́͛̀̑̒̂̀̈́̇̚͘͠ͅ)
13
Besides the Evan and Angelo incidences. The fact one of their main owners said something very racist and out of touch to a prominent member of our community and person of color also caused a lot of people to completely stop supporting their products and the brand as well.
I am not sure that their decline is easily attributed to people not “supporting” them for personal reasons. Most consumers are unaware of these concerns and most would not really care if Yoyofactory was making compelling products.
Yoyofactory has always made great yo-yo’s. It seems that this is starting to be less true than it was before. That is a concern when a great company is not maintaining its lofty standards.
The real YYF now is Yoyofriends, all their yoyos I’ve played are incredible. All the ones I haven’t tried LOOK incredible. I always spell em out to avoid confusion anyway.
The yoyofactory ones I have tried are kind of mid with the exception of my Cyborg 1.0 which is actually an incredible yoyo. It’s old yoyofactory though.
I don’t touch their new stuff now especially with the various controversies. The newest thing I tried from them is the original run miracle I got during their sale for 80. I bonked my hand with it and the rings never sat right again. Traded it for an unknown edition SF PLSTC which vibes anyway but at least the vibe level doesn’t change as the rings shift
YYF had so much aura back in the day but maybe that’s just my nostalgia. The thing that did it for me was the old promo videos they used to do, I don’t think they do that kind of promo anymore now that it’s influencer based but I watched the 888x and g5 promo videos so much back in the day. The shutter in particular is just so washed up now, the new shutter countdown series is so boring cause it’s the same yoyo most of us have thrown a thousand times. The Moz is dope but I don’t know why they made it Japan only, I bought 2 of them off mercari.
“Now we build for profit and efficiency, but we forget to build for the heart, and in doing so, we destroy the spirit of the people who must live in what we create.” - Christopher Alexander
This is just it. I’m newer to the hobby and I won’t comment on the controversies.
My take is that they are doing just fine. They seem to be selling just fine around the world and still have lots of traction. This group here on the forum is not the target audience. Are their throws the best quality? No, I think the competition is stiff and there are so many great options out there right now. I haven’t been unhappy with any of my throws from them, but I didn’t pay full price either. Does any of this matter at the end of the day, I don’t think so. If the product is selling why should they need to drastically change their business model or cater to a niche group of the market.
