No one has asked me to write on this. No one seems to even notice that it happened. Why is that? Well, the answer to that question is one small part to the answer to the whole question.
Back in 2005 I looked at the yo-yo community as a whole and the products that were available to players. I thought to myself, "Holy cow things are really expensive". I got to a point with everything that I thought to myself, " I have
spent thousands of dollars on yo-yoes over the year. I bet I can make
some of that money back." Then I looked at the yo-yoes I had and thought, "How can I make these play better rather than buying the newest yo-yo available?" I did a little bit of looking online and found the Taig Microlathe on yoyoguy.com. I was excited by the photos that Mo had posted over the years of mods he had been doing for quite some time and so I decided to go for it. I would buy a Taig lathe and become a modder.
You can definitely call me suspect because I spent $500 so I wouldn't have to spend $100.
When it came to the house I was instantly in love. I put the lathe together and mounted it all to the base board it came with and just new that amazing things would be made with this.
I had no formal training nor had I even seen how to mod anything using this particular setup but, fortunately for yoyoguy, they had what I thought I needed when I wanted it and they made some cash off of my whim. I started off by ruining some Spintastic Technics and Tornadoes while I practiced pad and silicone recesses. I tried to mod a Silk and it was so unplayable by the time I quit cutting it that all I can use it for now is a prop for photographing successful mods. Things did not go well at first but I didn't care because every cut I made pushed me closer to being good at it.
I started by modding my own yo-yoes and trying to sell them at Higby prices. Haha, who did I think I was. No one knew who I was and they weren't going to pay those prices for my work. I slowly dropped prices down to actually below retail price hoping that circulating my mods would gain me some notoriety and I could earn what I thought they were worth based off the work I put into them.
Totally for funsies I made myself a duct tape wallet. I looked all over the internet on how to make one and I found a bunch of instuctions that looked like crap. So this made me think, "I can do way better than this on my own. I developed a pattern that I liked and made myself one. Note: It was only supposed to be one wallet for myself. I carried it everywhere and had quite a few people tell me I they bet I could sell them. All it took was three and I was like, "ok, I will give it a go." Holy smokes, they were well received and are still my best selling product even after I shut things down.
At the same time I looked at some of the common parts and accessories that were available and I refused to pay $1/response pad. That seemed so ridiculous that I researched materials for 6 months and developed what I still call "The everlasting gobstopper of response pads". I developed the Barking Spider Gummies. These response pads took about 45 minutes of solid play to break in and then 9 months later the only reason why I changed them was because I wanted to test my thinner Gummies in the same yo-yo. I even went so far as to set the price point at half the cheapest competitor price to try to create some interest. The problem was that no one knew who I was and I was not/am not a distributor of hype. I have always stood by the principle that I make great products and if only people would try them out they would agree. Well in the world of yo-yo, as small as it is, this way of thinking doesn't sell product.
I sent samples to online stores hoping that if I could get them sold through a reputable store that maybe people would throw in their cart when they bought string or whatever. A couple of stores carried them so I had hope.
Then I ventured down some other products to include cleaned and lubricated bearings, ceramic bearings, and even prototyped a yo-yo that I really hoped to push into production.
The end result was that many years later and people in such a small community still didn't know who I was or what my products were about. I can admit that I am not a businessman, I am a yo-yo maker/modder.
Despite that I had some things lining up that looked very promising and I waited to see what happened. Worlds this year looked like it was going to be a huge help in gaining face time with the yo-yo world. I modded a Vs Newton Yo-yo Concepts Battosai to accept hand made weight rings and it was going to become a huge collab between me and them. In addition the prototype for the RIOT was supposed to be done and at Worlds for all to try, though it was not finished in time. Shortly after the World Yo-yo Contest the yo-yo documentary Strings was going to debut at the New York screening and I thought, wow all of this will make some great hype and we can catapult forward with it. In the end none of it did what I thought.
As a result I looked at the cost of continuing as a company and I just couldn't do it anymore. I continued as long as I did because I made just enough money to cover my costs and keep going but in the past couple of years that stopped. I also went through a bunch of life changes. I got out of the Navy, worked at Walmart and Target, at the same time, unloading trucks then moved cross country back into my parents house.
This didn't last and when the dust finally settled I decided that I would focus on me. I didn't need to run a business or use cute stage names. No one knew who I was either way. So I decided to cut the crap and shed the guises and just be ME.
I still throw, better than ever. I feel like I have finally found my style and I want to push it to the limits. I still modify yo-yoes, better than ever. I don't have the pressure of making a product that will sell and as a result I make better stuff.
So, in a way, I have performed addition through subtraction. By ridding myself of the business and the stage name I have shined through as myself and the more time goes by the more people will see who I am.
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