Discmania Partners with Latitude 64 and Yikun
It’s Valentine’s Day, not April Fools Day, and according to this latest announcement you’ll now be able to throw a “mixed-bag” all under the same Discmania name.
Discmania CEO Jussi Meresmaa has announced that they will offer “more choices to reinvent your game” by partnering with Latitude 64 in Sweden and Yikun Disc Sports in China to create two new sub-brand discs.
Over the past twelve years, Discmania brand discs were manufactured exclusively by Innova Champion Discs. These discs will continue being sold and produced under the name Discmania Originals.
Discs Manufactured by Latitude 64
The discs Latitude 64 will make will use the sub-brand Discmania Evolution. There are plans for four discs this year with one scheduled for release each month beginning March. The new disc molds include: Evolution Enigma, Evolution Instinct, Evolution Method, and the Evolution Link.
Discs Manufactured by Yikun
The disc line produced by Yikun will be using the sub brand Discmania Active. It appears that the partnership with Yikun is primarily to get very low-cost plastic, as the Active line discs are only scheduled to be released in a base plastic called, Base Level Plastic. Five discs have been announced for release in the Active Line: Guardian Lion, Spring Ox, Fox Spirit, Sea Serpent, and Sun Crow. All five of these discs are scheduled for release in March. It appears that the Active line is going to keep it really simple with these discs being available in just three colors: pink, white, and blue.
How will this change effect the disc golf industry?
It’s hard to say for sure. What we do know at Infinite Discs is that in terms of sales, the Discmania brand has been our fastest growing brand over the past three years.
This partnership also leads to a lot of speculation and questions. How much will this impact Discmania’s already rapidly growing brand? Discmania can now offer versions of the best molds in the best plastics from the two top manufactures in disc golf. They will also be able to offer very inexpensive discs that will likely help them increase their distribution in sporting goods and big box stores that focus primarily on price.
Will the fact that Latitude 64 manufactured discs will no longer be distributed exclusively by Dynamic Discs hurt the Trilogy brands growth? How will this separation impact Innova? We’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions, so please comment below!
Wow! When I read the headline my first thought was, “does this mean Ricki gets his back?” It doesn’t look that way… With that said, I like the open bag and friend philosophy. I have some quality concerns about Yikun produced discs, but I am a lot more likely to buy them under a Discmania label, so props to them for making friends. Over all I think the separation of the disc marketing and development companies and disc manufacturing companies is a good thing. I think it opens more possibilities for innovation. In my dream world there will be a company that lets us do low run custom molds at reasonable prices in the near future. Some students here at the university 3D printed a disc. It was out of PDGA specs, but pretty cool to throw. I fantasize about doing a 3D scan of my index finger to design a disc rim. Between now and then it is nice to have innovative companies with flexibility to create great designs and molds.