If I were a manufacturer now would be the perfect time to increase prices by a buck or two across the board, the specially coming off of such a supply shortage. Bulk plastic prices went up due up Covid, Suez Canal, blah blah blah so we had to pass along the price increase.
All of which is true, plastic prices have increased and other prices of raw materials in the supply chain have gone up a lot. Expect price increases on Baskets especially going forward.
Prices are up almost 20% year on year out of China for metal products. Textiles are likely to rise soon as well. Import prices have quadrupled to Europe from China and I would imagine probably doubled to the US.
A 20' container coming this way holds around 500 portable baskets. This time last year it was $2500 to ship, our container arriving in two weeks was $10000 we're now booking out another one at $13000, just for the shipping. Duties and taxes and product cost not included. You can see the issue coming with prices, especially as most European imports are into Scandinavia where it is even more expensive to ship from China.
(Sidenote - Forgetting Disc Golf this is also going to create huge inflation across all everyday products all of which are affected at some point by this supply chain. It might just be a small time blip but boats were taken off the water during the pandemic and container manufacturers stopped producing or went out of business and they take a long time to come back online. It was around 2 -3 years after the 2008 crash before the logistics market got back price wise and the shipping speed has never been as good since, 7 weeks door to door on average now vs 5.5 then)
Discmania's new soft blend starter sets. China made, looking to retail for €9.95. You get around 5500 of these in a 20' container.
The maths and decision making doesn't look so great on that one especially in a sport where no one ever has shouted about three disc starter sets being too expensive at €20 - €30.....
Some of Discmania's decision making recently has been odd and the inflated price sell off of first/second run discs smacks of a cash grab. Jees. Back channel it for God's sake, don't actively gouge your loyal customer base. Give them away alongside orders of the new molds to a given value or something. Charging disc flipper prices as the brand owner is an ugly look. Unless you're in desperate need for cash of course.
For any US readers, European ltd. company accounts are in the public record if you were interested in viewing them. They are a snapshot of last years position and of course don't do more than give a picture. There maybe subsidiary companies that are not easily linked (lots of different companies come under the Jussi umbrella) but it's interesting viewing none the less. I think Finland is free to view and Sweden might cost you a few dollars per company or it could be the other way round, I've not looked recently.
For our market over here there is little to no interest in the new Discmania molds either from China or Sweden, the only demand is for the Originals and it will take a good couple of years of hard pushed Crush Boy marketing to change that. EDIT I believe this is different in Finland where there is more demand for the new stuff.
