You're thinking reactively. That's the situation we're seeing now - proactive solutions should have been implemented years ago. They weren't - and now Innova has DM as a company by the balls, quite literally. What company or executive, in their right mind, would not account for another company (partner or not) to have so much control over your financial well being?
There's been plenty of time where they could have discussed having molds made of their own discs. Maybe Jussi explored this, maybe he didn't, we likely will never know.
At this point, I think it's safe to say that whatever deals that DM and Innova had were not nearly as air-tight as they might have seemed. Going to L64 and Yikun for manufacturing a couple of years ago was a good indication that Innova was not able to take care of the needs of DM.
Could all of this have been avoided? Probably - they had plenty of time to figure out a plan where they could have manufactured at least some of their own discs.
Regardless - it's no skin off my nose. I stopped throwing DM a long time ago, when they trimmed plastics and older molds around 2016/2017 or so. And now they have one of their top pros throwing OOP plastic (Simon and the C-MD)
You speak of proactive solutions, but everything after the initial agreement where Innova owns the molds and produces a disc DM slaps a name on was ultimately going to end this way sooner or later. DM was never going to own these molds, NEVER.
The best they could and probably should have done was sign some sort of contract where they were guaranteed a certain number of discs produced every year and renegotiated that contract periodically. That way they could contractually prevent Innova from ignoring the production of DM molds and prioritizing others. But of course, from Innova's point of view, a contract like that would likely never be signed or cost DM so much money that the margins on each disc would be next to nothing.
And yes, DM could have made huge capital investment into buying injection molds and producing their own discs, but again, it would under no circumstances been the Originals molds. No way Innova would have "loaned" out those pieces for another disc golf company to do the injection molding.
I think the story of DM is probably this:
1. Come up with an idea to sell a few discs using an established manufacturer that makes some tweaks and boom, new discs. Make a little money doing this for a while.
2. Grow popularity through good marketing, player signings, quality disc lineup and start selling more discs and making some decent money.
3. Start to become too popular for the business strategy to the point that you literally cannot keep up with the demand you have generated (Innova was never going to allow molding of a competitor's molds, very friendly but still a competitor, interfere with the capacity to mold their own discs that they make much more money selling.
4. Begin to expand strategy and have other manufacturers produce new molds (hopefully that are unique and that DM fully owns, even if someone else does the actual injection molding, if they want to avoid the problems of step 3 again in the future). Allows for new molds to be brought to market and increased production all together. Previous relationship cannot last but is still valuable and worth continuing while new strategy is ramped up and becomes main, sustainable, and ultimately growable source of revenue not limited like previous strategy.
5. Once in a century catastrophe that causes a not complete but certainly substantial decrease in ability for all manufacturers in all industries to produce products. Said catastrophe also directly results in a situation where the market you are in sees growth of popularity and demand like never before. This makes the unsustainable situation illustrated in step 3 come to a full halt that will ultimately end that working relationship forever.
6. (The following is my prediction) Forced to walk away from the relationship that allowed DM to become what it is, but possibly a good thing like ripping a Band-Aid off, had to happen sometime, probably better to do it quickly. Hurts sales for a few years, possibly losing some of the best signed players in the process, but allows them to focus solely on a sustainable strategy going forward.
opcorn:
