It has been nearly 4 months since Ive been in Japan, and 5 months since I left Toronto. Writing that out makes it feel short but in reality it feels like forever ago. The last launch of the Plastic Peak was an overwhelming experience. I felt so grateful to work with CLYW, a company I grew up with. When the World Yoyo Contest hit I didn't know what to expect, but I had started noticing a feeling of burn out after grinding out so many yoyo related projects and in a weird introverted way I was a bit reluctant to go.
This year the venue felt bigger than I remember in 2015 Tokyo Worlds. It was only 20 minutes from where I am living. It was surprisingly busy and there were of course no shortage of insanely talented Japanese players. I was surprised at how much the yoyo world has grown - the venue was big but it was packed at times. The live stream was massive with many different angles and a few of my friends from Toronto even came to volunteer. The after parties were insane, where I ran into some old friends I haven't seen in over 8 years. I caught up with many American friends, and met some new Japanese players by using my broken Japanese.
Eiji from Mowl reached out to see if I could do a small booth at his welcome party for the first day. This was a super cool last minute opportunity to showcase some of the prototype plastics I was working on, as well as meet some customers who I have only been able to communicate through Instagram or emails. I think meeting customers is a huge thing I enjoy, since I can really get a sense of connection to the community. Of course in Osaka style it became a huge party after with DJs and yoyo performances. I helped Eiji engrave these square sake cups as well which were offered at the event - a very cool piece of history.
I thought about filming video this year, but in the end decided to just enjoy the event as much as possible. I'm not sure if it was because I've lived in Japan for a while now but the entire experience of worlds this year definitely felt overwhelming. After all it was the first event of this size since Covid happened. I talked to a few other yoyoers too about this, and there were some who shared the same feeling. Perhaps it was the serious nature of Japan contests too, the level of yoyoing here is very high which breeds contests that seem to make the events cater to competitors more so then the consumers.
I had this burnout conversation with a few people at worlds and most were shocked to hear how I felt. Many people I spoke with don't realize how many hours it takes to develop yoyos at the scale that Luftverk does. For a lot of 2023 I was working 70+ hours a week managing logistics, retailers and manufacturing for these projects. A lot of the work is mostly spreadsheets now - making sure the projects at least break even and I can pay people on time. I also directly still manage the retailer accounts as well as do customer service, which weirdly is something I like doing. Interacting with my customers is something I actually love doing, so even though its probably a low ROI task its something I still do 100% of. I think its one of the main positives of events like this, it lets me talk to people who I work with like other brands and retailers. They often can give me insight on how they run their business too and how they manage their hours. I started normalizing the insane hours I was working and beat myself up for not doing more when I wanted to take a break. Only now I am starting to take a breather and enjoy things outside of yoyo related projects like competing at my first drift event here in Japan. Drifting in itself is a full time job, but It was a huge reason why I wanted to get a visa here. It's definitely a decent activity to force my mind to be somewhere else outside of yo-yoing for a bit to recharge my creative juices.
I realized most business owners who are full time successfully really let their job consume them. Many of my friends who are business owners are like that. It becomes a part of them. I love seeing that level of passion and intensity and you can probably tell I often do it too. Next week I am off to Hong Kong and China to work on more production of projects for Luftverk, Cheatcode and Polyform. But I think how I felt attending this Worlds event was an important sign that I need a massive break from work related to yoyo projects. It was the first event I felt overwhelmed enough to notice a feeling of distance from the yoyo players around me, and that's not a feeling I like to feel.
Overall Worlds was a blast, its always fun to catch up with friends you haven't seen for like 5 years. For the rest of 2023 I have some renditions of yoyos such as a redesigned Hybrid Fulvia that has less vibration issues, a new Magnesium in the pipeline, as well as a potentially new color of CLYW Plastic Peak. One of the things I really want to develop is an undersized Hybrid yoyo. But until my trip to China I will likely just take it easy to recover and push forward with new projects for 2024. Usually my blog posts are more about design so I thought I'd give you a different perspective and update everyone of what is going on since Luftverk will be quiet for a bit. Thank you for your continued support - will be back swinging with new stuff in a month or two!
It has been a while since Ive written much - the second half of 2023 was insanely busy with project management. Since the release of the plastic lineup, I had very little time to focus on the roots of what made Luftverk so exciting. I realized this was a huge problem - I needed to guide Luftverk back to it's roots of exploring new materials and build product lineups that told a story stemmed from exploration. I had done this with plastics last year but in 2024 I would like to also focus back onto some more products that use exotic materials. While being incredibly late to the party this recent project is Luftverk's first Magnesium ever, which was at first canceled and almost never released.
CLYW is a Canadian brand that started in 2006. I was 14 at the time when I watched this new brand unfold on the Yoyonation forums. They released their first yoyo named the "Peak" with 50 pieces retailing for $85. Today, that yoyo has used asking prices north of $2500 making it one of the most insanely rare and expensive yoyos to date. This "OG Painted Peak" featured a custom painted surface by a Canadian airbrush artist named Levi. Overtime as the Peak was impacted or dinged, the paint would chip off meaning there are only a handful of units in the world that survived in mint unused condition. Later versions would be released in more durable anodized finishes, but these first 50 "OG Painted Peaks"cemented CLYW into yoyoing history.
This one will interesting - since mine and Augie's relationship go a far distance back. Its also kind of a weird story of how like minded free sprits will seemingly eventually cross roads no matter how unlikely that is.
Growing up in what I like to call the golden area of competitive yoyoing I was blessed to be inspired by yoyoers with so much unique style. These players helped me stay hooked in yoyoing and I often wonder if I would have even stuck with it without them. Players like Yuuki Spenser, John Ando, Eric Koloski, Paul Han, Shinji Saito and of course Augie Fash were some of my favourites. Before there was a yoyo "meta" all these yoyoers had their own 1A style which is why I think fondly of this era.
Jeffrey Pang
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