[Other] Streamline Discs by MVP

[ZAMson]

The store owner I talked to..

Hi 3P! Nice to see you. Your shop guy, ask next time, does he get Star/ESP/(Gold line?) for $7.50, or Champ/Z/Opto for $7.25? What about your pricing back in the day, (before oil pushed everything up $1+ across the board) was it below that? Those are the base prices direct for Streamline Neutron and Proton. I don't know anything about the shop or their market, who they buy from, their retail prices, etc etc, but from what I recall the base-level Streamline price with no volume discount whatsoever is lower than any standard pricing I've seen from other single shot makers for those plastic grades.

The shops that do have them, hope they sell well for the shop owners and make players happy.

 

[Steezo]

Hi ZAM

 

[ZAMson]

Hi ZAM

Hi Steez! Nice to see you.

 

[thechamp]

I'm not going to switch putters anytime soon but the pilots feel great and the profile is nice.
The stamp looks like the grill on my Astatic harp mic.

 

[Broken Shoulder]

Fwiw early electron seemed more chalky pencil eraser-ish IMO vs current MVP stuff so makes sense.

That would make sense then, yeah. I felt it originally, knew it wouldn't work for me, and never went back to it.
The Pilots feel good though.

 

[Aim For The Chains]

i still hate electron for the reasons you mentioned... i noticed with new spins I ordered felt more like a seasoned dirty old electron vs old stupid tacky stuff when new.

 

[MrGlass01]

Got a handful of throws with the trace. Very rusty broken big toe on my plant , foot first toss hits 300 a good throw for my current condition. The rest were at about 340 which for me is good. Little turn and a gentle fade. Even when I forced the Anny line it flexed out pretty well. This may be the disc I want between my inertias and teslas. Good first impression today. Neutron looks damn sexy as a single shot disc which I figured I love be me some neutron.

 

[dwindacatcher]

 

[Halcón]

Fixed for ya. Just put the video code in between the youtube code

And thanks for the review! :thmbup:

 

[dwindacatcher]

thanks. one of these days i wont screw up posting videos on here.

 

[Three Putt]

Hi 3P! Nice to see you. Your shop guy, ask next time, does he get Star/ESP/(Gold line?) for $7.50, or Champ/Z/Opto for $7.25? What about your pricing back in the day, (before oil pushed everything up $1+ across the board) was it below that? Those are the base prices direct for Streamline Neutron and Proton. I don't know anything about the shop or their market, who they buy from, their retail prices, etc etc, but from what I recall the base-level Streamline price with no volume discount whatsoever is lower than any standard pricing I've seen from other single shot makers for those plastic grades.

The shops that do have them, hope they sell well for the shop owners and make players happy.

I have a weird point of view on this. Back in the 90's I was getting base plastic for $4.85 and Millennium/Pro/Glow/Elite Pro for $6.85. They retailed for $7.00 and $10.00, so I was making $2.15/$3.15 a disc. I sold over 10,000 golf discs in 1998 and the gross profit was $26,000. The reason I didn't quit my park job and open a disc golf shop was the knowledge that at that thin a profit margin, I'd have to sell more like 50,000 discs/year to make a living selling golf discs.

MY understanding is that right after I got out, the premium plastics carried a better profit margin and made selling discs more viable. That would have been a good thing. While I like cheap stuff, you have to pay enough to sustain the places you buy from.

When I was setting up a DD account for the park this fall, I noticed the MSRP's were high. As a player I was thinking "I don't want to pay $18.99 for that" but for the park I was thinking "If we can get $18.99 for these that would be great for business." You could make disc golf more of a profit-generator. Then MVP comes along and seems to be heading in the other direction. As a player it gets the product closer the the price my cheap wallet wants to pay. However, it depends on the profit margin. If that price pushes the profit margin back to the $2/$3 a disc range for the retailer, that's not really a good thing in my view.

So now back to what I don't know. I don't know what that profit margin is. I have ZAM saying the wholesale price is low and I have no reason to believe he is lying. I have another person selling discs for a living who I also have no reason to believe is lying to me saying the wholesale price is not low and the difference is coming out of his pocket.

Most people have never tried to sell golf discs and they really wouldn't care. They see lower price and that's good.

Either way it would need to be sustainable. If the material costs are the same, somebody is making less money off these discs. Whoever is making less money has to be OK with that. I just happened to talk to someone who said the somebody making less money was him, and he wasn't OK with it. I'm not looking at an invoice, so I can't tell anything for sure.

 

[Three Putt]

But, to be clear...I'm not trying to beat anybody up. I just read some stuff in this thread blasting stores for what they are charging. I talked to a guy who told me a story that (if true) would explain why a storefront would be charging more than what players are expecting. So I threw that out there. Everybody has to believe what they believe. If you believe a business is just gouging you, don't buy from them. If you believe the place has had fair prices before and now this one product line is higher than what you expected, you should probably cut them some slack and figure that they are charging what they need to charge to keep the lights on.

 

[Halcón]

Zam's price of $7.50 for Streamline N and $7.25 P can be easily confirmed by other retailers here. But Three Putt makes a good point in that sellers gotta put bread on the table. If there are those who can provide us with cheap plastic while still making a decent profit, then it's a win-win for all.

 

[ZAMson]

I do have a .... "THEORY". What confuses me a bit is saying he was quoted a price on Streamline, when all direct buyers have a price sheet, and there's no quoting, just referring them to the document. Makes me wonder if he's buying some brands through a redistributor. A lot of places do that instead of having direct accounts with every manufacturer, but it cuts into their profit bigtime. I suspect a lot of "local shops" we hear about with insane prices are going that route, although I've definitely heard about liquor stores or other non-DG shops that ARE direct buyers who have surprisingly high retail prices. Look at the price list on discgolfwholesale.com (a redistribution site bought from DN) ... some of those were manufacturer-direct matched prices when I was involved, but I can tell the MVP prices are $1 higher per disc even at the top-tier pricing. (I realize that "manufacturer direct pricing" is hardcoded on that page, but not all of them are, and it's run by DU with neither of the DN devs who made the site involved, and I don't see changes since the day I left) A lot of shops who go through redistributors don't realize how much they're losing in margin, and how low (like 32 discs) the minimums can be. But if DG was a side hustle for my shop, I might not wanna deal with dozens of vendors either.

But if you care to, let the guy know what Streamline direct prices actually are, he may be interested especially if he's paying middleman'd prices.

 

[kw83028]

I've read a few posts here and there about pricing, and those may have already been answered, but, for my shop, which is online and in-house, Streamline pricing is legit.

After the pre-order period, I did pull them down so that I could enter in all of the inventory that I received. My prices on launch day, and now any other day, are, 10.99, 11.99, 12.99. First runs I priced too high initially, but now those are 17.99 which is the minimum allowed.

At those prices, I make just a fraction of a percentage point less margin than I do selling Gyro at 14.99, and 15.99. The dealer costs are way less than any other premium plastic on the market. Selling Streamline for anything more than MSRP is bull in my opinion, but, of course, shop owners are free to do as they need to pay the bills. Even though the margin is less than a point different than any other disc.

We sold 62 Streamline discs in the first 48 hours of them going on sale. Sent Streamline to 18 different states too! And, of course, I'm just small time in my basement store lol.

 

[kw83028]

Either way it would need to be sustainable. If the material costs are the same, somebody is making less money off these discs. Whoever is making less money has to be OK with that.

Material costs may be the same, maybe cheaper because they are ordering more raw materials to support 3 brands, I don't know. But what they do claim is that their manufacturing costs are drastically less than the competitors due to the processes that they have engineered to be supposedly better.

MVP is claiming to have the cheapest and most consistent manufacturing process. Discraft is raising dealer costs due to "increase in manufacturing costs". I have no reason to not believe the brothers on their advanced processes. I don't feel that they are making less money. Shoot, with their advanced manufacturing processes, they produce a 2-step processed disc for the same cost as all of the other companies solo molds. So, I would imagine, as they've stated, that the 1-step disc would be cheaper in general.

I know for a fact that at the MSRP's, I'm not making less money, although I am making a fraction less at the "dealer minimum" pricing that is on my site. So, overall, I don't feel that anyone is making less money.

 

[dwindacatcher]

MVP is claiming to have the cheapest and most consistent manufacturing process.

I don't doubt that at all. I can't say with certainty every other DG manufacturer learned plastic because they wanted to make discs, but the MVP boys learned plastic than made discs. I would be shocked if they dont order their plastic through their family company and get better more consistent pellets for less than any other disc manufacture. They didnt answer that question in their reddit AMA. hopefully they will if they do another.

 

[brutalbrutus]

Snagged a 170g pink N bar stamp Trace, and 172g pink med Pilot. Gotta say I am impressed so far.

The trace is probly a bit heavy and too fast for my bad arm at the moment, but I got a couple nice throws with it into headwinds. I got one turned over a bit too much into the wind and it just took off and glided for days. Too bad its was in the wrong direction, lol.

Pilot is also nice. Had some gusty winds so I didn't really get a feel for the flight on longer shots. Had a similar line as my E ions on putting, but they are seasoned.

 

[TerryTuffskins]

We live in a world where middlemen make the bucks...

 

[dwindacatcher]

Snagged a 170g pink N bar stamp Trace, and 172g pink med Pilot. Gotta say I am impressed so far.

The trace is probly a bit heavy and too fast for my bad arm at the moment, but I got a couple nice throws with it into headwinds. I got one turned over a bit too much into the wind and it just took off and glided for days. Too bad its was in the wrong direction, lol.

Pilot is also nice. Had some gusty winds so I didn't really get a feel for the flight on longer shots. Had a similar line as my E ions on putting, but they are seasoned.

Pilot was straighter for me inside the circle. With an ion I'd see a little fade past 20 ft where I wouldn't start seeing any fade on the pilot until I gout out of the circle.