2019 Year End Stats

2019 was a crazy year for us at KWs Disc Golf. We started the year in a brand new house, and my in-store customer base grew substantially. My goal for 2019, as stated at the end of 2018 was to boost inventory from 3000 discs in stock up to 4000 discs. That didn’t quite happen mainly due to taking more paychecks out of the business to pay for the new house and such. We were able to get up to around 3400 discs in stock. We’ll see how 2020 pans out for stock levels. For the first 5 months of 2019, my shop was in complete disarray due to moving in, but I’m pretty settled in now. Still lots of work to do, but we’re cranking! On to the numbers!! As I always say, I’m not a big store, so the numbers may not be indicative of a national average from the big guns such as Infinite. I do feel, though, that the numbers give a decent perspective since I sell over 10,000 discs per year. In 2019, I shipped to all 50 states, and 17 countries. None of the countries were new destinations for us if I remember correctly, but a few cool ones were Malaysia, Japan, and Latvia. Companies that I carried in 2019 are as follows: MVP, Axiom, Streamline, Dynamic Discs, Latitude 64, Westside, Discmania, Innova, Discraft, Prodigy, Kastaplast, Mint Discs, and RPM Discs. I will break down each category and then bring it all together for the grand totals at the end. So if you want to see what disc I sold the most of, scroll way down!

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Distance Drivers

I generally categorized anything speed 10 and above as a distance driver, based on each company’s numbers. Of course there will be border line discs that don’t use the four number flight system, or some 10’s that may have slipped down to the fairways, but this is the way that I did it. The list in order of the most quantity sold: The overall distance driver winner of 2019 was the Discraft Zeus (Kong). I could barely keep these in stock for the first 6 months of the year. I’d order 20, sell 20 in a few days. Order 40, same. The Zeus plateaued half way through the year but still sold a ton to remain at the top for the year. The Innova Destroyer has been my #1 distance driver every year since I became a full time retailer 7 years ago. Of course the only disc that could beat it was the disc that may have been designed as it’s replacement. The Discmania DD3 was very solid mainly due to the Cloud Breaker release. That’s another one I couldn’t keep in stock. After the Cloud Breakers were gone, the DD3 sales dropped significantly. I would venture a guess that it will be quite a bit further down the list for 2020. The MVP Photon and Axiom Wrath round out the top 5. The Photon has always had strong sales, and the Wrath numbers were heavily driven by the Prism Prototype release.

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Fairway Drivers

The list in order of the most quantity sold: The Axiom Insanity ruled the fairway driver category for 2019 due to insane sales of the Prism Prototypes. In the second half of the year, the Insanity calmed down to average numbers, but the Prism sales were enough to bump it up to the top. The Axiom Crave is always a staple in the top 10, but it jumped up to number 2 due to strong sales of the Eclipse Glow plastic. The Discraft Undertaker jumped 40 spots over 2018, I’m guessing due to McBeth throwing them. Undertaker sales were steady throughout the year. Rounding out the top 5 are the Latitude 64 Explorer and River. These two discs are always up there and are staples of most Trilogy bags.

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Midranges

The list in order of the most quantity sold: The Buzzz reigned supreme again. I believe it has been the year end number one every year that I’ve been a retailer. This year was crazy, though. I sold a ton of Buzzz. Way more than any other year. McBeth love added on to one of the best midranges ever made, keeps the Buzzz at number one. The Innova Mako3 comes in at number two. The Mako3 has always had very solid numbers and has been Innova’s best selling midrange here for 5 years. A semi-surprise at the number three spot is the Kastaplast Göte. The Göte came in to 2019 strong and stayed very consistent through the year. The Westside Warship and Dynamic Discs EMac Truth round out the top 5. They are always up there as the most popular Trilogy midranges.

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Putters

The list in order of the most quantity sold: I don’t know if anything can be said about the Putter category. The Luna flat out destroyed the others. It wasn’t just launch time sales either. The Luna had strong sales at all points of the year. There’s not much out of place in the rest of the top 10. The Kastaplast Berg sneaks up there, the Discraft Zone jumps a few spots, and the Streamline Pilot rides numerous plastic blend releases.

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Top 30 Of Every Disc Sold

We carried 396 different molds in 2019, and here’s the top 30! Discraft Buzzz is the overall top seller of 2019! Discraft had 3 of the top 4 spots with their McBeth bagged discs. It’s not much of a surprise. I was cautiously wondering throughout the year if those initial sales were just a moment of McBeth hype, but they all proved to be solid sellers throughout the year. All of the companies that I carry, except for Prodigy and RPM discs had at least 1 disc in the top 30, with Innova taking 7 spots and Discraft taking 6 spots.

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The Bottom 30

The least selling discs that I had in stock: There really aren’t any surprises to me in the bottom 30. All of those discs have been dead for a really long time. A lot of them are produced in low numbers, so I don’t have much opportunity to order them. A lot of them are just old molds that I may only carry a couple of each at a time. Some of them even went out of production in 2019. I try to phase out a lot of the bottom sellers to make room for new stuff that’s always coming out, but sometimes it’s hard to get rid of the last 1 or 2 that are in stock, so they just sit and get counted.

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Year End Charts

Company Market Share Percentage Year Over Year Wow Discraft! Talk about a market share boom. I sold over double the amount of Discraft as I did in 2018 and that resulted in a huge jump in market share here. They definitely stole some share from Innova. They may have taken some share from the Trilogy companies, but their share has been steadily decreasing for a few years now. Market Share vs. % of Molds Offered

This chart helps me figure out who has a ton of molds that don’t sell. The blue bars represent our market share per company. The red dots (ignore the red connector lines, not sure how to get rid of them) represent the percent of molds offered per company. For instance, Axiom accounted for 8% of our sales and only have 5% of the molds that we carry. That is a good stat to have. Discraft 15% of our sales with only 11% of the molds that we carry. We run in to issues with companies like Latitude 64 that only accounted for about 9% of our sales, but they offered 14% of the molds that we carry. That means that there are a ton of molds that just do not sell, that we have in stock. Same goes for Discmania and Prodigy. Huge differences between what is offered versus what sold. A little bit for RPM and Westside, but I don’t look too much at +/- 2%. I will compare these charts with last year’s charts and make some correlations to see if there are any trends. I already know, though, that Discmania, Latitude 64, and Prodigy had the same trends last year. Year Over Year Gain/Loss Per Company

RPM discs made the biggest gain year over year. I sold 138% more RPM Discs than in 2018. Discraft, of course, makes a huge leap. We sold well over double the amount of Discraft in 2019 than in 2018. Axiom/MVP were dead steady. I sold quite a bit less Innova this year, I’m guessing because of the Discraft boost. Trilogy didn’t fare well for the 3rd straight year, with Latitude being the biggest decline year over year. I’m not sure why Latitude is heading down, but Infinite posted in 2019 that they’re seeing the same trend.

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Wrap Up

Well, 2019 is over and we’re jumping right in to 2020. 2019 was definitely the year of Discraft. I’m guessing we’ll see similar numbers for them this year with Paige Pierce jumping in and McBeth continuing the dominance. Axiom: Steady sales at all times. Lots of great releases throughout 2019 Discmania: 2019 was ruled by the Cloud Breaker. Most of their stuff was steady Discraft: Yea, we know. Insane. Dynamic Discs: Not a lot of sales from newer molds. Core molds are always strong Innova: It’s Innova. Top of the overall sales charts always. Lost some share here due to Discraft Kastaplast: Great gains this year, solid sales Latitude 64: Ouch, again. 80% of their sales here came from Ballista, Ballista Pro, Diamond, Explorer, Pure, River. That says a lot since they offer the second most molds of any company. The Ballista Pro and Explorer are their only molds introduced in the past 3 years that are not duds here. Not sure what’s going on, but the trend isn’t new. Mint Discs: New molds! Selling pretty steady for a small company MVP: Solid consistent performance. They OOP’d a ton of molds and that works for me because they were all at the very bottom of the sales chart here. Prodigy: Making some moves here and there. Lots of new discs. We’ll see how that translates into this year RPM Discs: New Zealand is representing here and they’re selling pretty well for a lesser known brand. I was able to get a good sized order in 2019 and I’ll be ordering again this year. Streamline: 3 new molds and lots of plastic options for everything has resulted in a nice increase in sales Westside: A bit of a decline again. I’m seeing quite a few molds become non-sellers over the past few years. Hopefully Nikko can pull the brand back up

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What a year! Overall, sales were about the same as 2018. In-store sales grew a bit while online sales declined a bit. I can’t complain though, I’ve gained a ton of great local customers, and my online customers are amazing! Thank you all for another great year!