Disc Golf Daily

Disc Golf Daily Sunday: Garett Priscock of Hooligan Discs

Summary Garett of Hooligan Discs shares his journey in the disc golf industry and offers advice for starting a brand. He discusses the challenges and accomplishments of manufacturing discs, including finding manufacturing partners and dealing with growing pains. Garett also talks about the different tiers of his team and the benefits they receive. The branding of Hooligan Discs is centered around the concept of being a young troublemaker, and the orange and white color scheme reflects his personal preferences. The episode concludes with a discussion about upcoming releases and the importance of pursuing a passion.

Keywords disc golf, manufacturing, brand, Hooligan Discs, challenges, accomplishments, team, branding, passion Takeaways Starting a disc golf brand requires finding a manufacturing partner or investing in your own equipment The upfront costs of starting a disc golf company can range from $8,000 to $10,000 Building a brand requires differentiation and a genuine passion for the product Creating a team can help grow a brand and provide benefits to team members Choosing a brand name and logo that reflects your personality and values is important Passion is key to long-term success in any business venture

Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background of Hooligan Discs 02:25 Getting Started in Disc Golf Manufacturing 06:08 Challenges with Manufacturing Partners 09:22 Accomplishments and Celebrating the Two-Year Anniversary 13:30 Building a Team and Providing Benefits 17:47 The Aesthetic and Branding of Hooligan Discs 22:26 Advice for Starting a Brand and the Importance of Passion Music by contreloup

Duration:: 29m
Broadcast on:: 13 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Starting a disc golf brand requires finding a manufacturing partner or investing in your own equipment
The upfront costs of starting a disc golf company can range from $8,000 to $10,000
Building a brand requires differentiation and a genuine passion for the product
Creating a team can help grow a brand and provide benefits to team members
Choosing a brand name and logo that reflects your personality and values is important
Passion is key to long-term success in any business venture

(upbeat music) - Welcome back everyone to Disc Golf Daily. I am your host of the Sunday Most Men Kenny. Here we are with Garrett of Hooligan Discs, a up and coming manufacturer in the disc golf industry. We're just gonna find more about who he is, what he does, and kind of what he does for the sport. And if you're watching on YouTube, apologies if his video is a little blurry. I am using my phone hotspot 'cause my home wifi doesn't work, but alas, you gotta keep on keeping on, baby. So Garrett, yeah, tell us more about yourself and your brand Hooligan Discs in Hooligan. - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So Hooligan is a brand I started back a little over two years ago now. We still ran out of my house, have a shop at my house, my wife and friends all helped, and it's growing pretty good. Initially we were manufactured by Lone Star until we had some growing pains there and slowly transitioned. We've been manufacturing with a partner up in Missouri, Gateway. So you probably know who Gateway is, and all that's been going pretty good. I also am the Disc Barn.com, so that's another side of Hooligan, if you will. So if you go on the Disc Barn.com, we got Hooligan for sale on there, as well as many other discs. And that was a little over three years ago now. So I got both companies, pretty simple guy, got a wife and a three year old, and just enjoying this disc golf run, building Hooligan with you there. - Yes, yes, I am sponsored by Hooligan, so he's my only sponsor, actually. So it's been great working with the Air in that side. I was like, I had to bring him on. So just tell us how you got your start into disc golf manufacturing, and running one that maybe wants the star, what do you have to do to get it off the ground and running, just cost-wise, if you wanna let us know? - Yeah, so there's two different paths that you can kind of take. You can buy your machines and buy dryers, everything you need to make discs and go that method, or you can find a manufacturing partner like I did. Initially, I reached out to a bunch of different companies, Discraft MVP, it reached out to them and nobody had capacity during COVID, they were all full. But during the Pinewoods Open, here in Texas, it's the largest state here here in Texas, there was a personal mic card that actually worked for Lone Star Discs, and I live in Texas, I've never even heard of them. So they were still pretty young into the game, but he told me that they had some capacity if I was interested and got me set up with their owner. I drove down to Houston, I'm from Dallas. I drove down to Houston, I'm at the owner, and from there, it was super simple, but finding a partner is definitely the first step, unless you wanna do it yourself and you have the funds, it means to do so. But a lot of different industries, and what you see and stuff you use, and what you, almost everything is done with a manufacturing partner in mind. Even the iPhone is manufactured with a partner, not straight by Apple, it's Foxcom. Everybody uses partners, I think it's super important, and it also is helpful because usually, you get to pick a partner that probably can do it better than you or else you do it yourself. So I think that's also really, really important. - Sweet, and that's a good intro story. You just kinda were looking to do it, and you did it, a little motivation. For everyone, wants to do it, just go for it. But for anyone that does wanna go for it, what are those upfront costs that people don't expect or realize when they wanna do something like disc golf manufacturing? And how much money would you say you would need to put towards it to just start up and let's say get your foot first mold. - Yeah, yeah, so for, if you're just gonna start a disc golf company with your first mold and you're gonna use a partner, obviously they have MOQs and everything, so you can't just say like, hey, ship me 20 of these, I'm gonna sell them and start from there. Especially if you're gonna make your own mold, if you're gonna use tops and bottoms, you can, for this scenario, we'll talk as cheap as you could probably get it with low MOQs and everything. I would probably say around eight to 10 grand, I mean, honestly, in the grand scheme of other businesses, I'd say that's on the very low side, as long as you've got a partner that already knows how to make discs and has the means to do so, and there's not the huge investment cost in all of that and the learning cost. But if you're gonna use tops and bottoms or shared molds, you gotta get a website going, you gotta get your LLC set up, all that cost a little bit of money, so we'll lean towards the 10 grand side, but it's really, if you set your mind to it, it's not super hard, I think anybody could really do it, you just gotta make sure you find a way to differentiate yourself and really care about what you're doing, 'cause you're gonna have to put some time into it. - And for anyone that doesn't know, explain to them what MOQ means. - And do you know what MOQ means? - Minimum order quantity. - Okay, I'll just check it. Yeah, sorry. I always say with people who use acronyms too, so I don't know why I did it, but you have another quantity to the listeners, so I guess, yeah, that's what it is. There you go, so when he says MOQ, it's like, basically it has to be worth any manufacturer that you work with, even in China, or it has to be worth their time, 'cause they're just making a vast amount of stuff, they're not gonna make ones or twos off, but those are like more samples, but yeah, some people, some of them, you have to order like 300 of a item, and you get lower pricing, but that's the minimum, because you know, it's not worth their time, they're just making so much other stuff. But yeah, just get us into kind of the biggest struggles so far that you've had in creating this brand with cooling disks. - Absolutely, so initially with Lone Star, everything was going really good, that COVID boom hit, the Ranger team started up, their capacity got really, really filled, so that was hard, you know, I would ask, I need yeats, maybe, or I guess the heat was the first one, so there was no problems there, but let's start with the rope, right? I needed the rope, but they're buying new machines and expanding their capacity, and they're still completely cool, and I totally understand they're gonna make more profit for their disks than me. So you are using a partner that's in the same industry, you're gonna run into those kind of growing pains, so they obviously prioritize their molds and their manufacturing when they had free time, basically is when they were able to run Pooligan, and at the same time, Pooligan is somewhat of a competitor, right? So they're manufacturing for, I mean, obviously they're making money off of Pooligan, but they're not making nearly as much off of mine as they are theirs, so there was a lot of growing pains there, and then it seems like there was somewhat of a downfall of Lone Star and some other issues that I think a lot of people know about, but I won't go into on here, but we decided to look around for other partners. I talked to a good amount of people and landed with Gateway, and if you're not familiar with Gateway plastic, if you haven't felt it lately, I would highly recommend it. It's really good stuff, but back in three years ago, when I first started, I actually talked with them, and I wasn't a huge fan of everything they had sent me and all the samples of plastic blends, but when they reached out the second go around, sent me their new NXT plastic and new drivers they'd been working on, they've completely turned everything around. Everything was amazing. Got on a probably a one-hour phone call with them, and they, it was all music to my ears. You want metal play, you want just all this sort of additives, all these different plastic blends, they could do it, they could, they could do it quickly, which is huge for me. If you are working like I am with pretty low funds, it's really hard to plan, release the six months in advance, 'cause you just don't know what the, what the bank account looks like that far out. So with them, I've been able to say, you know what, I need a thousand of these, and if I could have them in three weeks, that would be amazing. Obviously, they don't prefer that method, but if they do have the capacity it means to do, so they've been really good at doing that. But, so that's from the start to the beginning, or from the beginning to now, biggest growing pains, like I said, was kind of growing out of Lone Star. Obviously, there's always financial issues along the way, and I've tried to, I've got somebody in the warehouse packing orders now, so hopefully that'll free me up, but at the same time, it's more financial burden, but trying to free myself up to be able to do more of the day-to-day business, work with the other retailers, work with getting new molds out, all that sort of stuff. - Sweet. And kind of on the inverse, what would you say has been kind of your biggest accomplishment so far? What you're most proud of in that manufacturing process? - Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, launching is hard, right? Launching costs a lot of money, trying to get all the advertising. I have no experience in advertising, or marketing or any of that. My background's in that computer science-type business degree called information systems. So, I was pretty proud on Release Day, when we had, I think Release Day was 2000 discs, and we sold 80% of those, which was really cool to me. I assumed I was marketing correctly, and reaching the right people, but I wasn't positive, I'd never done it before. So, that was a pretty big feat to me, and then I wanted to make sure I learned from what happened with this mania, leaving end of it, right? I mean, all their molds were shared molds. So, I made sure with Lone Star, obviously we had a few shared molds, but there were a few that I wanted to own. The cash rope and flip, I do own, I was able to have them ship those to Texas, we've shipped those up to Missouri, and there's some work to be done on those, but it's not very often you see a mold made by a manufacturer move to another manufacturer, right? Have you ever had a disc made in two separate plastics from different manufacturers before? Nothing comes to my mind, so I'm pretty proud of being able to do that, right? So, we'll have the cash, you have it made by Lone Star in their plastic, without remaking the mold, it's gonna be in gateway plastic now, right? It's actually moving manufacturers, and that's something that I haven't seen anyone else do. - Wait, so, you said this mania is sharing molds within them? I didn't know that, I thought they were all unique molds. - No, they were tops and bottoms. - Oh, oh, okay. - So, when they left it, yeah, yeah, yeah. They didn't get to take any of the tops and bottoms with them, right? They had to start from scratch and try to remake the DD3 as close as they could, all new steel and everything. - I thought you meant like the DD3 was a destroyer, I'm like, I don't know if that's correct. - No, no, no, yeah, no, no, no, no. - But, yeah, that makes, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot. - They fully, the DD3 that you get now was completely remade, obviously it's got a few slight differences. The cash rope and flip that we have, that anybody had from Lone Star plastic, it's not being remade. It's literally just getting injected by a new machine. - Yeah. - So, that makes sense. - I'm pretty proud of that and I wanted to make sure that we were able to do that in case we ever did grow at a Lone Star and we did and I was able to move those. That was pretty awesome. - Sweet. So, do you have any exciting type of things that you want to talk about that are coming down the pipeline as a-- - Absolutely. - Yeah, so we, a two year was in May, but as I said, there's always, got a chipmunk running right by me. Hey, always financial burdens. And so, we're trying to get, literally just rain under my chair. - It's a little stressful. - That's hilarious. So, we're trying to get a pretty cool disc release for this two year celebration. It'll be a little bit late due to some tooling and other issues, but without giving away too much, it's definitely one of our most popular discs ever and it's about to be back into the public. And I've already got it in my hands and it's amazing. It's so much better. It was so good before and it's so much better now. - Yeah, I think everyone's gonna love it. I think other than that, we're not really talking with too many pro players right now on sponsorships. We've kinda taken a back seat on that for a little bit while we try to get everything going with Gateway and get the plastic lens figured out and all our mold settled before we get back into sponsorships and whatnot. But yeah, two year anniversary, it's gonna be huge. - Yeah, so stay tuned. It's gonna be very exciting. And if you wanna support Gary, I actually have a code, Ben 10, on hooligan discs, so 10% off the entire website. So, if you want it, even on release day, he, even those discs, you're able to use it. - That would no matter what. - Yes sir, so. - Yep, that's right. - And 100% supports Gary. I don't get any commission from it, so it's just, it's just, it supports Gary and it supports you guys. So I just did it so you guys have a little discount, if you know me and I wanna support hooligan. So recently you implemented a team, which is what I'm part of for hooligan discs. Tell us about that process and the pros and cons and how you're trying to separate yourself from other teams in disc golf. - Yeah, so we have a couple of different levels. We've got a creator team, which is mainly, I mean, maybe they do play a lot of tournaments, but maybe they don't, maybe they're mainly focused on YouTube and Instagram and all that sort of stuff. So we've got that, we've got the hooligan squad, which is gonna be the tier below like 950 rated. The players below that that are grinding really hard, trying to grow their rating. Want some support, want a company to represent, a company they like, that's the hooligan squad. And then we have the hooligan, which is gonna be your 950 plus players. They're all tour, trying to get on tour, growing, trying to be that local pro. They did, you know, a little more financial incentives and whatnot to keep growing that. Sorry, this truck's a little loud. (laughing) But to differentiate, but to differentiate our team, you know, we do give them a lot of benefits. They all get early releases, there's a team page, so they'll find out about this two year anniversary disc before anyone else. They'll get, they'll all get access. Every single tier level will get access to those discs before anybody else. They all get discounts, they all get, you know, free hot stamp add-ons to customize their stuff. And more than anything, I think it's communication. I try to be as available as possible. I talk to them all on the team page, they all message me. So anybody has questions, try to figure out how to grow. Some people have their own businesses and they'll wanna contact me and talk about that and stuff. And so the team is more of a family than it is a team, right? It's more of just getting people together. We do have minimum requirements for all the teams. So it's not just anybody gets on, right? That some other teams have been. So me and my buddies go through all the applications, decide who fits the criteria, who fits the brand, make sure everything looks good, and that the outlook looks good. But it's really just a community. I'd like to think that more of a community than a team. - I agree, yeah, being on the whole, the whole game. - Or at least the whole game. - Yeah, the North is the whole- - Greater team. - Creators, yeah. - Basically, greater gain, your greater gain. - It's been awesome and yeah, tons of benefits. I mean, just the discount code alone that you get personally to get on your disc is one of the best and you get Jersey, Apollo, and like you said, access to these discs. And it's been- - If you're on the team, obviously, we like to throw stuff in there and they get access to factory seconds and blanks and all sorts of fun stuff. - Yeah, so it's been definitely one of the best teams I've been on so far and I've only been on two, but that other team was also great too. So I haven't had any complaints with both of them. So tell us more about kind of your, you named it Hooligan-Diss. That might be, to some people it would be like, "Hmm, why Hooligan?" You know, so tell us more about the aesthetic and branding and just your idea behind naming it Hooligan. - Yeah, so Hooligan means young troublemaker and so I just turned, what, just turned 30. In September, I turned 30. So I'm on the fairly young side of disc golf manufacturers and I think a lot of disc golf is branding to me who get encompasses what I picture for the company. I don't want it to be taken seriously. I try not to take anything seriously. It's obviously I'm trying to grow the business, but I'm also trying to have fun with the business. I want customers to be happy, people to just be happy with the brand and want to be a part of it naturally. And so far everybody that I've tried to surround myself with are a bunch of Hooligans. We just go out, play, have fun, lots of banter. Once I thought of the name Hooligan, which was honestly probably four years ago, I knew for sure that that was the name I was going to use. It just encompasses me and who I am as a person. My three-year-old straight Hooligan, you've been your straight Hooligan. So it just fits. And when you know, you know, and Hooligan was it. So young troublemaker, that's it. We're a troublemaker in the industry of disc golf. - And oh, I like that. You know, you're, you're, what is it called? I don't know the word I'm trying to think of. - Disruptor. - Disruptor, yeah. Disruptor. - Disruptor. - There you go. - I like that. Doing things different, or at least trying to do. Yeah. And then like kind of just talk to us more about, you know, the logo, the actual logo itself and the orange and the white, kind of just let us know your thought process behind that. I just want, basically why I'm asking these questions, this might sound like very basic. I want anyone that's kind of wanting to start a brand in disc golf or anything to kind of, you know, get some, glean some advice from this that they could use to, you know, inspire them to possibly make their own brand. - Yeah. Yeah, if you're trying to make your own brand, there are certain colors that are supposed to invoke certain emotions and certain perceptions of the company. Personally, orange has been my favorite color since I was a kid. All through school, my, all four walls in my room were orange, one was black, I guess. So orange has been black and been my color since day one. And a lot of the school again was just doing something I was passionate about and trying to grow a brand that represents me. So I wouldn't say I'm necessarily trying to gear it towards, you know, orange and black for any business reasons, other than it's just what I really like, the brackets, you know, or have to do a lot with coding. So I, like I said, I was computer science. Brackets are used to in a lot of different coding ways. And so we kept that on the H. We originally had it on the main hooligan logo, but I was getting a lot of hate mail on the similarities between us and another company. And so I quickly changed that as soon as I could. So we could get out of that stigma. You know, I never want any negativity towards the hooligan brand. So we kept it on the H. I think it looks really good. It's easy to slap on stuff, slap on hats. But I mean, honestly, yeah, just trying to create a brand that I like and that I would wear and I feel passionate about. It's all I was going for, not necessarily what the market would go for. I've always liked the blue and green color scheme for a business to me that always pops and looks really good on apparel, but black and orange, maybe a little more niche, but it was more for me. - Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. That's really kind of what all, I guess, companies and brandings start with, where it's just like, you know, your favorite colors and stuff like that, like for my attacker store. Yeah, like, you know, I probably could have put blue in there, but we just did like a darker chocolate brown in a yellow and, you know, or like my disc golf expo. If you're on YouTube, you can kind of see it there. Just blue and yellow, it's, I don't know, it's just, I liked it and, you know, I won with it, even though my favorite color is not blue, but it just, it just felt great. - Yeah, I mean, it felt like it invokes a passion into you. You gotta do it. - Yes, precisely. So, is there anything else that we kind of haven't talked about that you would, or any advice that you give to anyone kind of starting this journey on making their own brand, whether it's just anything, whether it's clothing or discs, or specifically to disc golf. Any advice, I guess what I'm saying is any advice where you give someone where you were like, oh, I wish I had this, I wish I knew about this way sooner, where you went through like the growing pains of it, and maybe you can help someone skip that portion is what I'm trying to say. - Yeah, so skip that portion. I think I'm still working on it. So obviously I would love to quit my job one day. I think it's just really important to, if you have a passion, there's so many people out there that have a business idea and they just wanna do it and they don't ever do it and they don't know how to do it, but it's just, you just start and you don't have to do it with any sort of vision of, I'm quitting my job, I'm growing a massive company. You just have to figure out how to make $1 at a time, right? And start your business and maybe it's $100 a month and that's all you want out of it, but it's something that you have fun with. I mean, it's important to do something that you're passionate about. If it's just something that you're like, man, this would sell, but you don't care about it. You're not gonna put the time into it. And maybe you're a super hard worker and you do put the time into it, but you're not gonna enjoy it. It's gonna be just like any other job that you've ever done. So make sure you're passionate about it. I did a bunch of other stuff as a kid trying to make money. I remember at one point, I bought a bunch of auxiliary cables. It's like, man, I see these on eBay, people are, I had to buy an auxiliary cable from my car back in 2000s, right? They were, I don't know, $8 and I found them on in China for $2. And so I was trying to start a business selling those, but obviously I didn't care about them, right? I didn't hustle, I didn't want to go on and learn all the SEO to get my auxiliary cables off the shelf and whatnot. Lots of stuff like that growing up, trying to figure out what I should do. Finally, you know, I've been playing this golf 12 years before I started the disc barn and hooligan. So just clicked that it was something I was passionate about. It made sense and it shows, I finally found something that I'm good at and I think people can tell that I care about. - Yeah, it's so funny 'cause I had the same experience. You know, I tried basketball, I tried music, making music. Those are my two things that I really tried hard to get good at and until I found disc golf, that's when I realized, wow, this is what it actually means to be in love with something impassionate and how it doesn't feel like a job ever. So yeah, it was this grand opening. I didn't like making music that much because with disc golf, it's all I want to do. It's all I want to think about. It's all I want to practice isn't annoying. Or like doing work for it isn't annoying. It's just, you know, I love to sport that much, that anything to do with it is super fun. Like today, I have like, this is my first podcast of three podcasts, so I'm gonna probably be recording for five hours today. - You're excited about it, right? - Yeah, but yeah, I don't see it as a job or work. It's enjoyable and that's what's important. I think if you take anything from this episode, I think that's the most important thing. You might not like disc golf and that's okay. And find something you do like. And if you want to start your own side business or main business, or even if you don't really care and just like you want to work your job and go play disc golf or do whatever, just find something that you're passionate about because that's the most important thing. For longevity, you know, we all get burnt out at there a while, but if you're really passionate about it, you'll get back up and keep on swinging, but. - If it doesn't work out, you had fun along the way, right? I mean, you did something that was fun for you. - I'll deal with it if it doesn't work out so sad. Fortunately, it's so far from me knocking on. - Yeah, it's working out great for you. - But yeah, thanks for coming on, Gary. This was super cool, kind of insightful to get a manufacturer's perspective on the kind of their dates day and what they do and making people realize like, you know, in of a discraft and the big main manufacturers, you know, they're not the main, they're the main companies, but there's a bunch of smaller companies kind of trying to get to that level that I think people don't realize. So, if anything, just check out Hooligan Discs, check out what they got, I throw them, I love the dime. I pull their dimes and I throw their cash and the vibe has been super popular, just like a flippy, flippy, beaten, wraith, right out of the box, so flips up and comes back. So check it out, and you've been 10 if you have anything you would like to purchase. Gary, is there anything you want to shout out before we kind of close up? - I'm just gonna shout too out Ben, thank you for having me on the podcast, I'm just grabbing, you know, disc golf daily, I know you're working hard on this and you've got fun, you've got staggered stance, you're constantly grinding, I really appreciate it, I hope the disc golf industry and everybody in it appreciates it and sees the hard work you're putting in. And I just am grateful to be a part of it, right? I'm sitting here, I'm currently on vacation, we're in Red River, New Mexico. - New Mexico. - And I just, I'm just getting to do this cool stuff with you, bless you, but yeah, I appreciate you Ben and everybody that's watching, make sure you like and subscribe and stay tuned for whatever Ben has planned next. - Oh yeah, well, I guess, like disc south, it's the disc golf expo I am bringing to Dallas and Gary's gonna be a huge part of that, he's gonna vent in there. - You're truly gonna move, yeah. - Yeah, he's gonna vent there and just help me out, just spreading the word. So if you are around Texas or in Dallas and you are interested in venting, or being in attendee, you can go to discsouth.com for some preliminary information. I'm still working on updating more, more details, or you can follow @disc golf expos. That'll have information what you were looking for on just what I've been doing in the Northeast. And DM me and message me @disc golf expos or email me @disc golf expos at gmail.com if you are interested in venting or even attending. I don't have tickets up yet, but we're trying to make this big, it's a 40,000 square foot room. It's very large, it can fit 210 by 10 booth. It's very large. So it's gonna be very exciting and it's March 1st and 2nd, 2025. So if you have seen the Northeast Disc Golf Expo and how it's been, I'm bringing it to Dallas as well. So the Northeast one's still gonna happen, but I'm doing one in Dallas with Garrett. Well, Garrett will be a part of it. So it's very exciting time. And yeah, thanks so much, Gary. I appreciate you hopping off. - Of course, thanks for helping me just grow disc golf together. - Of course, movers in the shakers, baby. All right, this has been "Disc Golf Daily." Thank you so much. See you next Sunday. (upbeat music) Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment, and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) (gentle music)