This week we released the first run of our signature mold, the Cornerstone, and the response has been awesome. It has also sparked a lot of questions about why we went the signature route instead of making our own mold. The short answer is that this approach gives us long-term stability as a retailer and allows us to explore a model that could change how creators fit into the disc golf industry.

First lets take a look at what is a “signature mold”. The big difference here is that the Cornerstone is fully owned and manufactured by Gateway. Our involvement was in the flight we desired, the plastic the disc is made in, and giving our audience the chance to name the disc. The deal structure is similar to the PM line with Discraft, the Simon Line with MVP, or even the creator series stuff with Prodigy and Discmania. At the end of the day those manufacturers own the molds but they are influenced by the player with their name on them.

So why did we go that route instead of our own mold? To be honest with you a big part of this is the uncertainty of the disc golf retail landscape in the future. Right now, with Infinite Discs being the largest retailer in the game and growing as a manufacturer, the world of being both a retailer and manufacturer is safe. In my opinion this is because who in their right mind would want to lose the volume of discs that Infinite is ordering? With that being said, what happens 5 years from now if Infinite goes fully manufacturer and drops the retail side? Would the world of being both a retailer and manufacturer still be possible? I don’t know.

As we have discussed this internally over the years and had several opportunities to get into the “disc manufacturing” game, we have always landed in the spot where we don’t ever want to be forced in to making the decision of “stop making your own discs or stop carrying ours!” Like I said, that seems pretty far fetched for now, but I don’t think it is completely unrealistic. The signature mold model allows us to sacrifice some margin per disc and in exchange get a little bit of safety as we are not blurring the line between retailer and manufacturer.

Another benefit in our opinion is that this is non-exclusive. This means that if another company had a mold that we were confident in and felt like we could get our brand behind, we could have the conversation of doing it again with them. Knowing that this disc is a Gateway mold means we don’t have to hide their plastic blend behind some new name and pretend it is different. Diamond is still Diamond plastic and if we did it with another company, then their plastic would still be called by their plastic name. It just makes more sense to me.

Now what does this mean for the sport? I think this could be a big moment in the sport as it is a new model that has not been used outside of player sponsorship to my knowledge. Being that we are some of the first disc golf creators that are not players to grow to the size we have (thank you Foundation Nation), we are able to experiment with ideas like this one and see if it is something that other creators could do in the future. We do not take that responsibility lightly. We believe that if we do a good enough job with the partnerships and brand deals that we have the opportunity to do, it could create a world where more and more people can create disc golf content and get to call it a job. If this mold goes well, why wouldn’t a company want to do a similar model with J-Milly?

Last week I wrote about how players are influencers. As disc golf companies start to realize that, they also start to treat influencers like they have historically only treated players. That means if creators can move plastic like players then I think companies will start to compensate creators like players.

The Cornerstone is huge for us, but I also think it is a sign of where the sport is headed. The disc golf content creator era is just beginning.