For too long, our European fans have been forced to pay super high shipping fees on their orders from our store. We've heard your feedback and are proud to soon roll out our second official brand store, Discmania Store Europe. In this article we decided to provide a long-form update on what to expect, so if you're looking for just the basic info, see just the bullet points below:
Store URL: europe.discmania.net
Store theme: Dark side
Shipping: Worldwide
Location: Online only - warehouse in Tampere, Finland
Opening date: TBA - Subscribe to Discmania Store newsletter to get notified!
Instagram: @discmaniastore.eu
Facebook: @discmaniastore.eu
Customer service email: europe@discmania.net
Will there be Tilts? Maybe :)
So what can we expect from this new store?
As some of you may know, up until now, the Finland-based InnovaStore online shop has worked as our de-facto brand store in Europe. With the huge surge in popularity of Discmania products however, InnovaStore is no longer capable of handling our product releases. Also, since shipping to consumers from US to Europe is extremely expensive and has a high carbon footprint, the time is ripe for Europe to get their own Discmania flagship store.
Discmania Store Europe acts largely the same way as our current US-based Discmania Store. You'll find the best available selection of Discmania stock products from both stores and you can expect to see our major product releases becoming available on both stores largely on the same dates. The actual drop times will naturally vary due to time difference. Product selections between the stores are not going to be an exact match though. Both stores have their separate warehouses, US store in Colorado and Europe Store in Finland, and both are operated independently, meaning specialty product selections are more or less unique on both stores.
Going forward, you are likely to see some continent-specific drops on certain items like smaller run signature discs (Signature Series discs are always offered on both stores) and other specialties. Both stores still do offer international shipping though, so if you want to get your hands on these smaller scale releases, that possibility is always on the table regardless of your location.
Bringing more products available
Discmania Store Europe will also be the new home of our hugely popular Mystery Box products and we are doing our best to allocate higher numbers of key releases to our European store than you've previously seen on the European market. It worth noting however, that this does not mean slimmer pickings are to be found on the US market. Contrary to that, production numbers have been ramped up greatly from previous years, so that there's more products available for everyone. Naturally this doesn't automatically mean that nothing will ever sell out again, since market demand is difficult to predict and production scalability isn't endless, but regardless of that, going forward you can expect major releases to come with higher inventory than ever before, both in our US and Europe Discmania Stores.
Once the new store opens, you'll notice there will be some very limited goodies that can't be found anywhere else. For some of them, we had to really pull our resources together to make them happen and the opening specialty selection was largely achieved by the fact that, unlike in the US, there hasn't been much of any specialty drops in Europe after 2020. Please understand that with the current supply situation there's likely not going to be enough of each little specialty release for everyone. We tried to put together a selection that has multiple special goodies, so while there's not enough of each specialty for everyone, there's at least hopefully something special for most.
The new store fixes all issues on product releases forever, right?
Simply put, probably no. The rapid growth in the popularity of our new releases has come with its fair share of challenges. Technical issues are clearly among the most annoying of them. Compared to what our European customers have previously seen with InnovaStore, many of the key issues have been tackled by this new online store. This, however, doesn't automatically mean that it's all going to be smooth sailing from now.
As previously stated, we can only produce so much of each item and demand can very well still exceed the supply in future drops as well. In all honesty, launching a new online store in the current market can be quite stressful. The list of things that have to be taken into consideration looks a lot different from what most new online stores face. We've spent countless hours developing the new store, with high hopes of everything working as planned, but unfortunately shortcomings are always a possibility.
Testing the waters with a new cart functionality
One thing we haven't really seen in the European disc golf market to date is a shopping cart that creates a reservation for its contents. The reason for this is fairly simple - contrary to what most people may think, reserving carts simply aren't all that commonly offered on online store platforms. Most non disc golf -related online stores you use probably don't have one. You likely won't be able to notice the difference, since in most cases supply clearly exceeds demand, so situations where goods sell out while in your cart very rarely occur.
Especially since the Covid-19 pandemic rolled out, the situation has been very different with our new disc releases. In many cases goods are sold out in minutes, leaving people looking to buy frustrated and empty handed. At the end of the day, a reserving cart does not really do much to alleviate the core issue of demand greatly exceeding supply. It does, however, in some cases make the customer experience smoother and since it's been a highly requested feature, we've decided to try to offer this functionality at Discmania Store Europe as well.
However, it's worth noting that as the online store platform we use does not natively offer a reserving cart system, the system we have is custom made. We've been able to integrate it to our store thanks to great help from great people, but again, since it's a custom solution, things can sometimes work differently from what's expected. Essentially, please be patient and let us know if you run into issues. We have the capability to turn the cart functionality back to its default setting (no reservations) in case things go sour, but we hope that's something we don't need to resort to.
I'd like to become a retailer in Europe, can I buy from Discmania Store directly?
We value our existing retailers and are happy accept new ones especially when we have enough product to go around. From the retailer perspective however, Discmania Store Europe doesn't bring changes to existing arrangements. Discmania Store Europe has an independent selection of products and all parties are welcome to purchase the items available, but we do not offer dealer accounts on the new store or dealer pricing on Discmania Store items. The bulk of our products continues to be offered to retailers via Spin18 Oy in Europe.
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