I think it’s harder to imagine today than ever before a new online store catering to the US opening and becoming a major player on the scene. These days it seems more and more like a new store wouldn’t even be able to stock its shop, certainly not with the big name companies at least. YYE in seeming to have a good relationship with all the big companies and stocking a wide variety of product is the exception. The last good forum that I know of as well, even with the number of new posts having slowed.
The quality of the conversation on reddit is disappointing to me. It’s all inch deep. With virtually all yoyos coming out being ready to play perfectly right out of the box, almost all of the modding conversations have died out. I find it unfortunate that those conversations have been replaced by "Here’s a picture of yoyo X or “I really want yoyo Y” instead of more of a focus on tricks, making your own yoyos and/or string, etc. I don’t do FB so I’m not sure what the conversation is like there. They could be analyzing yoyoing through the prism of Neoplationism for all I know. I think finding a way to elevate the ongoing conversation within the hobby could be a good thing. Is the YYE forum the last vestige of a disappearing era?
It would be great if YYE decided to release some yoyos themselves. It wouldn’t have to be many, maybe just three. The community could potentially even be involved in designing them. A $20-25 beginner or gateway yoyo like the Legacy that could come with two bearings for responsive or unresponsive play. A $40 or $50 intermediate yoyo, something like a plastic with metal weight rings and an updated DM2 shape. Then an advanced or expert $100-110 metal machined by OD if possible. The store sold a million DM2s with the YYE #1 choice label on it, they should revive that label and slap it on their own yoyos.
Just let’s not ever have to add YYE to this list of stores that disappeared.