Creating A New Look

When it comes to track equipment, first and foremost our mission is to make sure we create the best performing equipment on the market. Our new S-Series Discus line however had a different starting point. This time we wanted to focus on the looks before we got to the performance.

About a couple years ago the sales team approached our R&D team with the idea of switching up our discus line. The thought was that our competitor’s discus were looking too much like ours. Changing our discus would give us a great opportunity to stand out. Now the challenge was what changes would we make?

To take on our challenge we started with what we knew. We knew that our discus were one tone and we didn’t want that. We wanted something more joyful and fun. Something that could get athletes interested in discus throwing. So, add a design and call it a day, right? Of course not. Easily done and did. We could create a design, but we knew it wouldn’t be enough. To get inspiration we looked to other things we knew. One of them happened to be another one of our discus, the Ghost. The Ghost was one of the first with a transparent plate. A unique concept, but again it has been done. We did however experiment with what else we could do with the Ghost. At one point we took the build process from another one of our discus and tried to combine it with the Ghost. The results failed but took us down a promising path.

After a while we were onto the idea of color transparent plates. A few bumps in the road lead us to add a pattern to the plate. One thing we kept in mind the entire process was knowing our current customers might be unsure about the discus they have bought for so long were going away. To help with this we decided to keep a similar color scheme. The name was also something we thought would be important. We knew many of our customers were used to ordering their discus by the color. We considered giving them names or keeping with the colors. Ultimately, we decided we wanted to stay with our letters naming system that we have been using for many other products (S for scholastic). By using the letters, we were able to add the rim weight. This way it eliminated the need for an added sticker and now the discus and rim weights remain on the discus.

The performance and durability of the discus were of course kept in mind every step of the way. We’ve created a line of discus that looks and performs better than before. Something that will stand out but isn’t just something to look unique. In the end we are all proud of taking on this challenge and exceeding our expectations.