NBDG history
The long history of NBDG in short words from Juha Kytö
NBDG has a long journey behind and even longer ahead. This story is told by Juha Kytö, founder of NBDG.
NBDG started as a dyeing company in 2013 when I continued the business named "Anabolic Asteroid Custom Dyed Discs" with two friends of mine.
We offered custom dyed discs and service where we dyed our customers discs.
At the same time, there was a lot going on the event side as the first Tyyni took place.
Kivikon Tyyni 2013
The first Tyyni was organized 2013 on the very fresh Kivikko course in Eastern part of Helsinki.
The event was aimed mainly for amateur players but had few professional divisions.
Juha Kytö was the TD and father of the event and the event was organizer under the name of disc golf club Talin Tallaajat from Helsinki.
FUN FACT: Tyyni 2013 had Womens Open division but not Mixed Open. Thats why in Tyyni history there is 1 Womens division Champion more than MPO division.
Dyed discs from 2013
Disc golf discs were dyed with special dyeing colors depending on the disc plastic and which color we wanted to use.
We did customer requests like in the picture and some own designs that were sold on the social media marketplaces.
2014 - year of first big developments
Once mastered the art of dyeing we started to teach and give lessons about dyeing discs.
We also shared our secret tips and tricks and put our materials in sale in a handy and quite ascetic "all in one" package which included everything you needed to start dyeing your discs.
This was a huge hit and sold more than we sold customized discs.
2015 - disc inventory
Spring of 2015 was the time when we started to sell discs and other disc golf accessories than just dyeing discs.
In the picture you see our whole inventory of discs that we had for sale during 2015 - roughly around 300 discs. Our inventory held only Westside Discs, Lecagy Discs and Prodigy Discs.
The shelf was sitting in Juha's office room where all the magic happened from dyeing to packing the orders and developing the webstore.
Sharing the art of dyeing discs
Distance world record holder Christian Sandström and Sofie Sandström in private teaching during Tali Open 2015.
First discs with NBDG designs
From Prodiscus
Second batch of discs with NBDG design
From Dynamic Discs
Sharing the knowledge
Sepän Heitto was one of the first events where we shared all the information, tips and tricks on our sleeves on how to run succesfull disc golf events.
Our main goal was to teach people how to run events on their own.
Mäntsälä Disc Golf Club is still running Sepän Heitto event annually by themselves.
First shop
On new years day of 2016 it was time to move out from home. We leased an 43m2 office room in Kerava that was also serving as brick and mortar shop for DGStore.
Mikko "Mike" Wikman was already on board and helping to put everything together (in picture).
Regular Dyeing schools
With our own shop with more space than a home office can ever offer, we were able to host regular dyeing schools for disc golf enthusiasts.
From customer to employee
Marika Salmi the well known disc golf photographer and known for working on many media and marketing roles at NBDG came to dyeing school to Get More for disc golf.
Marika did a dye of her favourite band and after that we started to write history with her.
compact disc golf store
The small room we had for working worked well at start. But as we put up the discs for retail purpose we quite fast acknowledged that the space was way too small for the purpose.
Luckily, there was something available on the same building....
Store 2.0
The landlord was helpful and knew what was going on. There was opening of a much larger store space with separate offices in total size of 140m2.
We could quickly switch the lease to it and put up a better store with much more opportunities to work with.
Getting more
With much more space did not only the inventory grew but we were able to produce more events during winter time.
This meant much bigger dyeing schools, board game nights, putting contests etc...
dyeing enthusiasts
Our regular dyeing schools did not only gather the new disc golfers to try out the wonderful craft of dyeing but also gathered together the most enthuastic disc golf dyers.
Together we shared all the tricks we got on the sleeve for making beatiful customizations to regular discs.
On left on this picture is Lauri Rönn who was one of the most popular dye artists of its time.
rönndye specials
Lauri Rönn's dyed discs were also available on retail sale under the name of "Rönndye" discs.
His vivid and eyecatching colors were practically rip out of the shelves immediatly.
making our own dye colors
Dedication and the need of proper disc dyeing colors took us to the point where we released our own line of disc dyeing colors.
Dyeline was not just for our own needs but for all disc dyeing enthusiasts to get vivid spectrum of colors what you saw in Rönndye discs.
Dyeline colors were eventually passed forward to Andidye from Estonia who still uses and sells them.
Juniors in intership
Finnish school system has a mandatory period of getting to know working enviroment in real work place on the ninth grade. This intership period variates from few days to two weeks.
With the brick and mortar store we were able to offer a intership spots to junior disc golfers. In the picture you see a young gun Antti Kotilainen during his intership period on 2016. On his prime Antti was 1000 rated professional player and broke the juniors distance world record before injuring his knee.
During the years we have offered many intership opportunities including other talented junior disc golfers like Lauri Lehtinen who did his intership with us during 2017.