Trash Panda Disc Golf owner Jesse Stedman sold 10,000 discs two weeks after launching them, but it was far from an overnight story.
He posted a video on the "Trash Panda Disc Golf" YouTube channel that dove into the specifics, including what made him start a business and when his business almost shut down for good. The business started with him wanting to solve a problem he encountered as a disc golf player, as it baffled him that no other manufacturer made discs out of recycled plastic.
"If I want this to be a thing, I guess it's going to be me," he said.
He naively went into the project thinking it would be quick, but it was a lengthy project that was days away from disaster.
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Learning To Weld Discs
Stedman's first step was learning to weld discs so he could mass-produce them in the future. He thought it would be easy to learn, but he said it ended up taking six months to build the right injection machine and the right mold. Even with this progress, future business growth came slowly.
"It genuinely took 30 minutes to make a single disc," he said in the video
With the weld and mold in place, Stedman had to load up on plastic to make the discs.
"I bought 200 pounds of recycled plastic on eBay," he said.
Stedman learned the hard way that when it comes to disc golf, some plastic is better than others. He said that TPU plastic is the best option for creating discs, but he didn't know that when he first bought 200 pounds of recycled plastic on eBay.
Shortly after making this discovery, Stedman said that he got a lucky break. A local recycling company had loads of TPU plastic, and they were happy to give it to Stedman.
"They literally let me come in and use a shovel to dig plastic out of their big boxes and bags and put them in my little boxes and bags to take them back to my garage and recycle," he said on "Trash Panda Disc Golf."
He said that Trash Panda Disc Golf wouldn’t exist without this partnership.
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Selling Minis Before Discs
While discs are the objects you throw in disc golf, minis are the things that you use as markers. Once you find your disc, you have to put a mini on the ground to mark your spot. Minis are smaller than discs, which means they are easier to make.
Stedman had been building Trash Panda Disc Golf as a brand since 2020, but he saw big success in 2021 when promoting the minis.
"2021 was a blur," he said.
Since he still operated in a garage at that point and took roughly 30 minutes to make a mini, he had to temporarily stop taking orders after selling 1,000 minis in three hours. He did multiple launches and said that he sold 5,000 minis that year. Stedman said that he had one part-time employee at that point.
Launching The Discs
Stedman had several successful mini launches and a growing brand. The "Trash Panda Disc Golf" YouTube channel was growing an online audience, and that made it easier for him to launch golf discs to more people. That made it easier – but still difficult – for him to make a $35,000 deposit to mass-produce them after prototyping discs for two years.
He finally had the right mold and 11,000 pounds of plastic to produce discs at scale, but there was a massive problem.
"I set a launch date for the disc without knowing if the two would work," he said.
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He recounted how one problem came up after another as the launch date drew closer, and he had already told the public about the launch date. The launch date was set for Friday, and he still didn't know how to mass-produce discs on Tuesday. The team stayed on site well past working hours to see if they could figure it out.
"For a couple of weeks, I couldn't sleep at all," he said.
He was set to give up on the project if it didn't work the following day, but luckily, that's when everything clicked. Stedman and his team could finally mass-produce discs two days before the official launch party. The public release was three days later, and the company ended up selling 10,000 discs in two weeks.
Selling 10,000 discs is a great achievement, but Stedman's description of his journey demonstrates that overnight success isn't as overnight as people think it is.
"It's not easy," he said on "Trash Panda Disc Golf." "There are ups and downs. It goes all over the place."
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