Darts: Ever wondered about Softip darts?

Close to 50% of Winmau dart sales are soft tip, and this is mainly for the export market (USA, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, etc.).

Our UK sales of soft tip products are less than 1% as it is still THE most traditional, steel tip market in the world!.

The Japanese market is a sight to behold, and is 95% soft tip dominated.

Our business over there has grown consistently over the past few years, and we see no reason why this won’t continue in the future.

It may interest you to know that we sponsor Wanton (the ‘Japanese Eric Bristow’!) via one of our distributors (Darts Shop NOB).

He is over 50, but is the most famous player in Japan.

We produce a set of darts for him, which are sold by NOB.

Interestingly, many Japanese players are buying Blade IIIbristle boards to practice on in their homes rather than the soft tip boards.

This is due to their obsession with the best quality and the polite culture as they don’t want to annoy their neighbours with the noise!

We will be launching a new and innovative Winmau soft tip range at the end of the year, which will coincide with our new brochure.

Globally, the soft tip game is very strong and is growing with new emerging markets all the time (Iran as an example).

There are products that are trying to bridge the gap between the steel and soft games (the Merlin Wild Bull developed for the pubs/clubs, for example), which use bristle dartboards with electronic scoring.

The Merlin example is the best quality product on the market, but there are many cheap electronic bristle boards that have been developed for the home market that are simply dreadful quality!

Therefore, the traditional soft tip dartboards will probably remain the more popular version for the next few years.