A visit to Reg Dragon

A couple of weeks back, whilst up in Ireland and the UK I decided to take a trip to Wales to meet with my darts representative, Beth, at the headquarters of Red Dragon Darts. Bullseye Darts New Zealand sells online a vast array of brands of darts sourced from all over the world, but Red Dragon darts are our biggest seller. So, I couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to see and meet them in person, to see why New Zealander’s prefer Red Dragon darts over the many other varieties we have on offer.

No doubt the fact that Red Dragon sponsor four of the top ten players in the world, with two of them home grown talents from Wales in Gerwyn Price (World Champ 2021) and Jonny Clayton (Premier League Champ, 2021) puts them well and truly in the public’s eye. Or maybe it’s their relationship with Winmau who took over from Unicorn’s 25 year reign as “official dartboard sponsor of the PDC”? Or maybe it’s that they just manufacture a very good range of darts!

The history of Red Dragon darts is an interesting one. Red Dragon was founded in 1975 by two highly skilled automotive engineers when they fell in love with the game of darts. They decided to set up a tungsten darts operation to manufacture darts with sales in the early years mostly via mail order. Today they sell darts to over 100 countries globally and have made millions of sets of darts since inception.

Go back a few decades with both Nodor and Winmau being rival dartboard manufacturers whose beginnings were based out of East London. Both businesses later added darts to their dartboard manufacturing as Nodor and Winmau were rivals in the dartboard and darts manufacturing industry for many, many years. Winmau, previously known as Kicks after its founder Harry Kicks changed its name to Winmau in the mid 1970’s, (pronounced Win More) as Harry used the first three letters of his wife’s first two names, Winifred Maud. Then in 2002, Nodor who owned Red Dragon acquired their rival, Winmau stunning many in darting circles. Today’s headquarters in Brigend, Wales, about 30kms west of Cardiff hosts the headquarters of Nodor, Winmau and Red Dragon.

History lesson over, it’s this experience that benefits Red Dragon along with these two other companies that helps them to produce some of the best quality darts in the world. The decades of production experience is seen in the colour, grip and quality that Red Dragon darts provide. I was lucky enough to sit down in Red Dragon/Winmau’s boardroom where I was told that Jonny Clayton was sitting earlier that week. Blade 6 dartboards lay around the room as we talked about the darts scene in the UK and in NZ. I was told the players they sponsor are really good people, which shows in much of what these pro players do on and off the oche. MVG (Michael van Gerwen) is apparently a real character and has a lot of fun with staff when he visits. We agreed that darts globally was in a very good space and that the professional players you get to see every week on t.v. are genuinely really good people. Maybe darts actually needs a villain of sorts? You know, someone that everyone loves to hate. Maybe. We ended up chatting for a good two hours and probably could have gone on longer as I learned where Red Dragon as a company was at and where they are headed with new products and exciting releases coming up.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to be given some signed darts to giveaway to our customers. Bullseye Darts is New Zealand’s largest online only darts store. Throughout the month of August, with every set of Red Dragon darts sold, customers will go into a draw to win a signed set of darts by either Jonny Clayton or Gerwyn Price (customer’s choice). The first 20 sets sold will automatically receive a signed card by one of these pro players. So why wait and miss out? Go online at www.bullseyedarts.co.nz and get a set of Red Dragon darts and see why kiwi’s prefer Red Dragon to the other 15 or so brands available in the market today.

Straight Arrows everyone

Paul Webber

Owner - Bullseye Darts NZ

(August draw will take place 12/9/23 and winner notified my email)