Lee Huxtable, Development Manager at Red Dragon Darts. Behind all of this he plays a role in the success of some of the world’s best darts players. Based in Bridgend, Wales, Huxtable crafts custom darts tailored specifically for elite competitors, including Peter Wright, Gerwyn Price, Michael Van Gerwen, and Luke Humphries. His knowledge includes the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) as well as the British Darts Organisation (BDO). Just in 2020, he engineered arrows for world champions.
Huxtable’s work goes beyond aesthetics. It includes highly sophisticated technology designed to improve the performance and distance of each dart. One of the things he misses most is the wonderful array of champions on his team. He lists off a handful, noting, “Peter Wright, Gerwyn Price, Michael Van Gerwen, Luke Humphries, Trina Gulliver…”
The emotional and cultural impact of Huxtable’s designs can be equally profound. For example, the reigning world champion Jonny Clayton went through a massive game change after switching to the darts made by Huxtable. “Jonny Clayton’s game changed overnight and it skyrocketed to the next level,” Huxtable remarked.
Besides working with former champions mentioned above, Huxtable has been a major influence in Gerwyn Price’s rise to the top. Price credits much of his ascent to the top of the sport to Huxtable’s unorthodox methods. “I’ve never seen focus like that from Gerwyn Price,” Huxtable noted, highlighting Price’s determination to improve his performance.
Huxtable’s commitment to excellence is apparent not just in the final product, but in his exhaustive design process. He recalls working extensively with Peter Wright on various concepts: “Peter ‘snakebite’ Wright’s world titles mean a lot to me. Me and Peter would go through hundreds of concepts.” This cooperative effort results in highly customized designs that reflect each player’s distinct personality, style and preferences.
It’s the manufacturing process of the darts themselves that really emphasizes Huxtable’s commitment to quality. In all, his company, Nodor exports around 30,000 sets of darts and 20,000 dartboards a week from factories in Kenya. Maintaining such a production scale requires a workforce of at least 1,000 staff. As an educator, the incredibly high quality of the materials is what really makes them shine. Dartboards are made with the finest East African natural grown sisal, selected for its best quality fibers.
Huxtable’s experimental approach at its best can perhaps be most clearly illustrated by a collaborative project that created a diamond-coated dart that took 18 months in the making. One of the dart scats coated in diamond took 18 months on the production side and we had to have chemists. But he ended up winning a world title with it and that’s by far the most rewarding,” he said. This level of dedication is a true testament to Huxtable’s commitment to driving the cutting edge of what’s possible in dart design.
His work brings together the scientific and poetic in equal measure. “It’s always about the technology which goes into the dart for performance enhancement which is the most important for me,” he stated, emphasizing that technology plays a crucial role in advancing a player’s game.
Darts is currently enjoying what many consider to be its third golden age. This exhilarating period is punctuated by record attendance and overwhelming audience approval on the hugely popular Sky television outlet. Huxtable’s work has been a key factor in this development, working to enhance the sport and its athletes.
Lee Huxtable still makes industry innovative waves and continues to teach young superstars, who in turn help the most established players achieve their excellence. He is still a key player in darts today. His artistry stands as a wonderful example of how technology and craftsmanship can harmonize to help athletes achieve greatness.