future of golf equipment retailing

[gsrjc]

Club champion golf in my area is having good business and they've only been open for a short time.

[SammyShaf]

The issue I have with your example is simple. Golf as a game is driven on a certain level by brand competition. I sold Allen Edmonds, and I firmly believe they are a superior product. Unfortunately, amongst the OEMs in golf you don't have much variance in the quality of product to warrant individual shops existing. No one will enter an Allen Edmond store and say "Well, I really love how the Park Avenue cap toe looks and feels, but how can I make a decision without comparing it to the Cole Haan cap toe?" This simply would not happen. Golfers want to compare all OEMs against one another, as is evident in the HOT LIST by Golf Digest. I would venture to say that major OEMs would not want to pop up low margin stores at high rent prices otherwise we would already be inundated with them. This is part of what makes golf retailing unique. Most manufacturers do not have to rely on the consumer generating tangible results with a product before purchasing to warrant the purchase.

[square]

First of all, Allen Edmonds is mostly a rip off deal. For the money the quality of leathers, and functional benefits of the shoes, is very questionable. But this is a golf forum and I only posted about AE's boutique retail model to cite an example of how a brand can better its image and sales revenues by taking ownership of retail distribution.
The way the big square footage stores merchandise their stores , and, or internet retailers such as TGW present their web sites, or large scale multiple brand demo days offer up club testing, is all a bit confusing to the consumer-player. Hit drivers from 5 different brands and you will be lost. The reality is that all the equipment, every single major brand, has excellent, very playable stuff. The boutique concept is one way a brand can differentiate itself.
Take Ping for example, a company which has offered Phoenix, Arizona, Ping factory Tours for decades. I guarantee you 9 out of 10 players who take the tour, drink the Kool-Aid, do come out of there ready and willing to buy Ping clubs. Boutique stores do have a similar effect. That is, a guy is so sold on the brand he does not even want to look at the competition. This kind of brand loyalty can emerge from offering up a really impressive boutique store experience.

[quote name='SammyShaf' timestamp='1392694974' post='8691421']
The issue I have with your example is simple. Golf as a game is driven on a certain level by brand competition. I sold Allen Edmonds, and I firmly believe they are a superior product. Unfortunately, amongst the OEMs in golf you don't have much variance in the quality of product to warrant individual shops existing. No one will enter an Allen Edmond store and say "Well, I really love how the Park Avenue cap toe looks and feels, but how can I make a decision without comparing it to the Cole Haan cap toe?" This simply would not happen. Golfers want to compare all OEMs against one another, as is evident in the HOT LIST by Golf Digest. I would venture to say that major OEMs would not want to pop up low margin stores at high rent prices otherwise we would already be inundated with them. This is part of what makes golf retailing unique. Most manufacturers do not have to rely on the consumer generating tangible results with a product before purchasing to warrant the purchase.
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[mokedaddy]

Clothing markets and golf markets are nothing alike. Clothing is driven on HUGE margins. Apple runs on huge margins.

Golf not so much. Boutique stores are only viable on high end luxuries with huge margins and clientele unaffected by economic cycles.

[SoCalTitleist]

callaeay and taylormade already have their own preowned sites.

[CHARGERS]

[quote name='SoCalTitleist' timestamp='1392701360' post='8692103']
callaeay and taylormade already have their own preowned sites.
[/quote]
Preowned???? Try brand new, Adams sells direct thru their website as well

[3fiddyz]

The bit about the internet taking over and killing off retail is an interesting one...

We see the advent of Internet shopping and etailing as being something new but in fact the ability for retailers to not have a shop front has been around for years and it hasn’t really changed things on the way we shop, it’s just a different scale.

In the past (and still do) we had catalogues and mail order businesses, they still needed an outlay to start running i.e. taking out adverts in newspapers, printing and shipping catalogues, but all we had to do was pick up the phone (remember those days of calling someone!!). This way of retailing never ruined the high street, it just ran alongside. In the UK we do have retail catalogue stores (not sure if they are in the states too) called Argos, where the shop front has items displayed, but you go to a catalogue and order from there. Sometimes they have the stock in the huge stock room at the back, other times they have to order and you can collect. They have spun this with the click and collect, you go online and order and then turn up at the store the next day and pick it up. If you don’t like it then you don’t buy it!

The difference now is that you can spin up an etail site in about 1/2 an hour and you don’t even have to carry stock as you can make small order numbers with the manufacturers, and most manufacturers / distributors will ship to the customer with cleared funds.

The one thing I have noticed and have also wondered why it hasn’t been picked up is how Golf hasn’t followed the IT market... Most IT manufacturers will help resellers with marketing and information for the web and provide portals that the customer can buy through. This should be something that the likes of TMAG, Cally, Ping etc. should be doing to help the proshops as very few have the skills and capabilities to run any type of etailing.

When you click on your golf clubs website, click the link to the proshop and there you can purchase online from say a TMAG portal that is branded with your golf clubs logos / colours. The proshop can set its own prices based on margins and payments can go via their own banking or they could be paid a commission from the manufacturer that is similar to the profits they would make if they sold it in store. Items would then be shipped to the proshop to be collected (for the purposes of fitting perhaps) or to the customers address.. the proshop would still make a margin. If the customer didn’t like the item it would then be down to the proshop to return the item, something they do every day!

It wouldn’t cost TMAG much to develop a portal that the '000's of golf club proshops around the world could benefit from...

When you go on most golfclub websites they do have a link to the proshop but there is very little on the proshop pages apart from the manufacturers they deal with and the maybe a pic of a display...

The internet will never take over retailing 100% and the winners will be those that offer a blended shopping experience. IMO!

[square]

For a golf brand, a significant part of the boutique store concept would be the presentation and selling of soft goods. For example, most golf superstores do not sell Ping's entire line of headwear, outerwear, shirts, pants, gloves, accessories etc... The boutique format would give PING the opportunity to expand their non-club merchandise categories.
Broadening of brand product categories, enhancing the image of the brand, is the reasoning behind a boutique store format. To a limited extent, the Golf Superstores already do this, trying to create a "store within a store" for the major brands. Boutiques just take this to a higher level.
25 years ago Nike demanded that all their independent retail accounts open a Nike "store within a store", or that retailer would lose its Nike account. Next, Shortly after that , in their home city of Portland, Oregon, Nike opened their first boutique store, called NikeTown . Now there are NikeTown's in many of the worlds major cities. The boutique concept, and owning their own retail distribution, did help Nike to expand it's merchandise categories beyond footwear.

[quote name='mokedaddy' timestamp='1392700877' post='8692061']
Clothing markets and golf markets are nothing alike. Clothing is driven on HUGE margins. Apple runs on huge margins.

Golf not so much. Boutique stores are only viable on high end luxuries with huge margins and clientele unaffected by economic cycles.
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[mxtitleistgolfer]

The boutique golf shop is interesting and to an extent you do already see some of this happening. Like you mentioned, Nike has outlets, Adidas has outlets, and I'm sure a few others do too. But to reiterate what others have said, the boutique style store will never work with golf clubs. You are right that if someone has strong brand loyalty then they will have no problem shopping at a boutique with only one brand to choose from. However, the majority of golfers do not have this sort of brand loyalty, and they want to compare brands when they shop. Not very many people get to take tours of factories and walk out wanting to go all out with that one brand's products.

Also, hardly anyone outside the PGA Tour or someone with a sponsorship will go head to toe and driver to putter with all the same brand. I know for myself that I don't have any desire to play a single Nike club. I'm not a fan of how they look at address, both shape and cosmetics. As you can see from my signature, I mostly prefer TaylorMade or Titleist clubs. At the same time, Adidas and FootJoy clothing just do not fit me very well. The cuts and shape of their clothing makes them uncomfortable for me to wear, but Nike clothing fits me great so a lot of my golf pants and polos are in fact Nike.

In other words, the boutique store would be dependent upon brand loyalty, and because so few consumers are so hardcore as to only purchase a single brand's products, the model will never take over the retail industry.

[square]

Boutiques are different from "outlet stores". Boutiques feature the highest priced, newest product offerings.
As for "comparing brands", with a boutique the company is trying to get the consumer not to do that. In other words, the idea is to impress the consumer enough so that he has no desire to look elsewhere.
The boutique concept is not intended to "take over retail". It is about creating and nurturing brand image and loyalty, This concept only makes sense in high population, relatively affluent locations. For a major like Ping, within the USA, I would guess that about a dozen total stores would make sense. 2 or 3 stores on the west coast, 1 in the southwest, 2 in the midwest, 3 in the northeast, 2 or 3 in the southeast. Something like that.

[quote name='mxtitleistgolfer' timestamp='1392741724' post='8694213']
The boutique golf shop is interesting and to an extent you do already see some of this happening. Like you mentioned, Nike has outlets, Adidas has outlets, and I'm sure a few others do too. But to reiterate what others have said, the boutique style store will never work with golf clubs. You are right that if someone has strong brand loyalty then they will have no problem shopping at a boutique with only one brand to choose from. However, the majority of golfers do not have this sort of brand loyalty, and they want to compare brands when they shop. Not very many people get to take tours of factories and walk out wanting to go all out with that one brand's products.

Also, hardly anyone outside the PGA Tour or someone with a sponsorship will go head to toe and driver to putter with all the same brand. I know for myself that I don't have any desire to play a single Nike club. I'm not a fan of how they look at address, both shape and cosmetics. As you can see from my signature, I mostly prefer TaylorMade or Titleist clubs. At the same time, Adidas and FootJoy clothing just do not fit me very well. The cuts and shape of their clothing makes them uncomfortable for me to wear, but Nike clothing fits me great so a lot of my golf pants and polos are in fact Nike.

In other words, the boutique store would be dependent upon brand loyalty, and because so few consumers are so hardcore as to only purchase a single brand's products, the model will never take over the retail industry.
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