Addressing the Ball: Golf P-O-P Rolls Toward the Pin

Golf equipment marketers are responding to a changing market with more and better P-O-P. And with each new release, they land closer to the pin.With sales estimates ranging from $1 billion to $1.8 billion wholesale, depending on who's asked, it's small wonder. The National Golf Foundation estimates that consumers spent $6.2 billion on equipment and merchandise at retail in 1994.Scott Kramer, senior editor of Golf Shop Operations magazine, places the number of "sizable" club manufacturers at about 70. Additionally, hundreds of companies manufacture golf accessories ranging from balls, carts, bags and hats to togs, towels and shoes. The annual PGA Merchandise Show in Florida this winter featured 1,140 exhibitors."In the past, our product hasn't needed much marketing to sell," observes Steve Bostwick, product coordinator for Karsten Manufacturing Corp., Phoenix, makers of Ping brand clubs and equipment. "But with more and more companies out there and a number of them doing a terrific job of marketing, retailers have begun asking us for help."The industry, while led by a few dozen veterans, is flush with entrepreneurs. "A new golf company [launches] at least every two weeks," says Jim Gray, general manager of Exhibitart, Carlsbad, Calif.Ron Addison, business manager for golf clubs and licensed product at Wilson Sporting Goods Co., Chicago, concurs: "As the number of products and manufacturers mushrooms, and displays grow, the importance of your ability to tell a story grows, too," he says. "Displays give us the opportunity to tell a story."Admittedly, the smaller companies aren't in much of a position to crank out P-O-P, but the presence of their product adds clutter to already cramped shops. Recently, notes Karsten's Bostwick, "We had been kind of shoved to the side with all the new companies coming in." By supplying the displays that retailers want, "we get premium floorspace, up front by the door," he says.Plain and simple, Exhibitart's Gray says, "A golf company can't survive without P-O-P as part of a integrated marketing program."Unfortunately, observes Hal Hannon, president of Golfology, a start-up putter maker in Carlsbad, Calif., "The chances of [a young company] selling enough product into a golf shop to merit P-O-P is not great. But once you're past that challenge [of sell in,] the next question is 'How does it get paid for?' [Big names might] get payment for P-O-P, but we cut our profit margins in half by providing P-O-P."Nevertheless, for many companies, including Golfology and Tommy Armour, P-O-P increasingly replaces advertising. "We decided to spend our initial marketing budget on P-O-P as opposed to golf magazine advertising because our P-O-P message is seen every time a golfer walks into the store,"says Hannon.In the past year, Tommy Armour has also traded print for in-store merchandising. "P-O-P is a way to grow sales, rather than print advertising," says Dominic Engels, product manager at Tommy Armour Golf, Morton Grove, Ill. "You can spend the same dollars on a display and achieve a greater impact."High-Tech ProductsIn addition to the proliferation of equipment and vendors, golf is growing more sophisticated, with technology and fashion changing both the product and its merchandising. Everything from bags to drivers are improving, becoming not only aesthetically more pleasing, "but possessing true technical innovation," Wilson's Addison says.And therein lies the primary challenge for the industry: Meshing golf's staid heritage with its state-of-the-art future.Increasingly, club makers are attempting to reflect the club's technology -- and usually that means titanium -- in the materials used in a display. The same holds true for bags and carts and even shoes.For Golfology, a holographic header suggests space-age technology come to life. Others, like cart maker Bag Boy in Richmond, Va., use cutaway views to demonstrate the engineering behind the product."Over the last 10 years, display ideas have remained basically the same, but the presentation has changed," says Joe Kunzelmann, national sales manager for Chicago Display Co., Melrose Park, Ill. "Instead of a vacuum-formed base, golf marketers are getting into clear, die-cut acrylics, screen printing, metal uprights ... And paint technology has come a long way, too, with silver and copper veining, high-textured, high-gloss finishes."Of course, there's a reason the industry clung so long and hard to the ubiquitous vacuum-formed club display. It worked."One of the challenges in golf is that everybody has a display with a rotationally molded base with a little wire piece that holds the clubs and then two posts and a banner. Only the colors differ," Karsten's Bostwick says.About a dozen years ago, Taylor Made Golf Co., with the help of Chicago Display, pioneered that display, according to Fred Havens, product manager at Taylor Made, Carlsbad, Calif. "It was easy to set up and not terribly expensive to make," he explains. The recipe was readily copied.Today, the trend is to "break out of that mold -- to give displays more of a high-tech look," says Havens. "To be honest, it's not easy to do. A golf club is kind of a tricky thing to display; there's only so many things you can do with it.""Cobra did a good job last year," he concedes. That company created a club and bag display with a transparency panel in a light box. "That's a step in the right direction. I think there'll be more competition to do that." At least among the larger brands."Cost tends to limit your possibilities," Havens admits. "The larger companies like ourselves, Callaway and Cobra, probably will upgrade the look of their displays. But for a lot of the smaller companies, it's simply not going to be possible to keep up."Irvine, Calif-based Grip Technologies, for one, has always wanted to create displays for its grip products, but lacked the necessary market penetration to "make them cheap enough to give away," says Greg Hopkins, product manager. The three-year-old company has now introduced its first display and is at work on another. Hopkins found the key to getting display space was to give retailers an extra incentive. His countertop grip display includes a spot for dealers' business cards.Low-Tech EnvironmentsThe golf industry has been labeled everything from "backward" to "not very savvy" when it comes to P-O-P use. "We're probably dealing with one of the less-savvy businesses, as far as P-O-P goes," says Tommy Armour's Engels. "Both from the point of view of our salesforce implementing it as well as our retailers using it. But it's getting better."Marketers like to point out how different golf merchandising is from other consumer product areas."Sporting goods in general are unique because they are interactive," notes Kunzelmann. Displays must "invite you to pull out the literature, read about it, feel the grip, grab a club and try it out," he says. At the same time, says Engels, "we're not working with the same budgets of other sporting goods manufacturers, like a Nike or an Easton."Furthermore, adds Dave Aznavorian, golf club associate marketing manager at Titleist/Foot-Joy Worldwide, Fairhaven, Mass., "Golf equipment is very different just from a sizing standpoint. [Display designers] have to be sensitive to the fact that golf equipment is not just one candy wrapper size."But even more so than product type and shape and size, marketers cite store variation as the biggest hazard they face."Golf is a really different marketplace because it's so diverse," says Todd Hansen, account manager with Promotional Industries Inc., East Hartford, Conn. "With hardware you're faced with two choices: your local hardware store or the big guys, there's not much in the middle. With golf, there's every opportunity, and it's tough to cover them all."Distribution falls into two main channels: cement (also called "off-course") and green grass (on-course). Warehouses, mass merchants and specialty stores fall into the first category, while private and public pro shops constitute the latter."Both on- and off-course environments differ from account to account," says Doug Dauray, account executive with display-maker Mechtronics, Stamford, Conn. "But by far the most restrictive is the on-course pro shop, which has very limited space available."It's tough to place a floorstand or standee in a green grass account, says Hansen, where anything large is anathema. Warehouse-stores are less restrictive.Even within the green grass category, pro shops vary widely. "Some are big, open fancy shops with a bent on fashion," notes Hansen. "Other, smaller pro shops are basically a room downstairs that was allocated for ball sales." There, the pro may also book his lessons and repair clubs.Indeed, manufacturers often say that "selling is secondary" at green grass accounts. Because the shop is a service to members, the environment must meet members' aesthetic expectations.Nevertheless, golf displays are typically created with pro shops in mind, even though the numbers indicate the bulk of sales are done off-course.At Taylor Made, "We don't differentiate displays between one type of store versus another," Havens says. "The main reason is we find the majority of green grass accounts prefer not to have manufacturers' displays in their stores at all and if they do accept them, they're very selective." Still manufacturers reason: If it works in a pro shop, it'll work everywhere.Of course, a few brands remain primarily pro shop brands. Karsten's Ping is one, and as such, says Bostwick, "our displays are designed first and foremost to fit into their shops." And yet, he admits, "store accounts are the ones that utilize displays most in the industry. And a lot of our displays will end up in the store accounts."Signs Fill a NeedOn-course and off, whether highlighting the name or explaining the technology, signage is a must-have in the golf industry. Sometimes, it's everything. "If they won't give us any display space, our next tool is signage," says Wilson's Addison. "We give signs away like popcorn."Signs run the gamut from perforated metal to silk banners. Illuminated signs, such as a Callaway fiber optic sign used last year, are also starting to pop up.Table tents and shelf talkers perform a similar function. Maxfli has armed sales reps with bulk boxes of the temporary pieces "to put anywhere they can get them," says Promotional Industries' Hansen, whose company is a regular supplier to the ball maker. "That way our balls have at least some kind of signage," he adds.Words of WisdomSuccessful golf displays share common elements: they are space efficient, sturdy, classy and flexible. And if it stores backstock, that's another plus."You want something that's going to be fairly permanent," notes Karsten's Bostwick. "If you give [golf retailers] something that's disposable, that's exactly what they're going to do with it." Permanent materials also have a better chance of fitting into the upscale decor of most golf shops.But if it is permanent, it had better be flexible. "The industry, particularly at the green grass, hangs on pretty strongly to the traditions and heritage of the game, and tends to be a little slower to adopt more innovative merchandising ideas, "notes Taylor Made's Havens."Our old displays had been in the field for an awfully long time, in some cases 10 years," says Havens. Those displays were impossible to retrofit affordably. "We designed the new displays with the intent of being able to change the story for a long time to come."While permanent materials dominate, promotional materials aren't verboten. Shoemaker Etonic proved this spring that well-done, promotional pieces can work even in the ritzy environment of a club shop. A poster alerted shoppers to free-glove-with-shoe-purchase special. It worked because it was "classy" and understated, explains George Spowart, Etonic account supervisor at Greenberg Seronick and Partners Inc., a Boston marketing agency. "I think it demonstrates how a piece must catch a consumer's attention, be usable for a variety of retailers and remain consistent with the 'golf' environment," he says.In addition to attracting and educating the consumer, golf P-O-P has one additional requirement: that of inspiring confidence. Even for footwear, the message is one of "game improvement" -- that elusive promise that the product will add distance or power to your game."We find that a lot of golfers will make a purchase of equipment just based on how confident they feel that [the product] is going to change their game," says Titleist's Aznavorian. The number of professionals playing a particular club also influences purchases. "Those two factors need to be addressed in all P-O-P," he says.That's why photos of famous faces and courses are so common to golf displays. "All golfers," claims Ron Bowers, account manager at Grafton, Wis.-based Frank Mayer & Associates Inc. "fall in love with any shot of a great golf course."

Addressing the Ball: Golf P-O-P Rolls Toward the Pin

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