Poor Callaway Golf, their sales are down and they are struggling to compete in the driver market. In the June 18th Wall Street Journal there was an article about Callaway, their dominance of the driver market in the 90's, their screw up in the late 90's and their current struggle to compete with Taylor Made (my driver of choice) and the onslaught of new Japanese manufacturers. So you know, the driver is golf's highest margin product.
Let me sum it up. In '91 Callaway introduced the Big Bertha, obviously it was a huge success. In '98 they screwed up when they developed the ERC II which the USGA banned. Over the last few years the company has really not done much as far as innovative technology. They only have one driver with a head over 400cc's. Their logic was if you have the most expensive driver on the market golfers will buy it. Well I got news for you, this isn't the 90's, we all have oversized drivers, we are much more savvy shoppers now and your arrogance of charging us top dollar is over & you're feeling it.
Here's my advice to all of you that play Callaway: Wait until the end of the summer to buy the new Great Big Bertha II driver, prices will be coming down. Expect an onslaught of new advertising from Callaway showing them as an innovative company with competitive pricing. I would also expect Callaway to be getting off their asses and introducing a lot more new products over the years if they want to stay in business. What were they thinking when they bought Top-Flite anyway?
This is another case of a company losing site of what is important, the consumer. They liked sticking it to us with the highest priced drivers on the market and it worked for a while. Meanwhile, their executive team kicked back, played golf and laughed at how stupid we were for paying so much. Their greed benefits us now, prices are coming down, there's more competition and the technology is letting us hit an occasional 300 yard drive. I'm not saying Callaway has bad products, I'm saying as a company they screwed up and pretty soon all golfers will be able to afford any driver they want.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
While I agree with you over the idiocy and arrogance of Callaway it is also true that Taylor Made and their bid for supremacy in the driver market have killed the driver as the biggest margin product in golf, especially for small shops.
I don't know about the States but in Europe TM have given huge discounts to bulk buyers with the result that the 400 odd euro selling price in the megastores is basically the same as the cost price for a small shop.
Sure, free market at work, but we will buy any driver we want only because there is no margin left in golf.
I wonder what the margin was for the TM R360 XD Ti driver I just bought on pgatour.com? Cost me a paltry $149 (shipping free!)...
Gee, I bought my entire set of clubs for under $200 new and after 2 years replaced the graphite shafted oversize headed driver with a steel shafted not-oversized driver that was $30 new. I've gone from the upper 90s to the mid-lower 90s over a two year period. Methinks lessons would do more for me than megabuck clubs at this point.
Hi NoThreePutts, you have a nice blog. Glad to see it. Today I was out blog surfing looking for detailed info on golf accessory when I found your page. Your Callaway Golf screwed up! is not an exact match but it did catch my interest. I am going to add you to my favorite list of blogs for future reading and reference. Should you ever need
information on golf accessory then drop by the site above and check it out.
Post a Comment