The CEO of Callaway Golf, Ron Drapeau, has resigned. Does this really come as a surprise to anyone? I don't think so. Callaway's flagship product, the driver, has become inferior to any new driver Taylor Made has introduced over the last few years. And Callaway has made poor business acquisitions: Top-Flite & Hogan.
I wrote about Callaway and their poor business decisions back in June. At that time I recommended that fans of Callaway equipment wait until the end of the summer to purchase their products. With a new CEO you bet Callaway is going to have aggressive pricing really soon. The new CEO is going to need to boost sales in order to make an impact and to get the board of directors and shareholders to believe in him and Callaway again.
And to the people in the golf forums that bashed me for saying Top-Flite & Hogan were bad acquisitions, I say this. Top-Flite can have all of the technologies and patents in the world, fact is their balls still suck. And, yes, Hogan is a great name, but the fact is the name Hogan does not sell golf equipment.
As far as making business decisions goes Ron Drapeau made 2 bad acquisitions, he forgot about the importance of producing new technology that conforms to USGA specs and most of all he forgot about us the consumers. Good luck to the new CEO, Callaway should be a fairly easy company to turnaround. My guess is by next year at this time Callaway will have a great new driver, the Top-Flite inventory will be dumped and Hogan will be sold.
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