Selling: Darts
Are Retailers on Target?
Are retailers doing enough to exploit the increasing popularity of darts? Alex Fordham put this question to Target Darts.
W
ith ticket sales for the PDC Championship Final in January already having flown off the shelf, and with celebrities from Prince Harry to Stephen Fry proclaiming their love for a game of ‘arrows’, this once unfashionable sport has suddenly hit bullseye with the middle classes.
Retailers should see the benefit with new fans purchasing a set of darts and dreaming of becoming the next Phil ‘the Power’ Taylor. However, are retailers doing enough to cash in? Target Darts believe that some retailers are missing out on this opportunity.
“Many retailers have become complacent when it comes to selling darts products” says Target Darts Managing Director Gary Plummer. “The darts market has remained stagnant over the past 30 years, selling the same old products year in, year out.”
Target Darts have sought to change this and are using their 40 years of experience within the darts industry to create new products focusing on quality production where every dart is manufactured and individually tested. This emphasis on quality production has seen Target Darts become one of the market leaders in Japan. Although the size of the market is very small, it is growing rapidly and the Japanese insistence on quality production has been taken on board and used for all products that Target now manufacture. “Retailers in Japan have been known to send products back because of a small hair on the item” says Plummer. “The Japanese market is our benchmark for quality control which we use on everything we manufacture.”
Taking the Japanese market as their benchmark, quality and precision is at the heart of the Target enterprise. Take the Silica range for example. Independent testers have verified the range to 3600 Vickers Hardness Value (HV). Each dart has been individually coated with silicon nitride, enhancing the synergy between finger and barrel and thus the authority of a players grip. It is these fine intricacies that have now become the trademark of Target Darts.
Each product comes with a lifetime barrel guarantee and manufacturing time for each
26
www.sgb-sports.com
dart is two and a half minutes compared to the traditional time of around forty-five seconds. With this in mind, some of the Target range has a higher retail price than traditionally associated with darts products.
However, International Sales Manager Matt Gilewicz believes there is a retail market for high end darts products that has not previously been exploited.
“In cricket, golf and many other sports there is a market for high-end quality equipment. Amateur cricketers and golfers pay for high value products, so why can’t darts exploit the increase in the popularity of the game and offer consumers high quality, precision products?” It remains to be seen whether darts will continue to flourish or whether this increase in popularity is merely a whim. However, darts undoubtedly is thriving at present and so high end products could prove to be popular with customers wanting the best as they try to be the best.
If retailers ignore the boom in darts, in the immortal words of Jim Bowen, it really could be the case of ‘here’s what you could have won!’
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38