The 18th hole
Making business in the golf industry look easy
I
n a little under ten months, STX, a Baltimore-based putter company has gone
from being a domestic, US-only brand to having distributors trading their product on all five continents. What did they do, send a million e-mails? Hand out free putters at the airport? None of the above. They have Wayne Farrell, a
guy who is a PGA coach/master distributor with an established group of downstream global sub-distributors. Farrell takes samples out to his network, and he takes an order book. He will see that the
distributors understand the product, choose and obtain stock best-suited to regional preference, train their account staff and help them increase margin. They trust Farrell and he knows what they like. They have one other
person, Dominic O’Byrne who is a writer, journalist and Tour photographer with an address book of golf journalists and editor/publishers from Santiago to Auckland. O’Byrne sources/verifies/tailors/ directs news along a two-way communications channel between the manufacturer and the markets, and tells influential people Farrell is coming. He knows the difference between PR and journalism
and journalists can use that. Neither Farrell nor O’Byrne
are even based in the USA: one is in South Africa and one is in West Yorkshire. How does it work, or
why, even? Do you need comprehensive business models, far-reaching marketing analyses, contingency scenarios, regional corporate offices and large Tour budgets? “We’re not really that
sophisticated,” says O’Bryne. “It’s the shortest ‘Global Golf Distribution for Dummies’ book ever written. One of us travels the world doing heroic stuff and coaching others in golf heroism. And the other one writes about it. It makes distributors money. They seem to like that.” “This is like the lift club we
operate at our kids’ school,” adds Farrell. “We sometimes have seats free and as we all need to get to the same place it makes sense to take people with us. As more people get into it, it frees up the highway and allows us to travel faster and arrive earlier.” Can it be that simple? Well,
the duo seems to have done it before; not once but twice. And they took both brands global. ‘Baltimore Putters Inc’ makes it a hat-trick. Can it be that simple? No,
the pair insist. But actually it is.
AND FINALLY...
S
taffordshire golf fan, Lee Beardmore is reported to
be thoroughly tee-d off after bookmaker, Coral refused to pay out £1,250 for his winning a £1 bet on Bubba Watson winning the US Masters, according to the website, This is Staffordshire. Coral is refusing to pay
out Beardmore’s winnings because an employee at its Cheadle branch confused Bubba Watson’s odds of 40-1 with 1000-1 figure for golfing legend, Tom Watson. Although Beardmore has
been offered a goodwill amount of £66, he is reported to be planning to appeal to the Independent Betting Adjudication Service which rules on gambling disputes. “I put good money on a
bet which I thought was legitimate and now it turns out it’s not worth the paper it’s written on,” he told This is Staffordshire. “I was gutted and angry
because I don’t know why I should be punished for someone else’s mistake.”
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Competition: Win a Nikon COOLSHOT T
he new Nikon COOLSHOT is the successor to the
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Pro Shop Europe April 2012
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