It strikes every pro between the eyes at some point: Your golf shop needs a lift. Sure, you’re always working with vendors to acquire their latest point-of sale displays and discuss new ways to use slats. But those who go a step further to develop their own unique techniques to spiff up the place and catch customers’ eyes will learn that the extra effort can directly affect profit margins. Wood Works Last decade, Ellie Athan, Buyer/Merchandiser for the Golf Shop at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif, invested in custom wood fixtures, which allow her to adjust the display arms high, low or slanted to her specific needs. Each unit is on wheels, so she can move clothing sections around in minutes. But best of all, this choice kicked out the typical circular racks and chrome fixtures.
“People associate those with a discount store, and that certainly isn’t what we are,” she says. “All wood is just much more beautiful and richer looking.” She further plays up the look by hanging every piece of clothing on a wooden hanger bearing the club’s logo in gold.
Meanwhile, for Todd Robertson, Golf Pro at Sherwood Forest Country Club in Baton Rouge, La., even the L-shape of his 1,000 square-foot shop presents a challenge, with one wall of windows and another of slats. To jazz things up, Robertson artfully places furniture pieces throughout the shop as display props; for instance, a bookcase serves as a headwear rack.
Many pro shop owners now list nesting tables as their favorite “shelving” strategy. “They are the way to go, especially if you have a big shop so you can fill it up without looking like a big retail store that has everything hanging on the wall,” assures Brian Patrick, Head PGA Professional at Split Rock Country Club in Lake Harmony, Pa. “The more stuff you have, the more people are apt to look through it and enjoy shopping. Whereas if you just scatter a little here and there, they’re going to say you don’t have much.”
The tables do require that you emphasize to store personnel the importance of keeping the inventory stacked neatly. And neatness counts, notes Sherwood Forest’s Robertson—he is a stickler for seeing that every nesting table presents folded shirts with XL sizes on the bottom and small sizes on top. Hats, too, all face the same way. “Day in and day out, we make sure everything looks as it would if you walked into the Gap,” he notes.
Mission Hills’ Athan reserves the nesting tables to show off new merchandise. Then when something newer arrives, the remaining clothing is steamed and moved to hangers. This rotation ensures that everything looks crisp and fresh at all times. “A manufacturer’s fold looks much nicer than anything we could refold, because they still have the little clips and tissue paper,” she notes.
Putting Your Best Feet Forward
Shoes are a trickier challenge, golf shop owners agree. Manufacturers offer individual shoe displays, but Bob Green, Head Pro at Tedesco Country Club in Marblehead, Mass., shunned these until one national brand name introduced a version with wood veneer facing the customer.
“A lot of the manufacturers’ displays are designed for one reason only: to attract people to their brand,” Green explains. “It works well off course, where you have 20 manufacturers competing, but I don’t think that is appropriate in a pro shop and a private country club.”
Split Rock’s Patrick once went so far as to go out into the woods, cut down a tree, strip its branches and replace them with nails to support little shelves. He then placed shoes on the “branches,” creating a twist on the “shoetree” theme.
“We dressed it up with Christmas lights in December, and in the summer put some sand around it like it was on the beach. It was very original, and worked pretty well.”
Shoe sales among club shop customers tend to run in threeyear cycles, Patrick has noticed—everyone buys a pair or two, then ignores that section of the store for two years. Since he can never be sure where in the cycle any one customer might be, now he stocks every shoe possible and devotes one wall to shoes and hats. He then mimics a department store by adding a couchand- table sitting area that faces that wall, to invite folks who may be ready for new shoes to take a load off and try on a new pair.
Athan has actually found that her own feet are the best shoe display she’s stumbled across over the years. “If you wear something in the shop, nine times out of 10 the customer wants what you’re wearing, “ she assures. She also reserves the space next to the front counter to display new pairs, taking care to always sweep her space clean of last year’s models when the new styles arrive.
Keeping Clubs Close At Hand
Patrick, on the other hand, makes sure he parks golf clubs next to the counter. Theft prevention, of course, plays a role in this decision, but it’s not his driving motivation. “You don’t have to sell a shirt, but you need to talk about a golf club—what is good about it, how it will help their game,” he notes. “If clubs are around the corner, you won’t see when people pick through them.”
At Tedesco CC, Green relies on an oak stand to display clubs, as opposed to racks on the wall, and places demo clubs on the floor in golf bags. At Split Rock’s shop, however, Patrick says “I won’t put clubs in the bag; that’s my one rule, because a golf bag isn’t a display, it’s an item.” So instead, he disperses his golf bag inventory throughout the store as part of little tableaus— matching the colors to shirts, skirts, head wear and anything else where the colors blend.
To also help boost club sales, Patrick flips through golf magazines to find a well-known pro playing with a particular brand, then displays the article on flip charts placed around the store, as part of individual displays. And many times the hard goods become the focal point of his “What’s Hot Corner,” a small display that he changes monthly to pique members’ interest.
Seeing the Light
Green’s shop suffered for too long from eightfoot, double-tube florescent lighting installed into a ceiling that was only seven feet high. “It was horrible, and the colors looked so washed out, I wouldn’t have bought anything either, “ he says. Luckily, a remodel let him start over; today he uses 75-watt, warm white bulbs to bring out his merchandise’s true colors. “If the lighting is cold, people won’t take time to look,” he notes. “They may not know why they are leaving quickly, but they don’t feel comfortable in there.”
Athan hopes to upgrade to a more sophisticated track lighting system that would let her move the cans around and spotlight merchandise displays. Robertson has one piece of advice for track lighting: Make sure you have the wattage and can size you need. “Our system is good, but we need more of it,” he says. “Our window catches the sunrise, but we don’t sell too many golf shirts at 6:00 in the morning! When the sun sets on the other side of the building, it gets rather dark in the afternoon, and you can’t tell navy blue from black from dark purple.”
A Place Like Home Colors also score big with Green, who spends a lot of time cultivating a warm, relaxing setting for his shop, using light oak hangers, oak walls, and distressed furniture pieces. Like Athan, he has banned the shiny chrome appearance in favor of wicker baskets to
hold golf balls and trinkets. Old suitcases, antique chests and even old wooden boxes stacked with clothing items also help to create a homey appeal in just 950 square feet of shop selling space.
Robertson plays up Sherwood Forest’s 1950s heritage by using era pieces to subtly establish a sophisticated tone. And at Split Rock, Patrick loves to inset collector whiskey bottles featuring a golf motif, bookends holding a collection of golf instruction books throughout the years, and an old golf chair and table throughout his displays.
But no matter how inviting your aura, the real key, these retailers say, is to rotate your inventory, freshen up the props, and change out the display at least once a month. Patrick and Athan step this schedule up to twice a month to appease not boredom, but the bottom line. “You can have a shirt hang somewhere in your shop for a month, and the minute you pull it out front and put it on display—even if it’s not a great shirt—everybody says, ‘Did we just get this in?’” Patrick notes. “People are impulse buyers—they’re running late for tee time and don’t have time to shop. They see something, they grab it. You want to use markdowns as a last-ditch effort.”
Rotating stock is also a key to keeping sunlight from fading items straight into the sale bin, Robertson has discovered.
For Green, the payoff from the extra effort comes when members insist that guests stop at his shop. “Oh, our sales definitely went up,” he says of his attention to displays and atmosphere. “People don’t say, ‘You should see the fixtures’—but give them a nice, relaxed environment where they want to stay, and they’ll walk all around your shop.” And that only adds to the chances that they’ll stop at the sales counter before they go. C&RB
Summing It Up
• Over-reliance on standard circular racks and chrome fixtures can be counter-productive by creating a discount-store feel.
• Good lighting is critical to create warm, comfortable shopping atmospheres and help both soft and hard goods look their best.
• Inventory should be rotated, props freshened, and displays changed out at a minimum of once a month.
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