Golf Retail Revolution

Our Sales Manager, Mark Hopkins, knows first-hand the issues faced by pros in their shops. In partnership with Foremost Golf, Mark has been touring the length and breadth of the UK, speaking to pros and sharing his knowledge and experiences.

There is a feeling that the tide is turning. The golf industry may have a reputation of a more traditional retailer, but with on-line and warehouse competitors, the industry is taking influence from some of the mid-high end retailers outside of golf and re-positioning itself as a contemporary retailer.

Mark understands the challenges in the sector but also sees opportunity to be grabbed.

“Golf Clubs will generally have a pool of upwards of 200 or more people that will regularly visit the Pro Shop, the High-Street would kill for that. We have to take full advantage of the captive market that we have”

For Mark, he feels that in 2017 the message of reducing stock is really hitting home.

“Traditionally golf pro shops were a “stack it high” business, resulting in heavily discounted stock at the end of the season, having a huge negative impact on profit margins.”

Taking their lead from the high street and online retailers, pro shops are now adopting a just-in-time model of business. The impact of this model is two-fold. Firstly pros are not left with huge amounts of stock to discount at the end of the season. Secondly, by working in a more efficient way, the pro’s are looking at what is selling in their shops and ordering the correct quantities therefore freeing up cash that would previously have been sitting in wasted stock.

Testimonies of pro’s working in this way are filtering out to the industry. As Mark says,

“Its really using the model of how we buy electric trollies – we sell one, we buy one.”

Using Crossover Technologies’ XPOS system makes working in this way even easier. Mark has seen this more efficient method start to make some big differences to the average Golf Pro “We have had many really positive comments from guys at the seminars who have taken this advice on board and made big increases in the amount of money they make. It’s such a simple thing, just using XPOS to view what is and isn’t selling. You then start to make decisions based on fact and not guess work.”

If you would like to see how Crossover’s XPOS system can help your pro shop become more profitable call 01454 418 395.