Tom Davies is Retail Fit
Tom Davies is Head PGA Professional at Langland Bay and Maestag Golf clubs in South Wales. He is founder of Tour Fit Golf, a custom fitting business which takes Tom around the world, working with some of the world’s top players at major events. He also presents a popular monthly podcast, “Ask a Club Fitter”. As Tom approaches his third year at Langland Bay, we catch up with him to discuss strategies for getting a retail business off the ground and the tools that help him to achieve his success.
A unique story
“I qualified in 2007 and have worked at four different clubs as the PGA Professional and I've also worked on the European Tour. I’ve always been passionate about custom fitting and believe the best way to run my fitting business is in a golf club. I work a lot with the top players but my day to day is very much on the front line of a club, like everyone else.
The Australian tour player, Lucas Herbert, lives in Orlando and I've known him through our work with TaylorMade. His contract with them has come to an end so he has more freedom now regarding which brands to use. I've been working with Lucas to test some options so he'll start his season knowing what is working for him. The work I do with the professionals is essentially the same as I do with my members. The process is a bit different, but it's similar.
When I first started working on tour, I felt like a fish out of water but I’m always happy to have a go at things and am not afraid to fail.
Right now, I’m working on plans for an online training platform to help PGA Pro’s to be better custom fitters. I also want to tie in the business element as well, which will take a bit more time to build up. Xpos will be a big part of that.
Year one at Llangland Bay
“The first year was tough, largely because I took over half way through the year. On top of that, I didn’t have any sales information from the previous shop owner. He had used an old Epos so I couldn’t rely on the data. The suppliers were able to tell me what the pro shop had bought, but not what had sold through. As a result, I ordered badly that first year. I underestimated and made mistakes.
Year two learnings
“My members didn’t buy a lot during year one, so I wasn’t able to learn much about their preferences or requirements. However, at the start of year two, I brought Xpos on board and now have more accurate data to pull out.
Without Xpos over the last year, I wouldn’t have been able to grow the business. Despite the rough start, the shop turnover exceeded the first year and I feel we are now on track.
The reports are a game changer for me. I am looking forward to having a full year’s worth of sales data to analyse.
Building loyalty
Last year I set up a member's loyalty scheme but, when I listened to Mark and Phil from Xpos speak at the TGI Conference this year, I started thinking about whether we were doing the right thing.
Mark spoke about how important it was to collect customer data in order to understand them more, and use the knowledge to choose an incentive scheme that was right for the our customers. I realised I was rewarding already-loyal customers with a loyalty programme, which was a waste. In fact, what we should be doing is incentivising lower-value customers to spend more across the shop.
As a result, we are going to move to a new discounting system. Our visitor numbers increase during the season so with any purchase of £40 or more, we'll set up an account for the customer. The beauty of it is that we'll be able to change it month by month. It will help us sell through slower moving items and also gives us content for the newsletter.
Cloud benefits and business confidence
“The Xpos software was built purely for golf so we save a lot of time with stock creation, stocktaking and analysis. With my previous Epos, we had to manually create our own categories and adjust the reports to work for our industry.
I work from home a lot and need an online system where I can work away from the shop. As a business owner I have a lot of confidence in Xpos. The team are industry experts and help us to look at the bigger picture.
I am looking forward to the new Brandtrac service, which will be a game changer. There isn’t anything else like it out there and sharing stock information with suppliers helps the industry as a whole.
The new Performance Dashboard is a great new addition. I’m a self-confessed numbers person and it gives me a powerful snapshot of my business in real time. It’s good for the team to be able to see the dashboard, too. It helps them to be more profit-focussed, and highlights the areas of business that need more attention in a visual way that everyone can understand.”
Switch to Xpos this Spring and enjoy the benefits of the cloud software this season. Email sales@xpos.co.uk. For more information about Brandtrac, visit www.xpos.co.uk/brandtrac/