The golf retail industry was not immune to decreased profits in the early days of the pandemic, but in July U.S. golf equipment sales hit an all-time high. On the most recent episode of “SBJ Unpacks: The Road Ahead,” our Andrew Levin and Golf Datatech partner John Krzynowek discuss trends in the golf retail industry and where it will go from here.
On how U.S. golf equipment sales reached an all-time greatest single month sales total:
Krzynowek: You had that early period where demand really dried up. Manufactures couldn’t ship anything because most of the manufactures are located in states where they had everything shut down . … Then as we got into April, people started to realize they could play golf because golf is actually a pretty safe sport to play. You’re outside. You’re socially distant. You might be two fairways away from me after we hit our drives. You’re not close to each other, so demand started to grow.
On how much golf has been played during the pandemic:
Krzynowek: It wasn’t as big a problem as it could have been, but we saw significant declines in March and April. Then, all of the sudden rounds played started to explode as well. We went from being down 20%, to now rounds played are ahead of where we were a year ago. It’s primarily due to golf is a sport that everybody can play, can be outside. We’re seeing a huge influx of people who have never played before, and people who have played but haven’t played a lot.
On consumers’ willingness to visit brick and mortar golf stores and demo days:
Krzynowek: We just finished our 26th week of doing weekly studies with consumers. We have at least 500 respondents each week, and it started initially as just trying to get their opinions on life in general. What’s their outlook on the economy, their health, and it evolved from there to a lot of questions about purchasing and purchase intent. One of the things we found was that early on there was a lot of concern about, ‘I don’t want to go to a demo day. I don’t want to go get custom fit. I don’t want to go inside.’ That’s all changed. It was about week 10 or 12 into that when we saw a flip, and people suddenly are like, ‘Yeah, I’m OK with going to a demo day. I can’t wait to get custom fit.’ Through this tracking mechanism we have we’ve been able to really look at what consumers feel.
