One Saturday morning last September, Aggie Cutrone, an IT specialist from Bellmore, N.Y., drove with high hopes to the Unique Golf Shop in nearby Babylon. A new golfer with a few lessons under her belt, Cutrone had decided to buy her first set of clubs. But after entering the store, she waited half an hour before being helped. "The sales guy brought me to the women's-club section and said, 'Take your pick; any of these would be fine for beginners,'"Cutrone recalls. "When I asked what clubs he'd recommend, he said, 'Don't spend a lot of money, because you don't look like you're going to stick with it.'" Flabbergasted, she turned around and left the shop.
We've all been there, standing in the middle of a golf store with dozens of salesclerks running by without giving us so much as a second glance. Are we invisible? Is it something we said? Would anyone even notice if we walked out the door and never came back?
There are 6.4 million women golfers in the U.S., yet the level of service we receive when we go to buy new clubs is sometimes stuck in retail's dark ages. This despite the fact that women represent the fastest--growing segment of golfers in the country and hold significant purchasing power: The average GFW reader anticipates spending $1,243 on her next set of clubs. (The good news is we have more choice than ever; the last five years have seen an explosion in women's equipment, and most manufacturers now offer excellent selections in every club category.)
The auto, financial services and home--improvement industries, once legendarily dismissive of female consumers, eventually discovered that we are family decision-makers who spend significant amounts of money; and today, they sell more product to women than ever before. So what's taking golf retail so long?
To answer that question, GFW decided to go undercover. We enlisted members of the Executive Women's Golf Association (EWGA) to be our covert shoppers. We asked the women to visit one or more golf retail stores in their area (they visited 56 stores altogether) and inquire about buying new clubs, then report to us on their experiences. The shoppers were instructed to take notes on several things, including how long it took them to get service, what questions the salesperson asked and whether or not they were offered the opportunity to test clubs or go through a fitting.
The results were illuminating. Salespeople approached our shoppers without prompting only half of the time, and in many cases, offered no help at all. "I am stunned,"says Sunny Mills of Sacramento, who spent 24 minutes trying to get the attention of staffers at Haggin Oaks Super Shop, a famously women-friendly golf store in her hometown. "I'm 5-foot-10, blond and was wearing an expensive outfit—in other words, I was visible. But the salesmen just kept talking to each other and greeting other customers at the door. "
What could possibly drive a salesperson to ignore a potential sale? In some cases, as with Mills, shoppers fall through the cracks even in the best of circumstances. "It's disheartening to hear the experience this woman had,"says Haggin Oaks PGA head golf professional Mike Woods. "Twenty-five of our 60 employees are women; we host equipment clinics for the EWGA, and we work really hard to train our team to make sure that we develop relationships with all customers who come through the door: men, women, kids—everybody. It's something that we focus on every single day. Obviously, that system broke down here."
In other cases, as one male salesperson from the New York area (who requested anonymity) explains, it's a matter of commissions. "I spend about 80 percent less time on a woman than I do on a man,"he admits, "because I know she's just not going to buy anything. If I spend time with her and get no sale, then another guy is going to get the sale with the new Callaway X-Forged irons and the FT-5 driver from the next man that comes in. So I'd rather ignore the woman and grab a male customer."
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