If we can learn lessons from a blighted business sector we ought to. Alongside golf, one of my greatest passions is playing guitar. Sounds glam, perhaps, but it isn’t. I play for my own amusement really… a few times a month at Mass and at the odd party when the intake of drink emboldens me far beyond what a drunken state can be expected to deliver.
But, one of my longest-standing buddies – the fabulous Rik – has spent the last 25 years or so since we left school, selling guitars. He recently was able to boast having the largest independent guitar shop in the country. But his business is shagged!!! Fellow golf industry stalwarts, watch for the parallels…
Gilt-edged guitar brands (familiar to most of us who love popular music) started being acquired by conglomerates. Buy a guitar now – Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, Martin, Rickenbacker, Ibanez, Ovation, Peavey, Hohner – and a great many of these brands now come from a small handful of master owner/distributors (via acquisitions). Production values, quality control and manufacturing pedigrees gradually were subsumed by profit margins and economies of scale. Most importantly, perhaps, retailers had less and less wriggle room due to the fact that an increasingly monopolistic supplier base began forcing increasingly arduous terms on shop-owners. Most of these shops and small businesses are now out of business.
You can buy a piece-of-shit Strat copy guitar-boxamp-strap-plectrums bundle from Argos or Wal-Mart for less than 50 quid but it’s an altogether joyless exchange. Crap components and mass, underpaid assembly sweatshops don’t nurture craftsmanship, do they? Take it back to the store you bought it and nobody is going to check the neck, adjust the action and season the fretboard.
Now… golf has its fair share of crackpot inventors and self-proclaimed paradigm shift-entrepreneurs, but we mustn’t dismiss them out-of-hand, for in them lies the enduring spirit that imbues not just the spirit of the original game, but its hope for the future. Out of every 10 (…okay, perhaps 100) ideas, along comes a gem. Does the same happen in football… or tennis… or cricket? I think not.
The eternal pursuit we golfers share for betterment naturally ‘seeds’ innovative ideas for enhancing performance and enjoyment of the game. The MGMs need to wat
Went down to the Crossroads and f@#ck me what a fright!
ch their backs… and mind the obligation they too owe the game.
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