How my Golf Academy works. A behind the scenes insight.

Let’s talk about how my business and many other Pro Shops, Golf Academy’s work in the UK. You maybe surprised what I tell you.

Everybody it’s Andrew answorth welcome to the video great to have you along sorry it’s been a while since I posted a video um what’s been happening been away on holiday few times um coming into my quietest time of year so uh yeah took advantage of going away on a few little

Trips um yeah and not really much to talk about in way of equipment this time of year all the new products it’s what’s today 21st of December maybe 22nd nearly Christmas uh lot of new product going to be launched in January so I’ll get back into some of the Club reviews when we

Start to get the new products coming through from sort of Cobra mauno uh New Ping g430 driver coming out to add to the range can’t tell you much more about it than that can’t mention any names till the Embargo finishes although it’s already out there on the internet but

I’ll get my uh wrist SLA by ping if I mention too much and there’s also possibly some new irons coming out from ping let’s leave it at that anyway purpose of today’s video is to tell you little different really little tell you little video to explain how businesses

Like mine run over here in the UK what’s it like how does a pro shop run maybe your Pro Shop or a club that you go and visit you know what’s the ins and outs of it people have messaged me and asked me over the years how does it all work

Well the two distinct different ways a business runs over here in the UK If you’re a PGA Pro um you’re either a self-employed and you run the whole business yourself and if you’re lucky you might get paid a retainer these days or what Americans may call a stipend I

Think is the correct terminology where you get paid a small fee and it is small sometimes to kind of run the shop then the rest is up to you you buy all the stock you employ the staff uh the club may help you out a little bit with electricity or utility

Bills but it’s all down to you so you kind of invest in stock and you try and sell the stock and you teach and you repair clubs and you do everything you can to make a living we’ll come back to that a little bit more in a minute

What’s becoming more common place I find these days although I don’t work at a golf club anymore I work for myself here um away from golf courses is for the actual Club to take the shop over I stop the shop and employ the pro and pay a salary and employ the

Assistant pros and any staff that are related to the business the pro may have an arrangement where he keeps his on lessons um every Club is going to be different the way that they negotiate it but I’m seeing a lot of PGA colleagues who I’ve known and I read about where

The club are coming in and saying right we’re not going to renew your contract as a self-employed contract we want to take the Pro Shop over because I think the golf clubs are a bit disillusioned here do you think that Pro Shops make absolute fortunes and there are a few

Shops out there that do very well certainly at some of the big clubs you know the sort of the Open Championship courses um you know let’s go I don’t know turnbury or Royal burkdale or Ry St George’s I no idea what the pros situations are there but shops like that

Will take a lot of money because they’re taking a lot of money in green fees they’re selling a lot of merchandise so they’re a different Kettler fish really but for your average pro shop there’s not as much money in there as the club thinks a lot of the time and they come

In and they say to the pro okay we’re taking the shop over you’re now employed and we’ll pay you x amount and after a couple years they think hold on a minute this business doesn’t make anywhere near as much money as we think and the a lot

Of times it goes back to the Pro or whatever so it’s quite an interesting scenario so that’s kind of generalizing how it works for PGA Pros in this country you’re either self-employed or you’re employed and I say every Club will have its own different way of how the shops

Run certainly when I was running my own Pro Shop um this was going by I left um my my previous Club ashridge Golf Club back in 2006 and things were pretty tough getting a a little bit tough on the retail side so um it’s at that time that

I approached the club to see if they would like to help me build an indoor golf Academy um so that I could do more lessons indoors I could do more custom fitting uh cuz that’s the way I thought it was going anyway uh to cut a long story short that the club wasn’t

Prepared at that time to sort of build those facilities so that’s fine that’s that’s not a problem so I thought well you know what I’ll go and do it myself I’ve been there for about 11 years fantastic Golf Club absolutely loved it lovely people lovely members one of the

Best courses in hartfordshire but it was time for me to move on so I set up this place my own Indoor Golf Academy here in trink and it’s just me I’ve never employed anybody and this is how my business then runs so I’m basically have two big income sources say big I have

Two income sources which are teaching and Club fitting and I’m I heavily specialize in club fitting and I work at the moment with ping Cobra and Mauna so people come in I give them a hopefully a really good custom fit experience and then I order the clubs from the manufacturer the clubs come

Back I had my profit margin on and out we go I obviously have a lot of overheads I have rent to pay here I have all sorts of other expenditures like electricity business rates all that sort of stuff so that has to come off the bottom line so that’s fine that’s just

The kind of way it works in business isn’t it but what’s quite interesting is how people are not aware of how it works when you’re a shop or you’re a retail outlet over here in the UK and I don’t know how it works in America or Canada or

Australia but for me to get good terms with a manufacturer and this could be ping Cobra mauno you have to commit to something called a pre-book order so the Reps the representatives the sale reps will come around sort of in the October the previous year and say okay this is

The product rate range for 2024 to get onto good terms I.E to get a discount off the the normal trade prices you have to commit to a certain amount of pre-booked stock now that can vary dependent on manufacturers um and you can negotiate that a little bit but you

Know you’re you’re somewhere in the ballpark between 5 and 10,000 worth of pre-book stock with each manufacturer to get onto decent terms and it’s one of those scenarios where sometimes the more you order the better the the terms become so that prebook kind of opens the door to accessing that manufactured

Stock at a decent price the only problem you run into with that scenario is that certain manufacturers um well ping for instance very good their product lines last for two years so the g430 driver which absolutely sails through is coming up for a year old and that product’s got a

Year to run but if you go to someone like Cobra or tailor made or Callaway you get that stock in I’ll get the new Cobra whatever it’s called driver I have seen it again I probably can’t mention the name but anyway the new driver will arrive in um

January and you’ve got a pretty short window of opportunity to sell that club so it comes in January um you’ve probably got six months of Prime Time selling when that driver comes in and let’s say for instance I get I’m massive turnover I maybe get 20 drivers I’ve got to kind of

Sell those drivers with a decent margin attached them to kind of make any profit sometimes we’ve certainly in the past we like Taylor Maid and Callaway I’ve been caught out because I’ve had big volumes of their latest blah blah driver and I haven’t sold enough of them

At the right price and then you’ve got to start discounting that drive D down to to get it off the shelf because when the new model comes out the the following January the price of those clubs just plummets absolutely falls through the roof and you’re lucky then

If you if you can get your money back on them so you’ve really got to get those clubs out the door quick to make a margin and the other thing certainly over here in the UK uh and I can’t be too specific with figures as I might get in trouble with certain manufacturers

But there isn’t as much money um in evolved for us profit wise on on let’s say a driver you know if I sell a driver at £480 you’d be surprised how little profit there is actually the bottom line when you’ve stripped out the vat and everything else that you’ve paid people

Think oh you’re making 250 profit on that driver trust me it’s nowhere near that that number maybe half that or less in some scenarios and that that’s the sort of profit that would making when we sell drivers so and you know same on irons and things like that the margin is

Nowhere near as high as as the uh the customer may think and that’s not me playing the violin and and moaning about it it’s just the way it is the profit margin in golf clubs is not that high so there we go that’s a little insight into

How the golf business my golf businesses run I truly love what I do obviously I do a lot of lessons um lessons are where you know I kind of make my my profit because all I’m paying for there obviously the the facilities come at a

Cost but um you know the only outlay for a golf lesson is is my time so you know I make more money you know more profit teaching than I do from selling clubs but they both work side by side somebody comes in for a golf lesson and says oh I

Might try that latest driver I may get a sale from there or or vice Versa somebody comes in from a custom fit and then thinks oh I might give them a few little free tips and and they might come back for a lesson so it kind of works

And you get all these different income streams I do Club repairs I do regrips I sell excess stock on online sites and things like that so these all different ways for to make a living so there we go I hope you didn’t find that too boring

I’m sure a lot of you have turned off by now because I ramble on don’t know but this this video is aimed more at people who are interested in the golf business and how it runs and maybe I’ve told you a few things today which uh you weren’t aware of so yeah

Post comments down below if uh tell me what how you know how your Pro Shop Works um your experiences you know maybe over in the States and Canada and Australia where a lot of my viewerships from interesting you know just to find out how other people do it uh comparison

To how we do it here in the UK it’s nearly Christmas so I’ll take this opportunity to wish you all a happy Christmas New Year PR Pro prosperity and good health in the new year and all that sort of stuff so thanks for watching the

Videos this year I know I’ve been a bit hit and miss with my content creation and uh I’ll try and do a bit better next year