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Golf Lesson #6: Why Buy Golf Clubs on the Internet?

Key Reasons to Buy Your Golf Clubs on the Internet

1. Factory direct shopping at factory direct pricing
2. Research and comparative shopping
3. Selection and customization
4. Value and Quality
5. Why name brand clubs are so much more expensive
6. Guaranteed customer satisfaction

Factory Direct Shopping at Factory Direct Pricing

Pinemeadowgolf.com is the electronic commerce site for Pinemeadow Golf Products, Inc. located in beautiful Portland, Oregon. We have been in the golf club building business since 1985. We make and sell clubs all over the world and can be seen in many of your local sporting goods stores, mass merchandisers, warehouse clubs and golf shops. We make hundreds of thousands of golf clubs every year and consistently continue to be one of the top fifty golf club makers in the United States.

Beginning in the mid-1980's, Pinemeadow was one of the very first companies to focus on building "legal clones" or "knock-offs." Just like the computer, automobile, and fashion industries, golf is an industry of product leaders and product followers. Pinemeadow is a "smart follower." We look at what is hot and analyze whether it really works as advertised and then tend to follow the concept at a much less expensive but no less effective result.

In past years, we explored factory outlets in the factory outlet malls, but we realize that is not our business focus. We are a manufacturer and we are good at it. Our strong suit is not running a retail establishment.

But the internet is different for us. It is compatible with our manufacturing operations. We use lots of computers, have strong networks and customer service staffing. And it fits our philosophy of value, cutting out the middleman and providing the best value to the consumer. Factory direct selling makes sense on the Internet. We believe in future years, many more businesses will develop Internet based, Factory direct customer service and selling.

Research and Comparative Shopping

The Internet is more valuable to those who value research and comparative shopping. While there aren't any good comparative pricing sites for golf club clones, there is plenty of access to information. And, we believe information is a good thing that will bring you back to our company.

We know that we stack up very well to the competition. Our prices are great and we provide a superb qualitative value to you — the consumer. We believe we are the only golf club company in the world that has been manufacturing golf clubs on a large scale in the brick and mortar world and has successfully integrated a large successful Internet retail golf club business. In the hey-day of the dot-com days, several companies raised tons of cash to do what we do, but they failed. They failed because they didn't know anything about manufacturing golf clubs. We do. And none of the name brand manufacturers sell factory direct — they all sell their wares through middlemen. And that costs you more money.

Selection and Customization

This is the one area where the Internet cannot be beat. Our mass merchandiser customers may buy 4 or 5 different models in 2 lengths and flexes and that is all their showroom can handle. On pinemeadowgolf.com, we provide more than 19,000 different combinations of clubs, lengths, flexes resulting in a custom fit product for you. This diversity of selection and customization is unheard of in a retail storefront at anywhere near the price and value that we can provide via pinemeadowgolf.com.

Value and Quality

Pinemeadow Golf has trained professionals on staff with decades of experience to custom assemble clubs just for you. Why trust your neighbor or some garage operation on the web to fit you for golf clubs when you can have a trained professional group that does it as their sole business who will give you the right fit for the same money? For more information on just who we are at pinemeadowgolf.com please see About Us.

The important point is we buy our heads, shafts, and grips from the same small community of golf manufacturing foundries and suppliers as our higher priced competitors. We provide performance but offer you a BETTER VALUE. To prove it, see what our other customers say about us.

Why Are Brand Name Clubs So Much More Expensive?

It is simple, really: advertising, overhead, and middlemen. The amount actually spent for research and development by the golf club industry is not nearly as large as the money spent for advertising. The real dollars go toward convincing you to buy the name brand club and paying the middleman to get them into your hands.

What About the Cost of Name Brand Advertising?

Independent surveys show that up to 70% of the retail price of a name brand golf club goes to support the advertising and brand name development. These advertising and brand development costs are legitimate — they provide advertising revenue to the major golf magazines, they provide many millions of dollars of licensing revenue to PGA Tour professionals, they provide even more millions of dollars to the major television networks. The money spent in advertising builds status and peer pressure to buy a name brand. Every advertising dollar spent by the name brand club is targeted to make you feel better (or justified) in paying more money for the brand. Some people raise their self-esteem by buying a name brand club for more money. Our customers on the other hand raise their self-esteem by getting the best performance for the best value and knowing their name brand buying friends got a worse deal.

Let Us Tell You About Overhead

The big name brand companies are usually publicly traded, higher overhead environments. They have lots of overhead expenses we don't have. They pay people to pay people to let their own people know who their people are — you get the idea. Most of Pinemeadow's top management team used to live in that world. Then we figured out we could make just as much money, have more fun, and pass the difference in costs on to you, the consumer, by building golf clubs in a simple, less costly world. And we do pass the savings on to you (well, most of it).

What About the Middleman?

Demo clubs, fancy retail storefronts, and sales personnel cost money. Most retailers mark up their products 60% to 100% from their wholesale purchase price. Our factory outlet golf web site is truly factory direct. Sending you clubs direct from the factory eliminates that cost and saves you money.

Guaranteed Customer Satisfaction

Pinemeadow Golf guarantees 100% satisfaction. For a standard order (meaning anything that shows up for sale in our drop down shopping menus) we will refund you the full purchase price for any product you return within 30 days of your receiving it. For special custom orders (where you order nonstandard shafts, special order grips, oddball lengths — essentially where you personalize the golf club so that we can't even sell it as used to your crazy uncle) we will credit you the full price towards a future purchase. That's simple and fair.

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