Now, it’s no secret that the big names in the driver market are Callaway, Ping, Taylormade and Titleist, because these four are the majority of driver sales.
Does this mean other companies won’t make the drivers as good? No, not true. But when you have such a large market share and established brand identity, this makes it hard for others to break into.
This is a challenge for companies like Cobra, La Golf, Mizuno, Srixon, Wilson and others. How did they break into the driver space like lab golf does in the putter market?
In this week’s golf episode, Johnny Wunder enters the driver market and why it’s hard to see the vandals in the space.
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“You’re not violating the marketing machine,” Wunder explained. “You’re violating their R&D budget and history and everything they can do. So when you compete with Callaway, Taylormade, Ping, Titleist, and these driver categories are basically “Big 4 big 4,” you’re entering a casino and you’re sitting at a table with someone with $50 million in chips and $5 million.”
Even if a smaller company does propose faster innovation than other drivers, larger companies simply turn to their R&D budgets and create their own spin on new technologies. A large R&D budget allows them to pivot and send out something quickly.
“That’s how you hold market share because you’ve done 50 years of research and development and billions of dollars in investment,” Wunder said. “That’s yours.”
Wunder said Lab Golf was able to capture a large part of the putter market because the product wasn’t focused on creating higher speeds. Laboratory putters may work well for many people, but there is no way to prove that putters are more than a given person, and unlike the driver, in which case everything is measured by speed.
Again, does this mean that any of the smaller companies listed above are not a great driver? Absolutely not! But that does explain everything they do when trying to compete for a larger share of the golf club market.
For more information on Wunder, including why Srixon Irons has been dominating the PGA tour recently, listen to the full episode of Golf Applect Applective here or watch it below.
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