Nike eyes a bigger chunk of the market

Clothing

Saturday afternoon, Royal Birkdale. Team Nike are feeling the pressure. Tiger Woods, with five visible swoosh emblems (two on his sweater, one on the neck of his polo neck and another two on the baseball cap), is feeling the pressure. Nick Price, another swoosh man, just can't wait to reach the clubhouse, his championship effectively finished.

An hour later, in the Golf Show - "Tented Village" - around 500 yards from the white clock-tower clubhouse, one of the busiest stands is that belonging to Nike Golf. Two television monitors blast out images of the Tiger, not conquering Birkdale, but going back to Augusta 1997 and also running spot ads with the man himself expounding the virtues of the gear which is keeping the tills a few yards away ringing merrily.

Out on the course throughout the week, the number of caps with the omnipresent swoosh was quite remarkable, especially among youngsters. So, the marketing blitz is obviously working.

Yet, back in the United States, there has been much restructuring in the company. Despite a six-fold increase in profits from golfing apparel in three years, a recent golf industry survey over there showed that Nike accounts for just one per cent of golf clothing retail in golf shop outlets with Ashworth (25 per cent), Cutter and Buck (24 per cent), Slazenger (11 per cent) and Polo (11 per cent) leaving them with many shots to make up.

Admittedly, the survey was conducted in what they call "green grass" shops - equivalent to the club professional shops - rather than the major retail outlets, but the results were still surprising.

Nike's golf image has been built around Tiger Woods. Once upon a time, Nike executives scoffed at any sport that didn't involve sweating, dunking or running. However, under the Woods phenomenon, Nike Golf - which was actually formed prior to Woods's arrival on the scene - has seen its sales in the United States rocket from $35 million to over $200 million in three years.

It seems that such growth was not enough, despite the fact that it was much greater than other divisions in the company which laid off some 2,000 employees last March.

The three executives who were involved with Nike Golf from the start (Bob Retief, the general manager; Rod Tallman, the director of marketing, and Joe Moses, the marketing manager) have all recently left their posts and the company has, according to the American publication Golfweek, placed the responsibility for Nike Golf's upward graph in the hands of Andy Mooney, who will now serve as global brand manager and oversee their advertising and marketing strategies.

Retief, who left the company in June, said his parting was "amicable," but added: "When I came here 35 months ago, I was given one task. Phil Knight (Nike CEO) said Nike Golf is the only subcontractor that has not been a contributor to the company's brand image. I was told to fix that . . . we met all the goals that were established. Nike Golf has been established as an authentic athletic brand."

On the evidence of spectators wearing their clothing at Royal Birkdale, such would indeed seem to be the case. However, the interesting thing is that the new management envisages moving into other areas of golf.

They've already received approval from the USGA (United States Golf Association) for four different balls and plan to introduce them next spring, and they also plan to move increasingly into other areas of equipment: most notably, gloves and bags.

"Golf's not hard for Tiger Woods", the Nike commercials constantly reminded us in the sales pitch at Birkdale. It would appear that their other motto, of just doing it, also applies in their quest to make Nike Golf a real winner.