Changing How The Game Is Played

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So far the Swing Ray has been primarily a research and promotional tool. Last spring, for example, a Worth van carried the prototype, a cumbersome thing, through eight major league training camps, generating newspaper stories and an appearance on NBC-TV's "Today" show (see box, page 98). This spring, however, the company will take a simplified version on the road, to set up at sporting goods stores and softball tournaments each weekend.

"Grass-roots promotion is the key to our success," insists sales manager Doug Bennett. "A retailer doesn't want to have to spend the time convincing people a certain bat or ball is best. He'll only handle a line if the customers ask for it."

"There are guys that play softball tournaments every weekend from the first of April to the end of August," marketing manager Savage says. "And guys that spend every weekend playing softball don't read a lot. They don't have the time. You can't get through to them with printed material, long detailed explanations of what makes Worth better. You've got to go talk to them one on one."

To make sure its salesmen can carry their end of the conversation, Worth insists that its promotion and sales staff be softball experts before they take to the road. Each salesman must spend time working in every step in the manufacturing process, right down to hand-stitching ball covers. "That way they know what's involved in making the product," Bennett says. "So they end up knowing more about balls and bats than any of their competitors."

"First of all you hit the parks and recreation departments," explains salesman Mike Cunningham. "They're the ones that buy the bulk of the softballs. You take a ball in and explain that it will save money because they can use that one ball over and over again.

"Once you sell them, you go to the sporting goods stores. Then you go talk to the players, to create the demand. You put a ball in their hands and let them beat it up. "Once you get them to hit the ball -- boom. You've got 'em."

It is the kind of salemanship that Chuck Parish excelled in, personal and substantial. And it works. "The leagues and college teams call us now," says Heald "They want to win and they know we can help."

Making baseballs, softballs, and bats is still a handicraft industry, much as it was in the days of George Lannom, although the company can now turn out 20,000 balls and 5,000 bats a day. Inside the aging ball factory, recently refronted in brick, countless cartons of fresh softballs share floor space with modern polyurethane molds. But there are no machines to replace long-time employees like Doris Phillips, an 18-year veteran still hand-packing some 600 dozen balls each day, or grayhaired Stella McEwin, one of Worth's 85 ball stitchers, who laboriously hand-sews the 88 cross-stitches in the hand-cut and hand-graded leather cover of Worth's patented softball. "I've been sewing balls for nearly 40 years," she says. "My mother used to sew, and my daughters still do -- it's kind of handed down from generation to generation."

Over the past three generations, Worth, too, has built on its past. Vertical integration has given the company exceptional flexibility to attack new markets. Eight years ago, for example, Worth test-marketed leather sports bags stitched at the company plant with leather from the tannery. Today most of the bags are made from vinyl and nylon, some with leather hand-grips. But Suzy Heald, general manager of the accessories division and Jess Heald's wife, reports that her division has nearly doubled sales annually for the past five years. More new products will be developed in the same way -- probably something that can be stitched, Heald hints, or perhaps wood and leather furniture -- then sold with Worth's traditional aggressive marketing.

Worth's growth plan remains conservative. "We've always spent our money circumspectly," Heald says. "We aren't high rollers; we want to make sure we have enough money to stay private." Growth planned for the future will be "a bootstrap operation" financed by cash flow.

Innovation, however, remains the key to the company's future. While ball division manager Charles Dale insists that his product is technically "about six years ahead of the nearest competitor," and while no one else yet markets bats with Swing Weight, Heald insists that Worth will make its way into the future through product innovation. R&D has been established as a corporate division in its own right, with a budget of roughly 0.5% of sales. "We've got some things on the drawing board that might well usher in another new era," Heald promises. "I don't want to let any secrets out, but we're looking closely at weight concentration -- the sweet spot that is the batter's target area."

After all, innovation has kept the company alive. "There used to be a tremendous market for low-price softballs and baseballs," Heald says. "But that market doesn't exist today.

"But when we went into the bat business we actually went into new markets as well. You can't make just low-grade bats like you can balls. When you cut a tree it yields 20% top-grade wood, and you've got to sell it. So if you're going to sell bats you've got to compete across the spectrum. And aluminum bats are all top grade. So by going into bats we thrust ourselves into top-grade sporting goods, where the company had never been before.

"We look back now at the low-end ball market and think, Wow. If we'd stayed there the company would have been in serious trouble."

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