Changes at the retail level have been equally profound. Today just 20% to 25% of golf clubs and apparel are sold at so-called green-grass sites -- in pro shops connected to courses. Most of the rest are sold out on the highway between the Burger King and the Blockbuster by aggressive discount chains like Nevada Bob's. Mainstream retailers like Kmart and Target have also jumped into the fray, accounting for 20% of equipment and clothing sales.
Pro shops, meanwhile, have been swamped by vendors feeding the growth of the game. Maxwell notes that some 85 manufacturers now make golf shirts. Most golf pros could never afford to carry such breadth; at the same time they lack the inclination to sort through it to see which lines they should carry. The pros still make most of their money giving lessons and booking greens fees.
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A Gap in the Trees. It was in that maelstrom of industry change that Maxwell glimpsed an opening. Being a merchandiser at heart, with no course to tend and no tee times to schedule, he could stock an inventory broad enough to overwhelm the average pro shop. Indeed, he carries 20 lines of golf shirts and 40 varieties of shoes. He breaks his apparel lines down into "short stories" within the larger celebration. One of them celebrates four labels that bear the names of legendary golfers: Byron Nelson, Greg Norman, Bobby Jones, and Jack Nicklaus. Maxwell spices up that merchandising tale with visual references to two superhuman golfing events. The first is a collection of news accounts from 1945 that chronicle the 11 straight PGA events won by Nelson. The other is a half-size replica of the roadster that carried Bobby Jones through a New York City ticker-tape parade after he won golf's grand slam in 1930. (Since then, no other golfer has won more than two of the four grand-slam events in one season.)
Elsewhere in the store, Maxwell has devoted another celebration to Polo golfwear. Initially, Polo turned Maxwell down. "They told me they wanted to see me with a couple years under my belt," he recalls. "I told them they'd better come down here and see what they were missing." The president of Polo Golf came. Soon thereafter, Polo asked Maxwell for more space than he wanted to grant and offered him favorable terms on payment. Meanwhile, the presidents of such department stores as Dillard's and Robinson May have also been to visit and take notes. Scarcely a week goes by when someone with a camera, often someone in the trade, doesn't drop in to snap pictures of the layout. Maxwell also receives inquiries from investors wanting to franchise ICOG or otherwise invest in the company. One such visitor to ICOG recently was Ted Cohn, an investment banker from Livingston, N.J., who says he was struck by "the panache that went into this endeavor. I had never seen anything like it before." Cohn adds that if Maxwell "can hit his numbers," he would like to put him in touch with private investors.
While ICOG carries 4,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) -- roughly five times as broad an inventory as the typical pro shop -- it also provides a level of service that larger stores lack. Maxwell can afford to offer such service because he's not depending for his profits on sales of commodity items at discount prices. He is trading, rather, on the lore of the game. A third of the store is given over to art, gifts, and furniture, much of it one-of-a-kind and generating gross margins north of 60%. Some of it is found by special request. "You never see this stuff in other stores," marvels Erik Pedersen, who has been selling for Izod Club for 13 years and has seen the inside of many a golf shop. "I'm looking for some bookends," he muses as he gazes wide-eyed across the shop. He turns and finds a pair on a nearby shelf. "These will do fine," he says, undeterred by the $85 price tag. Golf, he explains, is "a game for a lifetime, in which people are willing to invest."
While ICOG may be seen as a store for the hard core, Maxwell estimates that just 70% of his customers actually play the game. The rest are friends and relatives of players, who buy them gifts and help feed their addiction. Some shoppers are trying to decorate whole rooms in a golf motif.
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Skirting the Rough. In Roger Maxwell you sense a gambler. He seems willing, eager even, to break the rules of retailing -- an impulse all the more remarkable given the current hard times in retail. In a world where sales per square foot and inventory turnover matter all the more, Maxwell seems dismissive of such considerations. Asked what rent he pays, he replies, "I don't know off the top of my head." Well, has he designed the store to flow in a certain way? "Nah, I just slapped some golf things together. It looks good, doesn't it?"
Maxwell peppers his speech with imprecise words like touch, feel, and smell. He talks often about "selling sizzle."
In fact, that notion underlies his strategy. Lure the committed golfer in, intrigue the nongolfer. John Maitre, one of Maxwell's managers, says: "People who come in here see golf and feel golf. That gets them into a buying mood."
Most astonishing, ICOG has floor space that other retailers might consider wasted. An area designed to look like a club maker's shop at the turn of the century grosses about $800 a month in low-margin club-regripping work. Pausing in front of the workbench there, Maxwell allows: "I've been told, 'Roger, close it up. That's unproductive space.' I say, 'No, no, no. This is a fun area. I don't want to lose it.' "
Even more improbable is "The Men's Locker Room." Complete with four showers and hand towels laid out neatly at a spotless sink, the space resembles a country-club locker room. Maxwell waves a hand at a rack of 15 green blazers hanging in the closet, each of them the size worn by one of the last 15 winners of the Masters Golf Tournament. Small brass plaques mounted over each jacket give the golfer's name and the year of his victory. Maxwell says, "We've sold maybe 11 or 12 of these Masters Greens jackets. That's not a lot, but what I'm really trying to convey is an aura." The autographed photo of Ben Crenshaw, the 1995 winner, has yet to sell at $800. There's a "Women's Locker Room" as well.
