To engage northern golfers during the winter season, e-retailer Rock Bottom Golf drives two tractor trailers filled with displays and products to consumer golf shows for 12 or more consecutive weekends—producing about $1 million of sales that are on course to hit $23 million this year, chief operating and marketing officer Todd Rath tells InternetRetailer.com.
Rock Bottom Golf, No. 290 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, attends consumer golf shows in 25 to 30 cities from January through March.
At each show, Rock Bottom sets up a booth where it collects e-mail addresses, sells products and meets face-to-face with many of its regular online customers, Rath says. “Our booth looks like our web site,” he says. “We collect a couple of thousand e-mails at every show.”
In addition to serving as a marketing and customer outreach tool, the show circuit also helps Rock Bottom to turn inventory. The retailer tries to turn its inventory five or six times each year, and the winter show circuit usually accounts for at least one of those turns, helping Rock Bottom to clear the racks in time to introduce new merchandise for the busy spring season, Rath says.
Rock Bottom sends out two crews in two tractor trailers to attend two shows each weekend. One of its display booths is 1,600 square feet, the other half that size.
The booths are set up to display and sell merchandise ranging from golf clubs to apparel, and many shows have driving ranges where shoppers can test out Rock Bottom’s equipment.
The retailer owns one truck with a 40-foot trailer and leases the second one. In the early days, Rath would help drive the trucks but now assigns dedicated drivers among the teams of employees that attend the shows.
“Our employees like meeting the customers,” Rath says, adding that workers get paid extra through a separate company Rock Bottom set up to manage its show attendance.
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