Golf Industry, Company, Products and Services
The Golfing Industry
GolfingGopher.com (“Golf Gopher”) will operate within the growing Sports and Sporting Goods industry, specifically, within the golfing industry. Men and women worldwide spend approximately $30 billion annually on golf-related services and merchandise. The popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web (“The Web”) has created new venture opportunities by pushing much of this revenue-generating activity into cyberspace through the creation of content-specific web sites. This trend to purchase merchandise and services “online” shows no signs of slowing down and has resulted in what economists are calling a new “e-economy”. The Web has fundamentally change the way people make purchasing decisions. E-commerce is here to stay.
The Company and Concept
Golf Gopher is a vertical, web-based infomediary leveraging the power of information technology to link buyers and sellers of golf-related products and services and facilitate sales.
Due to the explosion of popularity of the Web, there are now literally billions of Web pages out on the Internet. As a result, a significant market opportunity has been created for a Web-based golf site that connects buyers with sellers. Every day it becomes harder and harder for golf consumers to find the information they need online to make smart buying decisions. Increasingly, there is a dispersion in price for identical products. Consumers waste countless hours and endure unnecessary frustration trying to navigate poorly designed Web sites, only to find the information provided is outdated, duplicated or irrelevant.
Do consumers want to hunt-and-peck through 20 e-tail sites to find the information they need? Absolutely not. Golf Gopher facilitates the exchange of information and lowers the processing and coordination cost (transaction and search costs) of bringing these buyers and sellers together.
The concept is to become a leading online destination for golfers by creating an online “Consumer Reports”-type information database and comparative search-engine for thousands of golf products and services. Consumers come to Golf Gopher to do research on golf products and find the best product at the best price, from the best merchant. We will provide consumers with in-depth product specs from manufactures, find the best price on an item, provide expert product reviews from local golf pro’s, peer reviews, and ratings for e-tail merchant services, including return policies, warranties, delivery times and overall reputation. This service will fundamentally change the way golfer's shops online.
Golfing Gopher creates value for consumers by providing them with the information they need to make smart buying decisions creates value for e-tail merchants by directing consumers to their online store to make purchases. GolfingGopher delivers customers directly to the e-tailer’s front door and provides them the opportunity to retain that customer by providing a positive experience. It creates value for manufacturers of golf equipment by creating brand awareness. It puts the manufacturers brand name in front of a highly targeted audience of millions.
GolfingGopher will acquire advertising revenue from
manufacturers, e-tailers and brick-and-mortar businesses
through banner ads and product placements as well as
taking a small commission on sales generated by Golfing
Gopher referrals or a referral fee based on click-throughs.
(Click-throughs are the number of users that “click
through” to a e-tail Web site via a hyperlink
on GolfingGopher's Web site)
The Company was conceptualized and created Sunday January
30, 2000 by its founder while watching SuperBowl XXXIV.
It was at the time, the height of dot.com mania, and
almost every multi-million dollar television commercial
was promoting some sort of Web-based dot.com Internet
company. A successful golf company must appeal to a very
large audience of affluent, highly-educated individuals
who all share a common passion. Right? Of course! GolfingGopher.com
was born.
Products and Services
Golfing Gopher offers the consumer free golf-related product reviews from Professional golfers, local club Pros, and amateur golfers (peer reviews) who have personally used the equipment. Consumers can search our database by entering their own keywords or by navigating a directory of products and services listed by subject. In addition, in-depth product specs are provided to Golfing Gopher directly from manufacturers. This satisfies both consumers who want to base purchasing decisions on the opinions of respected professionals providing smart advice, as well as those consumers who want more detailed information to make their own informed choices.
Golfing Gopher takes on the role of a consumer advocate, facilitating trust by ensuring the integrity of suppliers and adding value by providing knowledge and peer recommendations.
Golf Gopher offers the consumer free access to its comparison shopping and recommendation engine. This feature searches the web for equipment based on the user’s request and then retrieves the top 20 competing e-tailers that offer the identical product. This adds significant value to the consumer by lowering search costs. The consumer can now complete in seconds what would normally take hours, possibly over a course of several days, to complete. The comparison shopping engine not only allows consumers to compare price, but also shipping costs, product availability, and merchant reputation ratings.
Golfing Gopher offers the consumer free access to its wireless web site, PalmGopher.com. PalmGopher allows users to access our data and comparison shop while visiting a traditional brick-and-mortar store using a web-enables handheld device. Consumers can now decide if the want to order an identical less-expensive item online or to negotiate with a brick-and-mortar sales associate on a lower price or discount. Users can research golf equipment anywhere, anytime. We will be at the forefront when the mobile-commerce market explodes.
Golfing Gopher encourages the consumer to enter free weekly drawings to win free golf merchandise and prizes. This merchandise is provided to us by manufacturers to help promote brand awareness for their products. It also give consumers a reason to come back to Golfing Gopher even when they don’t intend on making a specific purchase.
Users can send free Virtual e-postcards and “Wish Lists” (called GopherGreetings and GopherGrams respectively). GopherGreetings are a fun way to enhance the user experience by allowing golfers to send humorous cards with personal messages to friends and colleagues. The purpose of a GopherGram is to send a non-golfer (such as a spouse, friend or relative) a postcard containing a “wish list” of golf products the sender is interested in. In both cases, the recipient of the electronic postcard is directed back to GolfingGopher.com in order to view the card. In the case GopherGreetings, it promotes Golfing Gopher brand awareness and creates new customers by driving e-postcard recipients back to the web site. In the case of GopherGrams, it drives non-golfers and golfers alike to the site with the added benefit of encouraging purchases from the senders wish-list. The GopherGram will provide the recipient with the exact model, price and e-tailer to make the purchase. This feature will always be available (for events such as birthdays and anniversaries) but was created specifically with the x-mas holiday season in mind.
Golfing Gopher offers free merchant reliability and reputation ratings. Price is an important factor when making buying-decisions but certainly not the only factor. GolfingGopher will test e-tail sites to discover how reliable they are, the level of customer support and service that they provide, and information in regards to exchange policies and warranty information. Customers themselves can also rate e-tailers based on past experiences.
Golfing Gopher will sell its own proprietary line of golf apparel called GopherGear. These high-quality items will be embroidered with the GolfingGopher logo and one of the many GopherGang characters. Our main character and mascot ‘Mulligan’ has already been developed. (see appendix 13.1) The items include caps, golf shirts, towels, coolers, balls and club covers. The GopherGang set of characters were created to appeal to different kinds of golfers with different kinds of personalities. For instance, there is a “grumpy” character, a “dizzy blonde” character, a “dopey” character, the character that had “one-too-many” on the 19th hole, etc.
In addition to searching multiple e-tail sites for the best equipment buys, users will be also be able to search several auction sites for identical but “pre-enjoyed” equipment. Not only will Golfing Gopher search popular auction sites such as E-bay, but we will offer our consumers the opportunity to sell their own equipment on our own private auction site.
Golfing Gopher will sell inexpensive “knock-off” or “look-alike” golf equipment at a serious discount. We have the advantage of placing these products strategically within the search results when users go looking for name-brands. We are able to make critical comparisons between the high-end name-brand and our “knock-offs” and lead the consumers to choose our brand. We will also lead consumers to our knock-off brands via “Editors Top Picks” product placements.
Golfing Gopher will eventually introduce a revolutionary transaction system called Gopher-It. The Gopher-It system will allow customers to buy goods from any e-tailer on web directly through Golfing Gopher. The consumer simply fills out a simple form with the required information and Golfing Gopher will submit the order on the users behalf (no need for a user to learn how to use a half dozen confusing e-tail sites and re-key similar information). Essentially, users will become customers of Golfing Gopher to buy golf equipment instead of having to buy directly from the e-tailer. This concept is guaranteed to be controversial, as it dilutes some of the brand awareness of some e-tailers and strips them of the opportunity to build a relationship directly with the consumer. This product will be rolled out after Golfing Gopher gains a large audience so e-tailers will less likely to complain due to the large quantity of orders we can potentially place. This method will revolutionize the business of infomediaries. We will gain extremely valuable demographic information about our users from this method which will be given to manufacturers and e-tailers who choose to advertise with us.
We provide e-tailers with free listings in our comparative shopping database (they will be listed with or without their express permission). They will be attracted to Golfing Gopher as a result of the enormous volume of targeted traffic and access to millions of potential customers. We offer e-tailers a highly-focused demographic...our users are golfers and they are here to buy. We generate a high ‘browse-to-buy’ ratio and give the e-tailer an opportunity to build and keep loyal customers. Golfing Gopher essentially becomes an ‘Affiliate’ to online stores and is rewarded by e-tailers with commissions.
We provide highly targeted product placements and banner ads for e-tailers. Depending on what a user is searching for, our intelligent database will decide what ads and products to display when the search results are displayed. For example, if a user is searching for a Callaway 9 iron, the user enters this data into the search field, presses the ‘search’ button, and Golfing Gopher goes to work finding all of the online merchants that carry the golf club and returns the results. In addition to the search results, the smart database serves a banner ad of a company that specializes in Callaway equipment. The ad might say “Jim’s Pro Shop. The Web’s leading Callaway Dealer. Click Here!” Or a photo of the product may displayed as an “Editor’s Pick” product placement. These add more value to the program participants buy leading the consumer to the e-tailer and encouraging sales from specific companies.
E-tailers who participate in our banner ad and product placement program receive copy of our ‘Consumer Preferences Report’ better known as GopherGauge. GopherGauge is a unique product that provides valuable marketing data by researching Golfing Gopher site activity. Here’s what it does: Once a user comes to the Golfing Gopher web site, their every move is carefully tracked. Their personal privacy is completely preserved but we are able to see where they go, where they came from, what they searched for, when they searched for it, who they chose to buy from, how often they visit, how long they visit, how long they view each page, and the content of that page, what web browser and operating system they use and more. This kind of data is priceless to e-tailers. What makes our report unique is that we give one very highly detailed report to all of the participating e-tailers. Other companies only provide e-tailers with information regarding the pages with their particular banner ad (how many times people saw the ad and how many people clicked on it) Using the data from GopherGauge, e-tailers will be able to determine what the hot new products are and adjust their marketing plans accordingly. Also, if GopherGauge consistently finds that users would rather buy the same product at a higher price from a competitor, that maybe the e-tailer has a perceived reliability problem in the eye of the consumer and can take steps to correct the problem. We will provide this report in electronic form as a PDF (Portable Document Format) via e-mail. Sending the report via e-mail eliminates our cost for postage and mailing materials. The reports are approximately 30 pages long that the user can print from their own personal printer if they wish to have hard copies. All data is organized in easy-to-understand charts, bar-graphs and tables. Adobe Corporation provides it’s PDF reader (Adobe Acrobat) free from their web site. Anyone with a computer and a connection to the Internet can obtain it to read and print PDF documents.
E-tailers can choose to ‘Enhance’ their database directory listings for a small fee. By enhancing the listing, the e-tailer will stand out among competitors. When a user initiates a search and the results are displayed, an enhanced listing is more noticeable because the companies logo appears beside their name. There is also space for an e-tailer to add a description of the company to try and excite and entice the consumer and encourage them to click their link instead if a competitors. By buying an enhanced listing, the e-tailer can emphasize ‘brand’ and make their listing more attractive to consumers.
Entry and Growth Strategy
Right now no one is focused on this particular niche. There are many high-profile golf web sites out there but they are more focused on scores, selling their own limited line of products, tips and news articles. These site try and provide value by being all things to all people but they always come up short. GolfingGopher will do only one thing but do it better than any other company out there. All of our content is free to consumers and our services to e-tailers is competitively priced. I believe that the GopherGauge report is a very innovative products and that e-tailers large and small will consider it a unique and very valuable tool. Our major efforts the first year will be advertising in major national magazines to build brand awareness, and cozying up to our e-tailers. The Golfing Gopher name and characters are very unique and will be very memorable to our consumers. We will continue to roll out new products on a pre-determined schedule to keep generating interest and to help us diversify.
