Dallas Golf started out small. In 1983, it was a single club repair shop located in Dallas, Texas. The company grew along with the recent popularity of the sport to which it is devoted. It became a consignment shop, a retail store, two retail stores, and finally, four retail stores. It was 1996, and the World Wide Web was the latest novelty. “Somebody said, ‘We’d better have a web site,’ so we jumped into the dot-com boom era,” recalls company E-Commerce Manager Chris Smith, along with some of his inventory. “Everybody was speculating and nobody was selling; we did that, too.”
By 1999, Dallas Golf’s retail stores were booming, even though its web site was not. Customers eagerly bought up new products. “We had lots of used inventory piling up in our retail stores, and those stores were small, so we said, ‘We need to do something with this.’ My boss read an article about eBay. He store the article out of the newspaper and said, ‘Here, try this.’ We put 10 things up for sale, then 100, then 250. Pretty soon, we had 20 employees assigned just to eBay, and that part of our business really took off.”
“Golf Is Almost the Perfect eBay Product”
Today, Dallas Golf is a Titanium PowerSeller and one of eBay’s biggest success stories. The store has only two retail locations now; it has actually closed some of its brick-and-mortar stores in order to concentrate its energy on Internet sales. “eBay has become a major part of our business,” says Smith. People who sell golf balls and golf equipment have always done well on the Internet and on eBay in particular. The qualities about the merchandise that make it such a success are ones that every budding eBay seller should look for:
Much of the equipment is small and easily transportable. True, golf bags and golf clubs are heavy. But most items like tees, balls, gloves, shoes, hats, and other accessories are small and easy to pack and ship.
There are many different product lines, each with its own models. Golf enthusiasts have a plethora of options when it comes to making purchases online. They can buy a complete set, an individual club, or they can mix and match. “Almost everything we sell is unique in some way, especially if it is used,” says Smith.
Used equipment is still valuable. Even though certain styles of golf clubs go out of style, according to Smith, they often come back in style a few years later. Golfers who are looking for quality equipment at bargain prices are eager to buy used equipment.
At certain times, it sells very quickly. The warm weather months find golfers shopping and buying on eBay in droves. Smith often conducts relatively short three-day auctions because the turnover comes so fast. “If there was a twelve-hour auction format, I might use it in summer,” he jokes.
By 1999, Dallas Golf’s retail stores were booming, even though its web site was not. Customers eagerly bought up new products. “We had lots of used inventory piling up in our retail stores, and those stores were small, so we said, ‘We need to do something with this.’ My boss read an article about eBay. He store the article out of the newspaper and said, ‘Here, try this.’ We put 10 things up for sale, then 100, then 250. Pretty soon, we had 20 employees assigned just to eBay, and that part of our business really took off.”
“Golf Is Almost the Perfect eBay Product”
Today, Dallas Golf is a Titanium PowerSeller and one of eBay’s biggest success stories. The store has only two retail locations now; it has actually closed some of its brick-and-mortar stores in order to concentrate its energy on Internet sales. “eBay has become a major part of our business,” says Smith. People who sell golf balls and golf equipment have always done well on the Internet and on eBay in particular. The qualities about the merchandise that make it such a success are ones that every budding eBay seller should look for:
Much of the equipment is small and easily transportable. True, golf bags and golf clubs are heavy. But most items like tees, balls, gloves, shoes, hats, and other accessories are small and easy to pack and ship.
There are many different product lines, each with its own models. Golf enthusiasts have a plethora of options when it comes to making purchases online. They can buy a complete set, an individual club, or they can mix and match. “Almost everything we sell is unique in some way, especially if it is used,” says Smith.
Used equipment is still valuable. Even though certain styles of golf clubs go out of style, according to Smith, they often come back in style a few years later. Golfers who are looking for quality equipment at bargain prices are eager to buy used equipment.
At certain times, it sells very quickly. The warm weather months find golfers shopping and buying on eBay in droves. Smith often conducts relatively short three-day auctions because the turnover comes so fast. “If there was a twelve-hour auction format, I might use it in summer,” he jokes.
