Custom Clubs Are Booming — But Golf Retail Operations Haven’t Kept Up

Walk into any golf store or club  in the world  and you’ll see it immediately: the current state  of golf retail isn’t off-the-rack, it’s custom - and this isn’t a fad. Every player wants the perfect build, the right shaft, the exact swing weight. For the same price as off-the-rack, who wouldn’t want custom. Fittings are no longer a luxury -  they’re the core of the business.

But behind the  modern front-of-house experience, most operations still run like they did 15 years ago. Orders are wrung up  manually. Staff chase updates across OEM portals. Customers wait weeks for visibility into where their clubs actually are.

It’s an open secret in golf retail: the front end has modernized — the back end hasn’t. And it’s costing businesses millions.

A Growing Market — and a Growing Bottleneck

The custom club segment is one of the healthiest parts of golf’s resurgence. Global equipment sales are up year over year, growing roughly 3–5% annually, with club and fitting categories leading that growth. Fitters are busier than ever. The challenge isn’t demand — it’s throughput.

For most stores, managing that growth means managing chaos.

Every OEM (Titleist, Ping, TaylorMade, Srixon, Mizuno, Callaway, Cobra) has its own portal, forms, and quirks. Specs are entered one by one. If a customer calls to tweak a loft or shaft, someone has to log in, find the order, make the change, and double-check it went through. Then the waiting begins.

Our interviews with retailers and fitters show a consistent pattern:

On average, each custom order takes about 60  minutes of staff time between entry, adjustments, follow-up, and communication.

Multiply that by hundreds  of orders a week across locations, and the operational cost becomes staggering — especially for a part of the business that already runs on thin margins.

Why Visibility Has Become the Biggest Competitive Advantage

Here’s the truth no one likes to admit: most fitters are selling products without knowing what’s actually available.

Inventory and lead times change daily. Components go on backorder mid-week. A shaft that’s in-stock on Monday might be unavailable by Friday. Yet in most shops, that information isn’t visible at the point of sale or fitting.

The result? Delayed deliveries. Refunds. Frustrated customers who feel misled.

The ripple effect is huge — lost trust, longer cycle times, and ultimately fewer repeat fittings.

It’s not that retailers don’t care about accuracy — it’s that they’ve never had access to real-time OEM availability data. Without it, fitters are flying blind.

The Missed Opportunity: Turning Operations Into a Profit Center

When we talk to retailers, they often describe custom orders as “operational overhead” — a necessary complexity that drags on margins. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

There’s a growing opportunity to treat operational efficiency as a profit driver.

The retailers who win the next decade won’t just fit better — they’ll fulfill better.

Imagine if every store manager could see, in real time, which orders were delayed and why. If buyers could analyze OEM performance data and forecast accurate fulfillment times. If your fitting team knew instantly which components were available — before the customer even asked.

This isn’t about more software. It’s about rethinking how information flows between your team, your systems, and your suppliers.

You’ve Digitized the Fitting — Now We Need to Digitize the Fulfillment

Over the past decade, the golf industry invested heavily in the front-end of the experience — TrackMan, Foresight, more hitting bays. . These innovations transformed how golfers buy clubs. But the back-end of the operation — ordering, tracking, communication — hasn’t changed.

That’s where the next wave of innovation will happen.

The first retailers to modernize their custom order operations will do more than save time. They’ll deliver the kind of transparency, speed, and experience today’s customers expect — and build loyalty no marketing campaign can buy.

The Industry Is Ready for Its Next Evolution

Golf is one of the few retail sectors where the customer experience is increasingly digital, but the operations behind it remain largely analog. That disconnect is now the industry’s biggest opportunity.

As one senior retail exec told us recently:

“We’ve invested millions in technology that helps golfers buy better. Now it’s time to invest in technology that helps us deliver better.”

The industry doesn’t need more portals or dashboards — it needs systems that connect them all.

The question isn’t if this change will happen.
It’s who can see the change  to  turn operational efficiency into a competitive edge.