Grace Hurley, the 2021 North Florida PGA Section Merchandiser of the Year for Resort Facilities, is the PGA Director of Sports Retail at Ponte Vedra Inn & Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
The new and exciting athleisure collections from many different brands have become very popular at our facility. In fact, we’ve recently started carrying such items in our gym facility, as well as in our golf shop. We run the same promotions in both locations – specials such as “Purchase two items and get 25 percent off.”
Our gym facility is very small, so we switch out the products weekly, moving existing items to the golf shop and then filling our gym space with items from our golf and tennis shops. The key is to keep everything consistently fresh.
For the most part, our gym members are creatures of habit, as many of them come in at the same days(s) and time(s) each week. Even if they come in at the same time every day, they still see new items weekly, thus driving increased sales with a special 15 percent discount that incentivizes them to buy their athletic items from us, rather than driving to the local Lululemon or Nike stores.
We generate between $50,000 and $75,000 in gym sales annually, which is additional retail revenue we did not have before 2019. We have found that this gym area has caught a market of customers that we were not seeing in the golf shop. At the same time, it has brought new foot traffic to the golf shop, with shoppers from the gym realizing that we carry more than just golf-related apparel.
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