“It was called the Glover,” recalls 53-year-old Brand Fusion MD Nigel Freemantle. “It was designed for the winter, for when you had to carry your bag. You know how when you carry, one hand goes on the base of the bag and the other on the driver’s headcover? Well the idea was to give that headcover a fur-lined pocket you could slip your hand into. I thought it was a superb idea. The principle was perfect, but we just couldn’t get them moving at all.”
The Glover may have flopped, but Freemantle’s readiness to include it in his wholesale operation sums up the spirited and free-wheeling approach that has taken him on a 30-year journey from one-white-van-man-band to the MD of one of Europe’s most successful golf merchandise wholesalers.
“In those early days we would take on everything,” he recalls, “and we were always ready to back hunches and gut feelings. We felt we were like a sweetshop, needing to stock wine gums and fruit pastilles and all the rest. Not everything was successful, but that was okay; we wanted to run our business as a progressive process, in which we’d be constantly evaluating and evolving products, and reacting to the changing market.
“These days we are a little more structured in deciding which products we take on. We look closer at retail potential, and how much the market needs a certain product line. But in terms of constant evaluation and reaction, nothing much has changed.”
From Tadworth to Tasmania
Today, Leatherhead-based Brand Fusion employs 35 people and distributes not just across the UK but also into Europe, Africa, Asia and just recently, Australasia. Its range of merchandise is astonishing; a saunter through the warehouse might take you past golfer-friendly sun cream, headcovers featuring Gromit and Dennis the Menace, clubs, clothes, grips, shafts, rubber cleats and copper bracelets. Freemantle estimates Brand Fusion has more than 2000 SKUs, and smiles at the contrast between today and how it all began, back in 1980.
“In the late ‘70s I was repping for Faulkner Sports, who had bought Penfold from Colgate. I was covering the northern Home Counties. But by 1980 the Professional Golfers Co-operative Association (PGCA), largely used by the club pros, was wobbling and Faulkner went into voluntary liquidation. So I set up my own business, doing accessories. I worked from my house, and rented a couple of garages for the stock.”
So was born ND Sports, after Freemantle’s forenames Nigel Dennis. He describes the early days covering North London, Essex, Herts and Beds, as “long and manic – up at 6am, home at 10pm, fill the van up, up at 6am …” – but successful.
“I guess I was the original white van man. I’d fill the truck jam full, go out into Essex, and come home pretty much empty. I’d make 12, 14 calls a day. These days we’re trying to lose that white van image, but after 30 years it’s hard to shift. Amazingly, there are still plenty of pros out there from when I started out.”
Freemantle built his business slowly, focusing on components and accessories and aiming to avoid fads and gizmos. The stock moved to a rented parts department in an Esso garage in Dorking, and finally, in 1984, to a warehouse in Tadworth. About this time, he took on his first member of staff.
“I think one of the key progressions we made at that time was to help make the pro shop a bit more retail friendly,” he says. “Pro shops back then were more like workshops; everything was so hand served, like Arkwright’s shop. Everything was loose packed or in jars. With great help from PD Supplies in Bedfordshire, we produced blister packaging; pros went from ordering 1,000 tees to 50 packets of 20. The packs smartened the place up and made the shop feel more retail savvy.”
Freemantle remembers a related victory with the Softspikes Black Widow cleat, which in the mid-1990s was being promoted only really as a way to beat the growing list of metal spike course bans, and sold loose. “I could see massive retail potential for them. We took it on and put retail packs together. It grew the business by many hundreds of thousands of pounds in the first couple of years.”
ND Sports’ transition into Brand Fusion did not happen until 2003, and was stimulated by a chance occurrence; in 2000 Freemantle was offered the chance to distribute Sun Mountain golf bags Europe-wide.
“Originally I turned the offer down,” he recalls. “I was aware that it would change the whole nature of my business. Warehouse, staff, export, finances - all would need to be re-evaluated. But the more I thought about it, the more the challenge of going a bit more global inspired me. My gut feeling was to go for it. I think that if you work at it, hunches tend to work out; they become closer to educated guesses that put you in the right place at the right time.”
Sunny side up
Despite some teething problems with quality and inventory, Sun Mountain’s steady progress became something of a template for how Freemantle believes a successful distributorship deal should work.
“Sun Mountain has been patient, realistic, and they have left us alone to get on with it,” he says. “We got their turnover up into the hundreds of thousands; now it’s in the millions. But its taken time. If we’d been pressured to do that in the short term, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
“I think the rest of the world regards Europe as a bit of a cash cow, and get false ideas of how much money its market can generate. Because of that, they can place too much pressure on distributors to make things happen too quickly. My understanding is that the European market is only 5-10% of the American market. If they are forecasting a 10 or 20 million dollar turnover, that equates to only one to two million in Europe. That sort of realism is important.
“Sun Mountain has also given us control over the product in the territories we’re in, in terms of suppliers, pricing structure and so on. We’ve learned that’s also vital. If you squeeze too many wholesalers into one territory, things get messy. Sun Mountain doesn’t want us ringing them about who has trodden on whose toes; they leave us to get on with it and we do a much better job.”
Since Sun Mountain, some brands have come and some have gone; but Freemantle insists the ones that have stuck – the likes of Sabona bracelets, Daphne’s headcovers and, more recently, the Sklz range of training aids – have been broadly based on these terms. Brand Fusion has reached a position where it is distributing around 12 brands globally – a figure Freemantle concedes might be above the optimum number – though the key areas of components and accessories is far from being neglected.
As for Brand Fusion’s future, Freemantle is confident. “We’ll continue to consolidate on what we take on. But in the last two years, some of the hardest the golf industry has ever known, we grew 27% last year in terms of turnover and are already trading some 15 or 16% up this year. We’re going way against the trend, and I put that down to continual reassessment of the business, and being able to make a quick decision. I think some companies have struggled because they are locked into business plans; our company model is less planned and constantly evolving. We don’t really have a journey plan; we are just committed to making the journey work. It might mean we end up with the odd Glover on our hands, but we can cope with that.
“And if you know anyone who wants one, let me know.”
