I mentioned in an earlier Fitters Corner that I had breakfast with the head of R & D for Irons and Hybrids while I was at the sales meeting. I wanted to share some of the details of that conversation.

We started talking about new products and launches and the cycle that is how they come to be. We have a design and development team and a concept team. The concept team will look at any idea – however outlandish it may seem. This team is like a chef in a pasta kitchen throwing partially cooked pasta against the wall… Some stick, but most fall to the floor. With this team, the lifecycle can be 5 years or more (sometimes 10+ years). Some really good ideas never see the light of day. Others get put in a drawer and may be used for future projects. It’s 2023. This group is working on things for 2028 and beyond. They work on different materials – is it possible to use this one? Does this material give us a structural or weight advantage over the material we are currently using? Do we have more flexibility in manufacturing with this material than we do with what we are currently using? They work on different manufacturing methods. Can we build it better? Does this offer any benefit to what we are currently doing? They look at design concepts. Most of the groundbreaking technologies that we use come from this group. Things like Jailbreak, Cup face, the 360* Carbon chassis, much of our work with Ai, and the different types of steels we use in our Iron heads all came from this group. They also look at unique head designs. Some of these are certainly on your shelves today.

Also with us that morning was a younger engineer on the product design team. He moved off the concept team and mostly works with Ai. I asked him how he liked the new position, and he said he did, but there are challenges. Like what?, I asked. He said “Ai will come up with solutions that are so advanced and out-perform anything on the marketplace, but it doesn’t have the look we want. So, we sometimes need to re-challenge Ai to have it produce results that also look like we want it to.” The head of R & D chimed in and he said Apex Pro was a perfect example. Ai made the performance out of this world, but the look was not one that a better player would want to see. So, back to the drawing board to re-work it in a way that looked AND performed the way we wanted it to.

Moving past the concept team, we move into the design team. They take what we currently have, see what needs to be improved and what can be improved, and then get busy. These designs can take as little as two years, or as long as 4 or 5 years. Ironically, performance is generally not the challenge. It’s waiting for mew materials and manufacturing methods to be perfected so we can apply them and utilize them in our designs. We know what’s coming, but not how it can best be applied. 

Ever wonder why we use a two year lifecycle? Or why some products take longer to replace than others? Or some are quicker? The answer often lies in the materials/ manufacturing processes. Apex Pro 24, for example, is a difficult head to design. Apex CB 24 and Apex MB 24, are fairly easy to design. The challenge is to design a head that fits with the appearance of CB and MB, but has the increase in performance over both the CB and MB, and the Apex Pro 21. It’s a small box, packed with a lot of technology and innovation. No easy task. This design team will look at one piece at a time, analyze the gains, make it look pretty, and bring it to the show. However long it takes is how long it takes. Other products, like Rogue Max ST, for example, is on a tighter timeline. It needs to be completed in 2 years, it is not as technologically advanced, so it’s easier to make that process complete in a shorter time window. 

I hope you enjoyed the insight as much as I did learning about it. Revolutionary ideas don’t just happen. They can come from a team of concept engineers who funnel them to the design team to implement. Product managers look critically at products throughout the process. The end result is something that knocks your socks off – after upwards of 5 years of design work. Maybe this will provide you a good story to tell in an upcoming fitting or two. 

I hope this helps!! Happy fitting, happy retaining, and happy selling.