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There’s something different going on at Mad Golfer Golf Club. From the bright yellow building to the employees who carry customers’ bags to their cars and clean their clubs—free of charge—Mad Golfer is changing the face of the modern golf range, pushing the envelope on what folks expect from their neighborhood golf facility. And owner Kalman Katz wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We’ve always tried to do things a little differently,” says Katz. “That’s why the ‘Mad Golfer’ name is the perfect fit for us.”
Located in Southampton, Pa., a suburb just north of Philadelphia, Mad Golfer Golf Club takes its “fitting” name from Katz’s ultra-successful line of golf apparel—his first foray into the golfing industry and the financial catalyst that allowed him to fulfill his dream of range ownership.
Today, Katz is rebuilding a facility that has failed under two previous absentee owners by applying the same practices that made his retail clothing business, Frenzi Golf, a success: giving customers what they want.
At Mad Golfer, that trait means green grass, seven target greens in front of a two-tier tee line, a large short game area and an 18-hole miniature golf course. But more significantly, it means a commitment to customer service.
“The only way this property is going to succeed is with local ownership,” says Katz. “I know every one of my customers by name and they know me. It’s my part-time job, and I’m here 80 hours a week.”
A Southampton native, Katz is as committed to the community as he is to his golf range. Awards and letters of appreciation cover a wall near the entrance to the clubhouse, and customers have come to expect the little extras in benefits and service Katz and his staff regularly offer.
But how do you turn around a business that has failed twice in five years?
“The biggest hurdle was the negative customer feelings about service,” explains Katz. “There were a lot of promises made to customers that were never completed, and that was the challenge—getting the customers back and winning their trust. A simple philosophy though, because ‘free’ works.”
Some Bang for the Bucket
After taking control of the range in April 2003, Katz saturated the local market with coupons and giveaways. He advertised in popular magazines, “clipper” shopping guides and co-op direct mailings, offering free buckets of balls, free miniature golf for families—“anything to get them out here to give us a try.”
At the facility, Katz is a familiar face on the tee line—talking, cajoling, asking questions and generally trying to make everyone feel at home. “If I walk down the range and I see a guy’s bucket has four old balls because our kids didn’t sort them properly, I grab them up and give the guy another small bucket,” he says. “What does that cost me compared to how it makes the customer feel?”
His customer service efforts extend from small conveniences to surprising gestures. For example, free coffee awaits early- morning golfers, and for Father’s Day 2004, Katz bought a digital camera and photo printer and offered free family photos.
Last Memorial Day, a holiday when Pennsylvania families traditionally pack up their cars and head to the beach, Katz thanked his patrons with ice cream cones he bought at the Dairy Queen next door. “I just wanted to thank them for coming,” he says.
Mad Golfer shares a parking lot with Dairy Queen, and Katz is milking that relationship for all it’s worth. Some coupons tie in free frozen treats with discounted rounds of miniature golf or buckets of balls, while party packages always include Dairy Queen goodies. Katz believes good business means good relationships with neighbors.
“I don’t want to compete with them,” he says. “Yeah, we lose a little revenue on things we could offer here, but it’s working for both of us this way.”
This philosophy spills over to the township’s soccer fields, which are adjacent to the range. “We send [our] kids over there all the time to hand out coupons” to children and their families playing in recreational leagues, Katz says. “Buy one miniature golf, get one free, free mini-buckets of balls, anything just to get those kids involved with golf.”
Katz created the 15-ball “mini-bucket” to whet their appetites and encourage more youth to come out and play. The center’s pro shop specializes in junior clubs that Katz says are priced well below competitors’. Katz knows if he can get the younger players to Mad Golfer regularly, he’ll make up the discount price of junior equipment in bucket fees and lessons.
“I’m not making great margins, but I’m making customers,” he says.
Marketing Blitz
Katz, who made a living marketing his apparel at great margins, loves to target new customers and find innovative ways to reach them. He rents local billboards, but changes locations every three months. First, he might advertise on busy Route 1, right off his Street Road location, and next move the ad to target golfers in another part of town. And when a competing range was closing, Katz rented a billboard on that facility’s major artery to direct passers-by to Mad Golfer.
In addition to his regular rotation of print ads, Katz alternates more specific campaigns in niche markets, such as advertising in the local Korean newspaper.
“Instead of doing the same things over and over, I think you’re better off blitzing something,” he says. “It’s important to go after different customers.”
Of course, Katz also hits his regular customers, using Mad Golfer’s customer database to promote events such as the annual golf tent sale and the now-annual cocktail party in September. Local government officials and the media also are invited to this Friday night soiree at the range that feels more like an evening at the country club.
“We just like to thank everyone for their support and maybe show them some things they wouldn’t normally see at a driving range,” Katz says of the cocktail party. “It’s a good way to stress our commitment to the community.”
He’s generous with charities and fund-raising groups and always willing to provide certificates for miniature golf or range cards for giveaways and auctions. “Anybody that comes in can see we’re serious about this because there’s 150 letters here on the wall,” he says of the array of thank-you notes from local police, firemen, the American Cancer Society and Abington Hospital, among others. Mad Golfer also has hosted events, including one for an amputees’ organization and other physically challenged patients from Abington Hospital. An instructor, himself missing a leg, showed participants how to enjoy golf despite physical limitations.
“It was truly amazing,” says Katz.
Up for Auction, Then for Sale
Originally a Family Golf Center, the facility first became available four years ago when the parent company went bankrupt. Katz headed to New York to make a bid on the property at public auction.
Katz was ready to compete in the 11 a.m. auction of golf properties, hopeful to take over his local facility, but a buyer from Chicago came in and bought the bulk of the properties at 10 a.m., with one bold bid. “They came out and told us there was no auction,” he recalls.
Katz gave the new owner, KemperSports Management, his business card and again kept an eye on the local property.
“They bought properties in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, everywhere,” he says. “There’s no way to market them all together. One range may do $4 million [in business] and another one does $200,000. It just didn’t make any sense for them to run all of them the same way, but they were basically just buying real estate.”
Katz drove by the Southampton location every week and finally went in and asked for the phone number of the regional manager.
“Turns out the regional manager was based in Chicago and was only on this property twice in two years,” he says, shaking his head. “They didn’t put any money into the property and it started going downhill.” And Katz should know—he had to make all the repairs.
Mad Golfer Gets a Little TLC
Katz paid mid-six figures to purchase the 10-acre facility, and he immediately started putting nearly as much money into improving his investment:
• Katz repaired 22 faulty radiant heaters on what was billed as a 25-stall heated tee line.
• In his first month of ownership, Katz had to close the center for four days because the ground was too wet to push the ball picker. Katz brought in seven tractor-trailer loads of stone to fill the ruts and planted grass seed and installed sod as well so that the landing area wouldn’t turn to mud when it rained.
• The miniature golf course carpet had turned black with mildew, so Katz ripped it out and installed a new artificial turf surface. Now it’s a showpiece, and Katz wishes it were more visible from the main road.
• Everywhere on the range, extensive landscaping of shrubs and flowers replaced poison ivy and weeds. “We put in more mulch in all the beds and tried to make it look like home,” Katz says.
• The large artificial surface on the chipping green was also black with mildew, but replacing the 1,500-square-foot short game area was cost-prohibitive, so Katz had the area power washed daily for four weeks until it looked better.
• The facility’s sand trap had turned into a water hazard, so Katz built a new practice bunker. “There was no sand in our sand trap,” he says with a laugh. “When it rained, it filled up with water and [the water] seemed to stay there forever.” Katz rented a trencher and dug a trench and then layered stone and PVC piping inside it, topping it off with 20 tons of sand.
Even after these renovations, Katz still had one of the facility’s thorniest issues to deal with. Condensed on the 10 acres, the 200-yard-wide range is only 250 yards deep, and errant balls regularly found their way over the 50-foot-tall fence at the far end to private property. For 13 years, this problem had been a regular agenda item at township government meetings.
Family Golf Centers applied for a variance to allow the range to install 75-foot-high netting but had initially been turned down because of potential environmental hazards such as birds getting caught in the nets. Seventy-five-foot poles were already in place but only 50-foot netting was allowed. By the time the variance was approved, Family Golf Centers was no more.
Kemper—operating the facility under its AllGolf portfolio of driving ranges—took over but never got around to raising higher nets. And that’s when Katz came into the picture.
“I’m losing balls left and right over the net,” he says. “It behooves me to fix the netting, plus it’s just the right thing to do. What the neighbor didn’t understand was that there aren’t many people in the world who do that kind of work.”
Just two weeks in as owner, Katz contracted Cross Country Cowboy Inc. to install the netting, but it was two and a half months before the busy company could complete the job. “I took over here in April and I promised the neighbor we’d have the netting up by November,” says Katz. “We got it up by July, so I was a hero.”
Making Them Believers
Katz loves making impressive splashes like he did with the netting, quickly showing neighbors that new management was on their side. One of the first things he did after taking over the facility was paint the clubhouse and the maintenance building bright yellow. It was his not-so-subtle signal that things were different.
“I came here regularly before I signed [the ownership] papers, just sitting here and talking to people,” he says. “I asked everybody why they came here. What changes did they want to see? What can we do to improve?”
Katz found customers liked the convenient location and, with the competing Somerton Springs facility shutting down, he didn’t have much competition.
“They told me the place has potential but no one was taking care of it,” Katz says of his informal surveys. “They said they want heat in the winter, and that they’d like new golf balls and nicer mats. Other than that, they said it’s a great facility.”
So Katz promised to make those changes. He could tell there was doubt about his intentions, though. Long-time customers had heard similar claims before.
“I could tell they were thinking, ‘You’re just like the rest of these guys, you’re going to give us old balls and take as much money as you can,’” Katz recalls. “So the next Monday, I hired a painter and had the buildings painted bright yellow—not my favorite color, but I wanted these guys to notice a change as soon as they came back.”
The outward changes didn’t end there. Mad Golfer employees wear fluorescent green shirts so that they’re easy for customers to spot. Katz also purchased 2,000 dozen new Top-Flite Super Range Balls and three different kinds of artificial turf golf mats for customers to hit from.
“I bought three of one kind, three of another and three of another,” says Katz. “Instead of buying 50 of one kind, I let the consumer tell me which one they liked best.”
He says customers preferred the Easy Picker teaching mats, which have a grid so that golfers can make adjustments to their stance, and now those are the ones used on the public part of the tee line. There are also 10 natural grass hitting stations and, five months ago, Katz added a seven-station preferred customer hitting area.
Customers exit the patio of the clubhouse to the tee line, where 18 ground-level public stalls are to the right side and the seven “private” tees are to the left. Katz installed glass doors between the two areas. The preferred area has three automated tee-up systems from Pareto Golf Inc. and two TrueStrike Ltd. golf mats, as well as tables and chairs. Katz encourages “members” to bring their lunch or to sit back and relax with a cigar.
“It’s great for serious golfers because there aren’t any kids running around, and I think our seniors like it because they don’t even have to bend over to tee up a ball,” says Katz.
Customers pay $99 a year to access the private area, but Katz promoted it with a special $59 introductory offer that included a jumbo bucket of balls, a free round of miniature golf, a $10 pro shop gift certificate and $5 worth of freebies like Mad Golfer tees and divot tools. “It was like $40 of value so it really only cost $19 to join,” says Katz. “But it makes the customer feel special.”
Katz earmarks the money he makes from selling memberships for testing new products and equipment. Likewise, money he saves on employee labor by using an Easy Picker gravity-fed chute system is passed along to customers in competitive bucket fees and more personalized service on the tee line. The chutes were purchased by the previous owners, but lay dormant on the range and began to rust. Easy Picker refurbished the chutes and Katz and his brother installed them.
“I figure that saves me maybe $20,000 in man-hours instead of paying kids to manually lug the balls into the hoppers,” he says. “I had a meeting with my ball kids and I said, ‘Listen, I could lay half of you off and save all that money, or I keep all of you and instead of washing balls and getting your hands dirty, you can actually speak to the customers and take care of them.’”
Katz encourages employees to help patrons carry their clubs to and from the tee line and to walk the line, cleaning clubs for free. “I take good care of my customers,” he says. “I really do everything backwards. I ask what the customer wants and I provide it and then figure out a way to make money doing it.”
Mad About the Logo
Katz didn’t only turn to his customers with questions when he opened Mad Golfer. He had six years working in the golf industry making contacts for his Frenzi line of clothing and had earned the distinction of preferred vendor from various organizations, including the Association of Golf Merchandisers, National Golf Course Owners Association, Golf Coaches Association of America, Air Force Nonappropriated Fund Purchasing Office (Air Force and Marines golf courses worldwide), Golf USA Corporate, and National Golf Buyers Association. Suffice it to say, he had a little black book full of ranges and golf facilities to call on for advice.
“I called 12 people across the country and got a cross section of the best people in the industry,” he says. “I wanted to know who to buy balls from. Who has the best netting? Who should I talk to about insurance? I was a rookie and I could use all the help I could get.”
Perhaps other ranges should come to Katz about marketing. After 15 years as a clothing retailer, he built a thriving golf clothing business by offering quality products at a lower price than the big names in the golf industry. Of course, he also had bright yellow displays at the PGA shows, a shrewd plan to market to golf retailers rather than the individual consumer and, of course, that distinctive logo, first used eight years ago.
Katz commissioned his daughter, Staci, a graphic designer, to come up with a design, something that was “a cross between a golfer and Albert Einstein.” Realizing the Mad Golfer concept was a little over the top for the mostly staid golf industry, he marketed his clothing under the more conservative name Frenzi Golf, which sounded to many like an upscale Italian line of clothing.
For his range, the Mad Golfer logo was shrunk down to just a head, but that head is everywhere—on apparel, golf equipment, towels, tees, divot tools, head covers and the sign out front. It wasn’t until August 2003, though, nearly five months after he bought the facility, that Katz changed the center’s sign to include the new name and logo.
“I didn’t change the sign until I had everything done that I wanted to get done,” he explains. “I didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars advertising and saying please come see the changes we’re making, and people come and we’re not ready. Then they never come back.”
Not much chance of that happening these days. Katz is still listening to his customers, only now, he’s got a lot more of them at Mad Golfer.
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