After five years of “achieving all our goals” in the UK, Lynx owners Stephanie Zinser and Steve Elford are now distributing their venerable brand in Spain, with an agreement with Holiday Golf, which has exclusivity.
Andalucía Golf/España Golf spoke to the couple during their visit to the Costa del Sol in May to see the workshop and all the other modern facilities at Holiday Golf in Marbella, play golf and enjoy the area’s spring-like climate and Mediterranean lifestyle.
Stephanie Zinser and Steve Elford had very different professional experiences when they decided to acquire Lynx five years ago. Steve had been in the golf sales business since 1982 and was “at the stage where I was looking for something different to do in golf.” Stephanie had a background in finance, having worked in the City before also going into journalism.
“The brand was available and I talked to Steph because we really wanted to do something together. I was in golf back in the eighties and nineties when Lynx was probably one of the top two or three golf brands in the world, so the idea of acquiring it was obviously very exciting.”
There were serious problems to solve. “It was a dormant brand,” says Stephanie. “Lynx went into financial difficulties in the late 1990s and a group of avid golfers, mostly celebrity names like Freddy Couples and Bill Murray, bought the brand, but unfortunately they put it back into receivership within 12 months. There’s a difference between loving the sport and being a good golfer and actually running a business. So he was available. Lynx wasn’t doing anything in the European market, so we took the brand for the U.K. and Europe in general, and after more than a year we decided there was no point in doing this unless we became its owners, that we would buy it.”
“It’s all very well having a passion for a sport,” Steve adds, “but you need a really good business brain, which is what Steph has. So my golf knowledge and her business skills have been a really good combination.”
Stephanie agrees. “Steve obviously knows all about golf. It’s almost in his DNA now. I came into this knowing nothing about golf – I’d never picked up a golf club – but in many ways we complement each other and each fill in the other’s gaps. That said, when it comes to branding and marketing and the vision we have for the company, we’re totally on the same page. It’s foolproof, and I think if you want to develop a strong identity you have to be very definitive about your approach. You have to have a very strong vision of what you want that brand to be and how you want it to look and feel to the public and the people you’re selling it to.”
At first, Steve recalls, “people underestimated our ambition. They thought we just wanted to be another small golf brand and would only be there for one season. “Now, after a difficult first couple of years and with tenacity, we’ve shown the doubters that we’re here to stay for a long time.
-When you took over Lynx, what attracted you to the company?
STEPHANIE: When we took over the business it wasn’t just a matter of “Oh, we’re going to make golf clubs, we’re going to be Lynx”: it was much more than that. Obviously, we had respect and recognition of what the brand stood for before. And if you talk to anyone who owned Lynx clubs or ever used them, there are always memories of the brand…great performance, a good legacy of winners and people playing, innovative and fresh.
We also said that if we are going to do it we are going to do it the right way, so it’s not just about product. We put a lot of focus on product, don’t get me wrong, but the key for us is also to service our customers efficiently, effectively, with care and concern, and with dynamism. It’s about making sure we play our part in helping people enjoy the game.
How many sports can a seven-year-old player play against a 75-year-old player? I’ve played with Laura Davies (a member of one of the Lynx teams). I barely have a handicap. She is a legendary golfer. We can play on the same team, we can play a fourball, we can play together. It’s awesome and people need to understand that. Plus, there are health benefits. And the argument about time is not real, because people are cycling now and they’re cycling five or six hours.
-It is also true, however, that young people in general and adults with little free time need to be attracted to golf. How can this be done?
STEPHANIE: We think we need to do a lot more about the format. Six-hole golf is a great format. I think more “clover course” layouts should be done so people can do six, six and six. For moms with kids, provide childcare or put the little ones in a golf lesson for an hour and a half. Do a round of six holes and then both of you both have lunch. You know, that kind of thing.
STEVE: “Nine and dinner” is a very widespread concept in the United States. It’s not a bad idea: it works. At five o’clock in the afternoon you finish work, take a buggy and play nine holes. You’re done in an hour and a half.
STEPHANIE: It shouldn’t be something heavy: it has to be fun.
-And isn’t it also too expensive for people starting out, especially young people?
STEPHANIE: Our Predator range is sold by the stick. We want to respect our customers. It’s great for us as a business if we can sell a complete set of clubs, but you know how fast kids grow up and yes, sometimes they get bored with golf or sometimes they say ‘Ah, I don’t like that.’ And if you’re a parent and you just bought a set of clubs and then John or Jemima decide not to play, it’s a waste. But if you buy them a 7 iron and they use it and say ‘I really like this’, you then buy them a driver next. I don’t think disrespecting customers is a very profitable thing to do in the long run. We’re looking for long-term business. There is a lot of corporate abuse of customer goodwill among some of the giants in this business.
STEVE: One of my biggest motivations when we first did this was because I had been in sales a long time and I saw the way some companies were treating customers. It was embarrassing. And I predicted three or four years ago that one of the major brands was on its way to going broke. You can’t keep gaining market share. It’s impossible, because once you have 100 percent what do you do then? They never did anything with the long term in mind. They did everything they could to get a sale for their shareholders, for that quarter, and that’s a dishonorable way to run your business, in my opinion. To be honest, they were taking the end user for a ride.
STEPHANIE: Also, what does it say about what they produce, about their product? Do they say, “We’re proud of what we’ve done”? Of course not, because if you were so proud of that, why would you change it three weeks from now?
-So, what is the normal Lynx product cycle?
STEVE: Two years. The other companies, well, sometimes three to six months. I mean six months would be an eternity for them! What they seem to be doing now is more amazing product launches throughout the year.
STEPHANIE: I think it’s just a way of masking the fact that they’re changing things a lot. Obviously, if we notice that something’s not right, if there’s a mistake in a bag or something like that, we’ll make a change within the company because why wouldn’t we want the customer to benefit from our discovery of something that could be improved? We always want to do that, but we usually take almost half of our entire range and change that in the first year and the other in the next year, so it’s on a two-year cycle. But not everything changes at the same time. As far as things that are very popular, if they’re not broken why fix them?
What are your most popular products?
STEPHANIE: Black Cat has been incredibly popular. We’re on our third reissue now. We are struggling to keep up with demand.
STEVE: The Black Cat driver was an impressive success. It was called a “cannon” in a magazine that has not been the kindest to us.
To what extent is your relationship with professionals important?
It’s very important, and they have the opportunity to take the reins of the business again. For a long time they’ve been undercut by the online dealers, but obviously there’s a big step towards fitting, custom fitting, and I think it’s quite important because actually everybody is different, everybody changes differently. Just the speed of the swing alone would probably determine what rod you used, so fitting is a very important thing, and you can’t do custom-fitting online. So they have a great opportunity to get back a lot of this business that has been previously taken away from them.
We see that we have to do something to help them, so we have made huge investments in supplying buggies with custom-fitting to the pros who have our products and so they have all the latest kit on them: interchangeable heads, exotic rods, a range of rods that we use… It’s not cheap, but we have invested in them because people try it, they see that it works for them and that they will actually be happy with their sticks. As often happens during our demo days, someone will come up and say, “I just spent x amount on some top-flight PXGs or something and I hate them.” And then they try our clubs and say, ” Oh my gosh, I hate them even more because this is amazing. I get 30 yards more than I did with my PXG.” And this is with a driver that’s on sale in the store!
STEVE: I’m going to brag now. We were invited last year to play nine holes, just the two of us, with Gary Player. How cool is that! He watched me hit with my Black Cat. I’m not a great hitter, and he said, “That’s going really well do you mind if I try it? Let me hit Callaway first. He hit a pretty good shot with his Callaway, then used my Lynx and went 20 yards further.
-In addition to Laura Davies, you have several other well-known players who help promote the Lynx brand, including senior champion Paul Eales and former Tour player and current TV commentator Nick Dougherty. What is the relationship like with them?
STEPHANIE: They are very collaborative and really want to see us succeed, just as we want to see them succeed. So it’s a complete synergy of desires. And it’s a very warm relationship. When they come to see us it’s like welcoming friends. And that’s what we want. We want partners, we want friends. We’re not interested in paying a lot of money to somebody who doesn’t give a shit about you and doesn’t get involved. We want people who want to play with our clubs because it works for them.
-Spain is the fifteenth country that is distributing your brand, which is already present in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Austria. Why now?
-STEPHANIE: A lot of people might say, “Well, why haven’t you been there before?” The reason is because we wanted to make sure we had our systems and the whole logistics aspect completely figured out. We worked out all the kinks in the system, and we got the product where we wanted it to be. Every year we look at last year’s product and say, “That wasn’t good enough, it could be improved, what could we do better,” because it has to be. We focus on what we can do better and expect the business to take care of itself.
There is no point in launching a brand in Europe if you don’t have everything in order, so you can present a cohesive and well thought-out product to the market. We have no shareholders. The two of us own the company, we have no external debt, and therefore all the responsibility for getting it right lies with us. But I am quite cautious. We are bold on one level, starting a venture like this, but on another level we are very cautious and I want to make sure that all my boxes are checked, that all my details are correct before we take the product somewhere else.
Europe is a different creature. Every part of Europe has different buying dynamics, the style of people, the style of selling and buying, playing, everything…, so you need to know your product thoroughly and that the form of service is strong enough to cover all of that.
-You said you want to “put Lynx back where it was.” Where is that?
STEPHANIE: World domination (laughs).
STEVE: I would like to see Lynx as one of the top three or four brands in the world. We received a very nice handwritten letter from one of the founders of Lynx telling us that he thought what we were doing was amazing, that it kept the spirit of the brand, and that he was very excited. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.
STEPHANIE: We are focused on what we are doing. There’s a part of us that looks around to see what everybody else is doing, but then we put the flashing lights on, because my feeling is, if you look around too much to see what other people are doing, first of all you get distracted and secondly you can lose your own focus. You do what you want to do and you do it well. I don’t want to copy anybody else. And we will live and die by it. If we get it wrong, there are only two people losing their money here. I think we have to stay awake, stay humble and not let the successes we have go to our heads.
STEVE: One time we went to a local restaurant that had just opened and was doing quite well. We got there and asked, “Do you have a table?” The maître d’ said, “Do we have a table?!” Don’t get your hopes up: we’re very popular.” And he said it in such an arrogant way that I thought: he must be annoying everyone with that attitude. And now they’re empty. I don’t want to be successful and then be arrogant about it. In fact, if anything, I want to be more humble at that point, and make our customer service even better.
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