TRUTH OR DARE?

We answer the questions you may have.

By Inesis

February 23^rd, 2022

On our design site at Inesis Golf Park, we connect directly to the golfers. We are fortunate to have a very large bay window overlooking the 9 hole golf course. This is called the “sea view”. It's just perfect for watching golfers with the idea of coming up with the products of tomorrow. We also have direct access to the shop behind our large collaborative table. We hear the customers’ questions, expectations and comments. There are some topics that come up often. Because we like to be as transparent as possible with you, we have decided to answer 8 recurring questions here. As frankly as possible.

1. WHEN WILL THERE BE COLOURS?

A few years ago, we had more patterns and bold colours in our clothing range and that translated into many products on sale at the end of the season. By turning our artistic direction towards “Athletic & Elegant” 3 years ago, we made the choice to use “block colours”, that is, plain colours that were able to please the most people. That has translated into excellent economic results. Our clothing is client-approved: the average score across all our range is 4.75/5!

But we completely understand your feelings. We have already added more colours in 2021, on shorts, polo shirts, and down jackets, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. Therefore, we are going to tackle the subject. We are going to go back to the drawing board and organise a large survey about colours in 2022.

2. WHERE ARE THE PRODUCTS?

You are entirely right. We have had a very complicated year in terms of product availability, for two reasons:

Difficulty producing our products: many factories have been forced to close for several weeks due to Covid. At the same time, the global demand for golf products was going up.
Lengthening of transport delays: Covid has also completely disrupted international transport, resulting in container shortages, blocked ports, and longer delays in delivery.

Unfortunately, in 2022, we have to expect as complicated a situation, in this sense.

3. WHY ARE YOUR PRODUCTS NOT IN MY SIZE?

You are right to bring up the complex question of sizing. There are two issues:

Universal sizing: our mission is to design products which work for the maximum number of people across the world, despite the diversity of morphologies. During this polo shirt sizing test, our golfers who all wore the L measured between 1.68m and 1.92m! We have to offer an average which will more or less work with the physical characteristics or each one.
Size inconsistency: that is, either too much or not enough difference between sizes, or difference between two products that are supposed to be the same size. It’s about the production. Clothing-making is a mainly manual procedure where errors exist and the tolerance margins are important. We have encountered production control problems in 2021. It’s a real challenge to harmonise our providers, of which there are more than 20 across the world who manufacture more than 4 million items per year!

Sizing is a long-term issue. We will unfortunately not be able to resolve all problems in 2022. But rest assured that we are hyper-focused on the issue. We are still going to reinforce our demands for quality from our production partners.

4. WHY ARE THERE QUALITY ISSUES?

We have taken into account your feedback on shoes to design the new versions of them, which will arrive from spring 2022.

We have also come across concerns about the quality of our polo shirts. Because of the Covid crisis, we have had to urgently move a part of the production, which has had a negative effect on the quality of the products.

A polo shirt designed to last: it’s with this idea in mind that we designed the MW500 polo shirt which comes out in the next few weeks. A 235g/m2 cotton (we have gone back to the weight from 10 years ago) and tested on 100+ machine washes.

Quality is an issue on which we will not compromise, because we know that if we want to claim to be cheaper than others on the same quality; there is no room for error.

5. HOW ARE YOU IMPROVING THE BRAND IMAGE?

In 2021, we received a lot of strong signals from the golf world underlining the progress we have made in terms of notoriety and brand image. For example, Benoît Vincent, TaylorMade’s former R&D Director , recently told us that he found the product and image direction of Inesis to be particularly appropriate.

There are two schools of thought: giving as much value as possible for your average brand into advertising, sponsorship, and marketing to sell (good) products at a more and more expensive price. Or designing excellent products well and sell them at a fair price, relying on the clients’ opinion and recommendation, without making golfers pay for things which won’t have an effect on their game (advertising, sponsorship, marketing). This is our position at Inesis.

We won’t go down the premium brand niche. Our communication strategy is to be transparent about what we do. We have nothing to hide, rather the opposite. Feel free to subscribe to our newsletter to follow all our design matters. We do not pay for outreach. We send products to independent influencers who are free to say what they think about them. In 2021, the results have been very positive with very good tests on the 100, 500, and 900 clubs and putters, and 850,000 views accumulated on YouTube in 2021!

We won’t sponsor pro players. For the sponsorship to have a true impact, you have to target the best PGA or European Tour players and that means millions of dollars. We prefer to invest in designing. We have two times more engineers and designers than 4 years ago. And an ecosystem open to all, with a lot of talent. In collaboration with the design team based in Inesis Golf Park, Benoît Vincent in San Diego (former Vice-President of TaylorMade), Binny and Paul in Shenzhen (former Titleist and Callaway engineers), Kevin in Dallas (former Wilson and Adams Golf engineer) and Erik in Paris (former Nike designer) work with us to develop products. We think we were right to make this economic arbitration 3 years ago in service of product excellence.

6. ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE MORE PRODUCTS FOR KIDS?

“Offer more choice of kids’ clothing!”

Kids make up 10% of the global golf market. We have therefore decided to only cover the main usage needs and to stick with 100% golfing products.

clubs: a range of 4 especially designed sets for kids between 2 and 13 years old
clothing: a complete range of mixed clothing: polo shirt, windstopper pullover, waterproofs, shoes, cap, glove.

It’s a strategic choice to not develop any other range of products for the next 2 years. This allows us to concentrate our resources on other key projects.

7. WHY HAVE PRICES GONE UP?

You have noticed the price increase of some products. We are completely committed to offering products at the best value/price. So there isn’t a lot of margin to cushion the fluctuations, and we are obliged to mirror the increase in primary materials or transport in the final price. In 2021, these were huge! For example, cotton went up by 40% and elastane by 100%. It’s the same thing for transport: it has gone up 10 times in 2021! Sending a container from Asia to Europe cost $1500 in 2020, it’s now $15,000! We are really focused on continuing to stand out in price difference against our competitors. Making golf easier is also about making it more accessible; it’s in Decathlon’s DNA.

And then sometimes, on the other side, we are challenged on how much cheaper we are than rival products that it doesn’t seem possible to offer products of the same quality. This has been the case for putters, waterproofs, the 900 series, and shoes. The idea that a good product has to be expensive has a way to evolve, we have to go easy with it.

Continue to bring your surprise about the prices to us, when you are, this is still important to us.

8. WHAT ABOUT SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT?

We are still far from our commitments in terms of sustainable development, but a lot of indicators are going to considerably improve in 2022.

Durability: 100% of the new clothing items are eco-designed; we will thus reach 40% of clothing being eco-designed at Inesis by the end of 2022.
Reparability: we are increasing the number of repairable club and trolley models at Inesis.

Finally, upon demand, we are putting together the 900 series and, shortly, 900 drivers, woods, and hybrids in the AML assembly facility in Lille, which allows us to reduce transport-related CO2 emissions by being directly connected to the demand. It’s a first at Decathlon.

Once again, a big thank you for your feedback which is really important and useful to us, year after year to improve us and we hope, to please you. Long live golf! We make golf easier!