Golfsmith Expands its Virtual Footprint

Golfsmith, the leading golf equipment retailer is now providing the underpinnings of the EPSN.com website. They will be the official golf and tennis supplier of EPSN.com and will provide all the marketing, sales, fulfillment and administrative support as well as 30,000 golf and tennis products to the site’s 18 million monthly visitors. This is part of an ongoing effort by EPSN.com to capture more of their site visitors’ retail spending.

What I found interesting was that Golfsmith, without the need to open a new bricks and mortar store, can expand its online footprint. Like Amazon.com, which provides content and infrastructure and fulfillment to other websites like Borders.com and Target.com, Golfsmith is re-purposing its entire inventory to another audience, thus growing its incremental sales without having to make a huge investment. Likewise, ESPN.com can offer more “value", in this case an online retail store, to its site visitors with little financial investment.

According to Alexa.com, the site ranking website, ESPN.com is the 38th most visited site on the web, while Golfsmith.com is at 15,559th. In comparison, GolfGalaxy.com is 96,559th and Dick’s Sporting Goods leads the pack at 7,127th.

Generally, online deals of this nature have a payout to a site like ESPN.com of 10-20% of gross sales. This seems like a win-win for both players in a slow growth market and another arena that a Golf Galaxy or a Dick’s Sporting Good should be playing in.