Clone vs Brand

What is a cloned golf club?

Cloned golf clubs are not to be mistaken for the original clubs that they are trying to resemble. Yet they are built with the same material, have the same design and construction, and give the same feeling as the original. The biggest market for cloned golf clubs is the USA with several million clubs sold under the years. The goal with cloning is to offer the same features like the originals, but as a more price worthy alternative for the golfer. A cloned golf club is very much alike the concept with computer clones. In the middle of the 1980s computer clones were introduced on the PC market. Some of them, like Compaq, turned in to a big and successful brand.

Quality, Feeling, Price

During the autumn 2004 the Swedish television channel Tv4 plus, in the program Golftimmen (Golf-Hour), made independent tests were they compared a very well known golf brand with these less known brands. The question was if you could “buy” yourself a better handicap if you bought the more expensive clubs, or if you rather could just buy their cloned cousins. The outcome was an astonishing alike result with one exception: Our iron clubs showed a better result in certain tests.

The reason why you pay much more for a well known branded golf club is that you bought the marketing. The cost for research and development is not even close to the cost for marketing. Did you know for instance that marketing and brand development costs make almost 70 % of a branded club’s price, as an independent research showed? 2004’s Masters winner Phil Mickelson, signed a contract with Callaway worth a quarter of a billion Swedish crowns!