Acushnet Company - footjoy

Address:
333 Bridge Street
Fairhaven, Massachusetts 02719-0965
U.S.A.

Telephone: (508) 979-2000
Toll Free: 800-225-8500
Fax: (508) 979-3927
http://www.acushnet.com

Statistics:
Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Fortune Brands Inc.
Founded: 1910 as Peabody, Young & Weeks
Employees: 4,615
Sales: $1 billion (2002)
NAIC: 339920 Sporting and Athletic Good Manufacturer

Company Perspectives:

FootJoy. It's about comfort. It's about performance. It's about tradition. For nearly 150 years, FootJoy has been committed to creating superior golf footwear, gloves, and accessories that will enhance your on-course experience.
Second to none, FootJoy is the choice of those who love the game, from young to old, from amateur to top professional. For more than 55 years, FootJoy has been the leading golf shoe on the PGA tour. This proves, when given a choice, the best golfers in the world choose the best golf shoes in the world.

Key Dates:

1910: The company is formed as a rubber processing business.
1932: A Golf Ball Division is created.
1968: Acushnet Company name is adopted.
1976: The company is acquired by American Brands, Inc.
1985: Foot-Joy, Inc. is acquired.
1994: The company's Rubber division is sold off.
1996: Cobra Golf Incorporated is acquired.
2000: Tiger Woods drops his endorsement of Titleist balls.
2002: Acushnet reaches the $1 billion mark in annual revenues.

Company History:

A subsidiary of Fortune Brands Inc., Achusnet Company is devoted to producing golfing equipment and accessories. The Fairhaven, Massachusetts-based company boasts three of the most important brands in the industry: Titleist, Foot-Joy, and Cobra. Titleist produces the top selling golf ball, a favorite of touring professionals for several decades, but the logo also adorns other golf products, including clubs, gloves, bags, and accessories. Foot-Joy is best known for golf shoes and also markets dress and athletic shoes as well as golf gloves and accessories. Cobra's focus is golf clubs, but it too makes accessories. In addition to eight manufacturing, sales, and distribution centers located in the United States, Acushnet also operates facilities in countries across the world, including England, France, Germany, South Africa, Japan, and the Peoples Republic of China.

1910 Origins

Acushnet was founded in 1910 by a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Phillip W. "Skipper" Young, along with two college friends. Their partnership was called Peabody, Young & Weeks but subsequently became known as Acushnet Processing Company, named after the town in which they set up shop, Acushnet, Massachusetts. Although the company soon moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, it retained the Acushnet name. Its original focus was on rubber, taking advantage of a process Young developed to reconstitute rubber waste and scraps into a workable material. Acushnet developed a steady business with the major Akron, Ohio, rubber companies, which sent them their rubber scraps to be processed. By the end of World War I, in 1918, Acushnet was the world's largest supplier of reclaimed uncured rubber. However, with the dramatic drop in rubber prices in the early 1920s, falling from more than $3 per pound to just three cents per pound, Acushnet was forced to shift its focus. The company began to produce a number of molded rubber products, including bathing shoes and caps, toy boats, and hot water bottles. Acushnet became involved in the golfing business because of Young's fondness for, and frustration with, the game. According to company lore, he was so dismayed by the inaccuracy of his golf shots one day that he decided to x-ray some golf balls to see if the cores were properly centered. He found that most were well off the mark and prone to erratic shots. As a result, he decided to develop a better golf ball.

The first golf balls, dating as far back as the 15th century, were made of wood, either from elm or beech. Although durable, they were far from aerodynamic and could travel only around 100 yards. Next came leather spheres filled with cow's hair. The first major breakthrough in the evolution of the golf ball was the "feathery," introduced in 1618. Inside its leather sphere, painted white for better visibility, were goose feathers. The ball was packed while wet, so that upon drying it would become tight and firm and capable of being driven twice as far as a wooden ball. This process was labor intensive and thus resulted in a product that was expensive beyond the reach of average people. Next came the Gutta Percha ball, developed by Reverend Adam Paterson of St. Andrews, Scotland. It was made from rubber, the name referring to the gutta percha gum used as a raw material. The gutta percha ball could be mass produced, making golf more affordable, but it also had a tendency to break into pieces while in flight. Then, in 1898, Coburn Haskell introduced a more durable golf ball, one that had a solid rubber core around which was wrapped rubber thread that was then enclosed in a gutta percha covering. By the early 1900s, the Haskell ball became the standard in golf. As Skipper Young discovered, however, the balls were not precisely manufactured.

The 1990s and Beyond

In 1990, Acushnet reorganized its golf business, forging a single operating unit, Titleist and Foot-Joy Worldwide. A third major brand joined the fold in January 1996 with the acquisition of Cobra Golf Inc., maker of high-tech golf clubs. Cobra was a much younger entity than its sister companies. It was launched in 1973 by Thomas Crow, a former Australian Amateur Champion who also had 20 years of experience in golf club design working at Melbourne-based Precision Golf. Crow emigrated to San Diego, California, and launched his own golf club company, producing a unique club called the Baffler, the first utility wood that golfers could rely on to help them escape from especially tricky lies. The company then built on a reputation for innovation. In the mid-1980s, it embraced lightweight graphite shafts. Later, it developed the first full sets of oversized irons.

At first, Cobra Golf Inc. operated as a separate unit from Titleist and Foot-Joy Worldwide, but in August 1999 Acushnet's management decided to consolidate the golf club business. Although the brands continued to maintain separation, their operations were combined and streamlined to cut costs and gain efficiencies. A year later, the Titleist and Cobra sales forces were also consolidated, a move designed to help Cobra, which lacked a large enough stand-alone sales force to achieve the level of sales Acushnet expected from the brand. In 2000, Acushnet did away with the two division format, opting instead to do business as a single entity, Acushnet Company, featuring its three premiere brands.

In the last two decades of the 20th century, Acushnet expanded its golf business internationally. In 1983, the company formed a joint venture with Tokyo Tire and Rubber Company to distribute Titleist products in Japan. Acushnet Foot-Joy Thailand Ltd. was launched in 1990 to manufacture Foot-Joy golf gloves. Acushnet GmbH became operational in Germany in 1992. A year later, operations were established in Canada, Sweden, France, Denmark, and Austria. In 1994, Acushnet Nederland BV was launched, followed in 1995 by a joint venture in Taiwan to manufacture Foot-Joy golf shoes. The Acushnet South Africa office opened in 1996. Finally, Acushnet Singapore Pte. Ltd. launched operations in Singapore and Malaysia in 2002.

Leading Acushnet into the new century was president and CEO Walter R. Uihlein, a long-time executive with the company. An avid golfer from childhood, Uihlein went to work at a local pro shop as a teenager. He was, by his own admission, entranced by the image portrayed by the Titleist sales rep, who was always better dressed than the competition and had the air of the consummate professional. One Titleist rep, Jim Kernohan, took Uihlein under his wing and helped him land a job with Dunlop after college. As soon as a sales job opened up at Titleist, however, Uihlein was quick to lobby for the position. An enthusiastic and hard worker, he quickly made his way up through the ranks. Hired as a sales rep in 1977, he was promoted to national sales manager little more than a year later. By age 33, he made vice-president, and three years later, in 1985, became the youngest general manager in the company's history. In 1989, he became president and CEO of Titleist and added the chairmanship in 1995. In that same year, he became president and CEO of Acushnet.

The emergence of Tiger Woods in the late 1990s increased golf's popularity and also added to the complexities Uihlein faced in leading Acushnet into the new century. In 2000, Woods dropped his endorsement