It's small adjustments that can help you play better. So we've got my strategy
which can take your data and overlay it onto any golf course in the world,
so you can see what you want to hit off the t, what
your dispersion and tendencies will mean for your alignment, and how you want to
hit it down a specific hall. Again great for course management and course strategy.
You can get your coach to sign up to Academy for free and you
can push all of your data to them. If you're going to go for
a lesson, they can spend five minutes before that lesson having to look through
your data so that when you rock up, it's not how have you been
playing My driving's terrible. That may be, but if data can show actually,
no, it's short game and bunker play, go and get the most
value for your dollars and spend that time working with a PG coach on that
part of the game. It's just small decisions, small changes that can lead
to better golf. And when we see that continually within our ecosystem, golfers
coming back saying he a player of fourteen eight ah. This is Trent Harvill
from Germantown Tennessee. I play at the Iring Country Club. This is Golf
Smarter number nine hundred and twenty nine. Technologies evolution and game improvement. Data
contributes greatly to lower scores with Shotscope. This is Golf Smarter sharing stories,
tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and raise
your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the
Golf Smarter Podcast. Gavin, Thanks Fry, thanks for having me on.
It's great to see you again. It's been a couple of years. You
were on episode seven hundred and sixty three back in October of twenty twenty and
we were just getting introduced to schtscope because at that time it was practically a
new category in golf of you know, bringing in the electronics. And I
can't think of any other sector in golf that is moving as rapidly as the
electroc side, the metrics side versus. Maybe, but the PGA Tour will
be the only thing that's moving fast because of the tour and the competition that
they all have. But what's going on with Shaska over the last couple of
years has been remarkable. How are you how things going? Yeah, I
mean it feels like yesterday, right days, merge, months merge, and
it is. It's an explosion across of technology effectively, and there was a
lag with the pandemic, you know, with lots of companies right, R
and D hit product innovation, and we were fortunate that we back in twenty
twenty we launched our V three you watch in our G three watch, and
then from that point on we had plans to launch other products. They took
a little bit of a hitting twenty twenty one and then I'm early like a
supply chain thing or was it just yeah, people not being together working together
to give you an idea. GPS components went from normally on about sixteen week
lead time up to seventy weeks. Oh my god. So you know it's
not my side of the of work, but I'm sitting there going, you
know, you're trying to forecast seventy weeks in advance of what you might need,
and it was just impossible, you know, to innovate off that and
understanding, and it affects everything, right, So it affects our innovation.
But we are beholding to chip sets that you can use, and so their
R and D of Chipman manufacturers stopped production scale because they you know, demand
was through the roof, but they had shut downs and lockdowns and the Asia
predominantly where they're manufactured, and of course it just ripples down and in seventy
weeks is more than a ladder. Well, this is it. It's it's
it's crazy. And now for GPS chips would be down back down to like
twenty two weeks. So you know, for instance, we're looking at Q
three at the moment for twenty twenty four for manufacturing. Wow. And with
today's market, especially for US, you've got the wild swings of inflation and
election and different things taking place, and all you need is a couple of
retailers, Hey, we're thinking about doing a full rollout of you for twenty
twenty four. You're like, oh great, thanks of the notice. So
you know, it's it's a challenge, right, and one of the things
that we've done to combat that, and and partly because of our users have
asked, is go and expand our product lines and introduce different products. Mhm.
So yeah, it's it's been a challenge, but again it's it's good
fun. That's that's the key. You know, you're you're all good.
You have a perspective on it. It's all good fun. And hey,
it's better to be in demand than not being demand. Listen, you have
kids, you understand. It's all work. It's fine, It's gonna make
itself fine. I got really more important things to deal with these days.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. They keep you on your toes. Yeah,
much more than work. So when we first talked to you, it was
really the watch, right, the shot Scope watch yea. And there there
was a lot of competition there, you know, the you know, Apple,
everyone tried to come out with these smart watches. Then Apple does what
they do, and they came out with the Apple Watch, and all of
a sudden, there's lots of apps competing with that. And you know,
I'm pretty nerdy. I'm a very tech oriented person. I'm in my group
of friends. I'm the it guy that everyone's like, oh that's Freddy knows.
They're like, how do you figure out how your picture is? Where?
They are so fast? All anyway, But I started using you know,
I used your stuff. I liked it a lot. Then the Apple
Watch and then all the apps and the Apple Watch just I couldn't do play
a whole round of golf without the watch dying. They're like, okay,
well that's useless. And then all these gps, the rangefinders were coming out
and they're giving you front middle back on your phone or you you know,
you have a range finder where you can look through and it's giving you front
middle back. It's great, but you're just looking at a pin. There's
so many ways to do it. But metrics have become so important that this
is just an integral part of everybody's back. Yeah, and so the metrics
side back when we last spoke, the collection method was using one of r
V three watch And for US, you know, if you look at the
UK golf market, sidently five percent of golfers will use a watch. In
the US, it's like twenty two to twenty five percent. Wow, it
because we take longer to play? No, well yeah, I mean it's
growing quickly in the US, much quicker than anywhere else. And generally that's
because of how easy a watch is to use on the golf course. But
what that meant was we had that one product and it was like, hey,
if you want to track your game capture data, here's how you use
it. Here's how you're going to have to do it. Where we are
now is we have goodness made one, two, three, four, four
different options of how to do it, and two of those currently are watch
based. One is a small handheld device that you can tag, and another
is are an app based product which you get tags and you can effectively use
your mobile phone with on the course. And the reason for that is it
allows golfers to go and track how they want to track. Now we can
provide them three different ways to do it. We can offer them four different
price points because we don't have subscription, so it's just hed by whatever product,
how you want to utilize it, how it fits with your game.
And that's really seen an explosion of use of tracking the minute we did that
right, and we'll see a lot of guys come in and use our app
best product, which is Connects. It's one hundred bucks, no subscription.
They get access to GPS app, they can capture all of their data.
It's pretty simple to use and it introduces them to the shots gooed ecosystem,
what you can gather off that data. And then what we see is six
months nine months later they say, well, actually i've been watching how much
simpler it is to track for the watch, I think I'll go and get
one of those, you know. And for us, the key is,
hey, we don't want to tell the golfer how they have to track the
game. We want to just provide, you know four. Hopefully there'll be
a fifth option quite soon, a different way that fits in with that golfer
and potentially the other technology that they have. They might have an Apple Watch
because they want to do heart ray monitor, or they feel like they need
to be connected with the outside world and a golf course, so hey,
you could use a different mechanism to track your game. It doesn't need to
be a watch based. That's a real estate battle on the body effectively the
watch. So that's one aspect of our growth. And then the other was
we moved into rangefinders, which again is logical, and that came from two
reasons. One was, as we expanded into retail, they're saying, hey,
look what other products we like your brand? It sells well, what
other products can you bring to market? And we also started getting a number
of our watch users saying, hey, I'd love to see if you guys
could develop a rangefinder. And it's becoming noticeable with it and avid golfers that
over fifty percent of them will now carry two technical devices or two tech devices
within their bag. Two so that may be a watch system and a rangefinder.
It could be a handheld and a rangefinder, so they like to have
two. So we brought out the L one at the end of twenty twenty.
We've now moved in L two. We have the Lex the Lex Plus
which is integrates the GPS as well, and then we'll have a new rangefinder
debuting at the PGS Show next year. So you know, all of a
sudden from when we spoke we had two skews to now we manage with colors
and straps about fifty five wow. So it's a logistical nightmare. Is probably
the best way to put too many skis use for a little company, you
knows. It creates some fun and it creates a bit of a challenge,
but it also allows us to service different markets and different types of golfers,
right, which is key for us because we've got quite a holistic view of
the company is full of golfers. We just want guys to improve. You
know, you look out on a Saturday or someday, there's a lot of
improvement that can be done. And I'm in this camp now where it's like,
hey, I don't play as much golf as I'd like. I certainly
don't practice. So if you don't practice and spend hours at your game,
how are you going to improve? Well, data is an insight, you
know. Data can lead you to making some better decisions. If you make
a few better decisions, you will score better. So well, I think
you're at a place in your life where it's more important to just get out
there than worrying about am I getting better? You say that. Unfortunately,
we have some very good players at the company, and it gets incredibly competitive
on the golf course. So yeah, there's there's a pride aspect to the
game, probably more than anything else. We're gonna take a time out and
we're gonna talk more with Gavin Deer about what's going on at shot Scope right
after this. I really appreciate the fact that you guys are avoiding up to
this point. It may change at some point, but not doing subscriptions.
I know it's hard for a company to figure out, Okay, we sold
our product, how do we get that person to come back? Because they
have the product and hopefully it's going to last a long time, so let's
do a subscription service. So we've got them by the golf teas. You
know, it's like how do we keep them here? And to me as
a consumer, I see subscription and I'm like, I'm not so sure.
You know, why am I paying monthly for this where there's so many options
where I don't have to. That must have been an internal battle from you
know, the bean counters to the players to a point. But quite early
on we had a look at the market and none of us felt comfortable with
the subscription model. And that can be from a number of places, but
I think one of the one of the drivers would be, hey, we're
Scottish, you're not playing golf all year round. I how are you going
to charge somebody a subscription in January when it's snowing outside? That makes no
sense? And are you going to punish golfers for playing more golf? And
fortunately we've we've got models in place that don't you know, financially, we
don't need subscriptions. And you know, if you take the L two we
can sell thirty thousand of those pieces a year. That means that we don't
need to sell subscriptions. And if we're smart, and again, if you're
shops cope user and you want to add a rangefinder, will hopefully you know,
they'll like our brand they keep it. So it's trying to create that
ecosystem and a lot of that fends off the need for a subscription. I
fully agree with you. It's so easy to understand how companies fall into that
trap. But at the end of the day, we view subscriptions as they
will inhibit growth. And you know, I think our aim is to sort
of to get up there, to be in one of the largest companies within
golf. And if you're going to do that, subscriptions just aren't going to
help you, right right, That's not what's going to sell the It's not
like we're all consumers at the end of the day. I'm similar to you.
If I see a subscription, I'm sitting They're going You've got to show
me incredible value throughout that time to make me sign up to this. I'm
skeptical. It's difficult, and you go, look it's yeah, I don't
I don't think you need it. I'd rather sit there and content and provide
you additional value for free that makes you turn around and say to your friend,
Hey, you're watching just ran over in the car park. You should
go get yourself one of these. Yeah. Yeah, years ago when tags
were just being introduced, I think it was game golf was one of the
first ones, if not the first, to introduce the concept of tags,
but you had to wear something on your belt, and then it's you know,
it was early, early in the evolution of the technology, and Arcost
came along and kind of just dominated. And now you guys have introduced tags
to your products as well, which I think is amazing because now it's not
just a GPS product. Now it introduces the whole metrics element into game improvement,
which is so important for every every especially every amateur golfer, because we
don't have time to stand at the range for five to six hours a day
and play a round of golf, analyzing every swing and the speed and all
these things. So any kind of any way that you can come home from
the golf course and have information and data that helps you analyze where you are
in your game and where you need to improve is so valuable. Yeah,
and it's it's a fastening the fascinating out element of technology within golf. You've
got this element of collection. How does something perform on the golf course.
One of our standards is, let's make sure that technology doesn't slow down the
game. So you've got that element, and then, as you say,
when you come off the golf course, you upload your data to your app
and everything's there, and that's what we pride ourselves on. We've got different
ways for a golfer to collect, but we also pride ourselves on, Hey,
you might not be a statistician at heart, but hey, if you
come onto the app, we're going to help you gain insights from it.
We're not just going to leave you looking at a spreadsheet of numbers. And
the way we do that is we'll go and ask you certain things. So
we'll ask you your handicap, We'll ask you where you play, how often
you play, what you're trying to do, and then we'll go and say,
hey, here's your death but hey, you play have twenty two.
Well here's what twenty handicapper does. You're better than them at driving puttings where
you're poor, Oh, look at that, it's holding out and you just
want to create little places so that hey, you don't have hours to go
and stand up putting green, But can you go and spend five or eight
minutes before you play next just practicing from five feet and in and it's small
adjustments that can help you play better. Then additionally, you can look at
strategies. So we've got my strategy which can take your data and overlay it
onto any golf course in the world, so you can see what you want
to hit off the tea, what your dispersion and tendencies will mean for your
alignment, and how you want to hit it down a specific hole. Again
great for course management and course strategy. You can get your coach to sign
up to Academy for free and you can push all of your data to them
so they can if you're going to go for a lesson, they can spend
five minutes before that lesson having a look through your data so that when you
rock up, it's not hey, how have you been playing My driving's terrible?
Well, that may be, but if data can show actually, no,
it's short game and bunker play. Go and get the most value for
your dollars and spend that time working with a PG coach on that part of
the game and it's just small decisions, small changes that can lead to better
golf. And when we see that continually within our ecosystem, golfers coming back
saying, here, I play off fourteen and now playoff eight. What have
you done differently? I make a few decisions. I've concentrated a couple of
elements of the game. I know that I shouldn't hit it in bunkers off
the tae, so I avoid them under all at all costs, and suddenly
my scores are dropped. You know that? Is it is that simple?
I know it's hard to go no brainer, right, I mean, it's
it's easy to say that, and it's like, is it really Yeah?
It really is a no brainer on it. And we we publish huge amounts
of content about data, and it's all generalistic. Here's what a twenty handicapper
does, here's what a ten does, here's you know, we know hitting
into ferry bunkers cost you a lot of shots. That's not rocket science,
right, And it's great and it can help inform golfers. But until you've
got individualistic data of your tendencies and trends, that's where the real gold golden
nuggets are, right, And it's it's three putting from distance. We'll go
and stand and it puts up and down the putting green for five minutes.
You know, if you do it five minutes for the next ten rounds,
it's a lot of time you spent on that part of the game that you
didn't before. And it's simple. It could be two less three parts around
there's two shots gone, so you know, it's it's it's fascinating seeing and
working with amateur golfers and and and you know, more than ever being in
the position where yes, I'm I've got a time crunch where it you know,
work a lot, travel a lot with work, young family, don't
play as much golf, And I'm like, I get why you're not going
to spend hours on the range, But hey, here's a couple of tips
that you could do that just are small changes and they could have a big
reward. Indeed, another time out coming up right now. I'm curious if
the the data on the tags, let's let's go back to the tags for
a second, that the data that you're accumulating in the app, is that
all happening in the background, or is there's something you need to do post
round to make sure that it's all there and then you can review it.
How exactly does that work? So what we do is during the game of
golf, you're collecting the data and the tags don't have any batteries in them,
so they never need replaced. So the device has the data and the
tags are on the golf clubs. Yes, they're screwed into the grips,
yes, And all they're really doing is saying, hey, this is a
seven ar, this is a setar, and I'm standing at this spot.
Yeah, and that after your round, the device, so the watch or
the handheld will connect via bluetooth to the app and you upload your data.
Takes six seconds, and in that time of uploading, we effectively take all
your swings, practice swings, real swings. We look at how you've walked,
where you walked, the tie time stamps in the GPS locations, and
we put it through about a million and a half lines of code, and
we know which course you were playing if we overlay it on our course mapping
data, so we know, hey, this isn't a bunker, this is
in a fair way, this is a fringe. And we compile all of
that and then what we do is similar if you were going to sign off
a scorecard, we say, hey, look, Fred, here's your scorecard.
This is what happened. Can you just double check it? Are you
happy with that score? Has it missed anything? Occasionally we'll miss a shot,
you know, if you hit a bunker shot and it comes back to
your feet, the system find it difficult to dish to understand what that is,
so we just take you through a quick sign off period which will take
a minute or two minutes it and it does things like, hey, you
hold out from sixty yards? Did that happen? Did we miss something there?
Did that happen? You hit it four hundred yards off the team?
Did that happen? Did we miss congratulations? You hold out from sixty hours.
So occasionally, and the system gets smarter the more you play it right,
because we know what you average, so it's like, hey, that
looks a bit unusual, and it can be the opposite of I was.
I was traveling with one of the team in Scottsdale and we went and played
it true north and he hit a boulder off the tee and it went backwards
and he's his second shot was further away from the hole than his first shot
was and of course I'm sitting there going, well, this is going to
be interesting. There in no doubt the clubhouse. He uploaded it and it
went did this actually happen? And it's just a little bit of checks right,
But that takes a couple of minutes. And then after that all your
data is available and we will show you overlays of each hole well pilot,
so that hey, you've played this course a lot, so you can look
at your history of playing that course. We'll add it to your club distances,
your percentage is a fair way. All of that information just becomes available
and you can spend hours looking through the app and what you can gain from
it. So there's so many different rangefinders out there right now, and they
seem to all be the same one, just with different branding on thems,
like it looks like they were made by the same manufacturer. And then someone
just say, oh, here put my name on it. Here put my
name, and then you get an email that says the greatest range frond.
It's like, now I've used that one and my friend actually uses it,
and every time we're standing on the tea, we're getting different readings. Come
on, really, what's going on? And I used to early on,
I found a rangefinder that also had the front middle back readout on it,
and I love I love that because it gives me front middle back and then
it gives me an actual view of where the pin is, so then I
can kind of strategically say, okay, I don't I should play below the
hole here. It's as opposed to try to reach the back of the green.
And you guys have seemed to take all that technology and created a rangefinder
that works with the tags and that seems to be unique. And what is
out there available compared to your competition. Yeah, so we am. I
was at so we have two PR companies, one for North America, one
for Europe. And I was down playing golf with the UK one and of
course I'd never played before, and I was showing them our first range finder,
the prol one, and you know, we've got a technical apartment,
so they've had to learn quite quickly how a rangefinder would be made and how
to do it. And we were out and it was the ninth hole,
par five. I'm going to have a go at it in two and I'm
like, I've range I've lasered the back flag and I'm like, that's a
long grain. And our PR guy, who's very experienced, is looking at
me, going, what's wrong, Gavin. I've got a doll of my
watch. I want to know what the distance is to the front of the
green. I can't. I can't find it anywhere it's firm. I've got
to land around there. I don't know. And we then sat in a
car for seven hours with one of our team and she's she's a very good
golfer, and I was like, I kept coming back to this instance,
and she was like, you know what, we could take a range finder
and add GPS to it. And so we started kind of coming around with
these ideas how would it look. So we spent a couple of months and
then presented it to our technical side, who were less than impressed, I
think, with our models. But we'd kind of worked out a way that
by putting a magnet on the back and putting a magnet on a handheld,
you could connect the two so you could have this versatility of this all in
one product. That was Hey, it's a rangefinder, it's also a handheld.
It canake the handheld can be taken off the rangefinder can be attached to
the cart. You could shot track using the handheld if you want, You
could leave it on the rangefinder if you want. You could do any which
way of using it. And that's that's what the Prolexplus is. It's been
a phenomenal introduction for us because it is a three and one product. One
of its great strengths is that it's our handheld and one of our rangefinders combined,
so they're a lot of the time if you see a GPS integrated rangefinder,
it's a rechargeable rangefinder yea. And people you know what are golfers that
live in colder climates will know well, if you put a liftian battery outside
in a cold golf bag and a garage, it can go flat quite quickly.
So one of the great advantages with our rangefinders, the Lex has battery
operated. The H four side is a lithium battery, but they're they're not
connected, so if one ran out of battery, you still have a device,
you still have ability to use one of them. So yeah, we
introduced that in the twenty twenty end of twenty twenty one and it's been phenomenal.
Are we revised it in the middle of the summer of twenty twenty three,
which was effectively us putting a cart magnet on the side because our initial
rangefinders we don't there's no need for cart magnets because we're based in the UK
and you're not going to use a cart and you know so quickly. Our
second generations of rangefinders have included the cart magnet. But I never really understood
to give you to answer your question about them all being similar. Rangefinders are
all similar, there are subtle differences in quality. It was a fascinating journey
for me because I had to go and learn about this, spend hours in
golf shops all around the world sort of just picking up range finders randomly,
so you get fire time. Now, for most golfers, fire time doesn't
make any difference consistency so effectively how quickly from when you fire the rangefinder that
it will hit a flag and come back to you and show this, okay,
right, and you're talking the difference between it and industry leading one in
the normal range finders half a second. It's unnoticeable to most golfers. You're
right. We had to work quite hard on the consistency element of it showing
the same distance. You know that that was a learning curve for us.
Our new rangefinder that comes out in January, will we think, compete with
anything on the market at any price point. At the same time, we
produce the L two, which is one hundred and fifty bucks rangefinder which comes
with a cart magnet slope. It's a phenomenal value piece and it's it's been
an incredible seller for us in multiple different territories. So you know, it's
trying to hit different price points, different offerings, making sure that they're all
every product's up to a quality that you know we would use and adding in
elements of innovation, whether it be adding the GP and the capability of you
know, taking the product and using it in different ways, which again is
something that within short scope really pleas with because it's hey, they're core golfers.
They understand the different use cases. Here's how I would use it,
here's how I would use it right, And for a lot of the tech
companies, they're not golf companies. They're doing different things right, so it's
different ideas. Are in products more margin based. Well, this is usually
where we take a break to talk about what's going to be happening this week
on Golf Smarter Mulligans. But Golf Smarter Mulligans is on hiatus until the beginning
of April of twenty twenty four, So in the meantime we're going to take
a quick break and then we'll be back with more after this. One of
the things that you said that kind of concerns me, and I'm just wondering
how well that works. As you said that, you're your front middle back
rangefinder that's on the laser and I'm getting the words wrong here, but it
attaches to the rangefinder by magnets yep. And do you ever have issues with
disappearing people losing it? It coming off? It bumps off while you're there
because you know you had a second element there and you're introducing a potential issue
for clumsy people. Yeah. No. And I'm just looking around because I'm
like, I shure have one, but I'm talking to you, and you're
like, like there's a bee buzzing around your head and you're looking all over
the place. I'm under your desk. I don't I have a one of
the h fours, So okay, it actually that's the small unit that is
that is the one that attaches to the range. Okay, yeah, and
so it it sits in the magnets attractions a magnet on either side. They
don't come off. It's incredible and yeah, very stable. But that's the
thing. You can put it in your pocket as well, right, you
know, you need to have that attached to so it doesn't necessarily have to
be attached, but you can keep them attached and get the front, middle,
back and then look through the rainfinder and get the exact position correct it.
And it comes with a little belt clip as well that the magnet stills
in and clips to. And so there's there's multiple uses and ways of a
golf that a golfer could use us. Right, they could they could just
attach this to the car. They could put it in their pocket, they
could put it onto their belt. Again, it's a lot of our products
are designed to how somebody going to use this, Yeah, it's up to
them. Yeah, well that's really smart. That's what I love about you
guys is that your golfers and it's like you get to test it yourself and
as opposed to just having a bunch of nerds in the in the back room
going now, you can't do it that way. Yeah, and that's both
hardware and software. So you know, when it comes to software development,
it's features that the golfers within our company would like to use effectively. And
you know, we go from I mean I was ex professional, but we've
got a couple of PG professionals or XPG professionals within our team. We've got
a girl that's top one hundred and fifty in the world amateur rankings, and
we've got various club champions. But we've also got fifteen handicappers and absolute beginners
within our team. So again, you get that breadth of experience, knowledge
and want from the products. So we tend to tap into that as much
as I've seen any company do right to help understand what's what's the way forward?
Awesome, Awesome, So when are you coming up in twenty twenty four
And you mentioned earlier the PGA Show, and if we you know this is
going to run right around the time that we're recording this at the end of
twenty twenty three, but we're going to publish this show just around the time
that the PGA Show will be happening. So you're not giving up anything that
hasn't been announced already. Yeah, So we've got a new rangefinder coming out,
the pro ed R. Again, so we've been looking primarily at technology
within the rangefinders. With the z R, we've done that again and again,
looking at that consistency of fire and understanding, hey, how can we
improve that, and our team of work pretty hard over the last year to
come up with something that we're really proud of. But then also looking at
the touch and the feel aspect of the rangefinder. You know, our rangefinders
up to this point have been plastic. The z R is a full metal
bodied rangefinder, so it's way more robust than anything on the market. How
does that impact the weight of it? It makes it heavier, but heavier
is not a bad thing. Heavier generally makes it more stable in your hands.
And again just it's a really solid package. So it's our it will
be what our most premium rangefinder, but it's still going to be three hundred
bucks so you know probably yeah, and in technology wise, probably competing against
things that are four hundred and fifty five hundred bucks. Wow, So really
pleased with that. It will be carried from the off in pg siperstore in
all of their stores. So again available for touch and feel, which is
incredibly important when it comes to the rangefinder aspect. This is not a kind
of product that can be an online only purchase. Yeah, and they have
to be able to feel it. When you get to a certain price point
within the golf market and technology, it becomes a touch and feel m Hey,
you know, I'm going to part with some serious cash what a you
know? Am I really happy with what I'm going to buy? And that
helps us with the z R So yeah, So that absolutely fascinated to see
how that goes. We've already had a lot of people interested at the retail
aspect, and then further into twenty twenty four, we'll have a new watch
coming out as well, so something that sits between our current offering which is
G five which is GPS only and one hundred and fifty bucks and the X
five which is two hundred and ninety nine bucks. We'll have a watch setting
in the middle of that. Again, so you've got something for everybody now,
yeah, and again that's you know, for us, we pride ourselves
on that. And you look around the ecosystem and you've got garment there,
you've got Bushnell. We talk about ourselves as being the third brand within golf
technology, and but part of that is the breadth of product that we have
and the ability to say different price points, different types of customers, and
that's something that's really helped us grow over the last couple of years and will
help us grow in the future. And you feel confident that the quality of
your product line is competing with Again, you're a small tech company and you're
competing with very large tech companies. Yeah, I mean again, looking at
our products, there's two aspects. So one is the hardware aspect, very
comfortable with how that competes. And then the other side would be the software
side, and incredibly comfortable and effectively. We take care with our apps or
development our features because we are golfers. We're going to use the product ourselves,
and even when it comes down to support, really comfortable with how that
works. How hey, you need your course updated, takes our guys forty
hours and then it'll be their new course. Whatever you need is adjusted,
it's available on the app, it's available on your device. So I think
that will see us with our growth. I think with the larger companies it's
more of a bottom line focus than ourselves, where hey, we just want
to grow, we just want to be there. Talk to potential golf customers,
get them into our ecosystem, get them understand how we see the world
of golf, and hey, we can help you try and improve. And
the type of nerd that likes to get information about what I'm doing, how
I'm progressing. And a friend recently asked me, is like, what do
you do with that information? I said, to figure out what I'm not
doing well and then try to work on that. Because you think that helps.
I'm like, yeah, I really do, I really do. So,
you know, at first having the tags with Game Golf, as we
talked about early on, that gave me some good information and I liked it.
And then but having all these different products, then I went to the
watch, Then I went to the phone, Then I went to GPS apps,
then I went to a rangefinder, having you know, and now I'm
using Arcos on my clubs only getting information, but it's mix and match,
and I really have to go over I have to keep my scorecard and go
over it with a fine tooth comb to compare the notes with Arcos. And
it's like, this is really spending a lot of time doing something I don't
want to do. I was hoping it would be taken care of. What
I love about what you guys have been able to develop and evolve as a
as a tech company is that you have all those elements integrated into a single
product that you can get your just the information you need while you're playing,
but you can also go home take all that information, compare it to other
how other golfers and you know your category are doing. What is it?
What are the things that we can learn from your app once we you know,
at the end of the round. Besides, you know, while we're
playing, but after the round, what can we learn and how do we
access that to help us look at what we're struggling with and how we get
better. Yeah, that's okay, that's it a never ending question. It
sure sounded like it from use I kept going so with the apps and our
team are phenomenal at allowing a goal for to dig as deep and as granular
as they want. And so, hey, you just want some basic club
distances, we can give you that. It's a couple of clicks. Hey,
if you want to go and look at every individual shot you've ever hit
with a driver. You can do it. It's a lot of clicks,
but you can do that. So it gives you what you want. It's
not going to force you anything. We actively encourage guys that are being working
with a club pro or a PGA pro to connect their data to them through
academy. Get that insights and advice. But in reality, the system is
just going to tell you whether it's using strokes gained, what areas of the
game you're losing shots where you benchmark against your peers, and then start to
help you dig into that. So, hey, we'll show you short game,
Fred, you're losing shots short game against your peers. Okay, how
is that taking place? Is that bunker play? Is that specific clubs?
Oh? Actually, Fred, you pitch constantly with a loggage, right,
we would suggest trying to pitch with two clubs less than whatever you're going to
choose. So, hey, I normally choose a loggage, Let me choose
a gap wage. I normally choose a pitching wedge from this location, Let
me choose an eta. So we're gonna we're going to try and give you
some questions to go and answer and say, look, here's some ideas of
how you could improve without changing technique or concepts. Right, wow, that
is phenomenal. Have you been Wait a minute, I'm not using your product.
How do you know that about my game? Oh? This is it?
This is educated guess experience guess. So it's it's it's about this element
of giving the golfer manageable insights, right telling you, Hey, your short
games per Well, that's great. You may or may not know that.
How do you deal with that? Well? Okay, well if we say,
hey, actually, Fred, it's your bunker play. That's diabolaccaults,
letting your rest. Your short game is actually quite good, but bunker plays
a problem. Okay, Well, there's two aspects to that. One is
don't hit it in bunkers. The other is improve improve your technique to get
out of bunkers. And at that point we go, well, look,
bunker play is pretty technical, weed advise you go and see a PGA pro
Go, spend a couple of hours with PJ pro. Additionally, let's try
and not hit it into bunkers. So hey, if there's bunkers short of
the green, here's your club distances. Try and hit to the back portion
of the green. So you can come at everything from a couple of elements,
but it's it's that major understanding of hey, okay, it's my bunker
play, that's my problem. And it's amazing how often you see golfer on
my chipping's terrible. Well it's not great, but you've missed fifteen out of
eighteen greens for the last four rounds. So is it you're chipping? And
then you dial back and say, well, why are you missing all the
greens? Well, actually you're not hitting great tea shots. And it's amazing
the knock on effect of going right. Okay, you're missing all your tee
shots. Right then you're kind of hitting it up somewhere around the green.
Now you're chipping from a variety of locations. Can we take the tea shot
and aim down the left hand side? If you change your point of your
point of alignment and hit down the left side, can you hit more fairway?
Data would suggest you can. Now you can hit some more greens.
Now you're pitching less. And there was also the element of your ego and
you're like, oh, I can hit this club this far and it's like,
no, you're not coming up to the green. So obviously you can't.
You got a club up. Yeah, and even for myself, I
mean, look, I played at a really high level. I find it
fascinating. I'll stand on a course and I'm like a little bit of a
wind here, it's one hundred and thirty yards. I'll hit eightime and I
go back and look at the system. Wow, I only hit that one
hundred and thirty six yards, you know, and I'd sit there on average
flatcam one hundred and sixty five with an ear. It's amazing some of the
impacts that you can see on elevation or wind. And that's what the whole
overviews give you. So there's so many elements of the system where you can
go and gain insight, and effectively, what it does is it gets you
to go and gather more data, enjoy collecting it, you know, use
it correctly, improve your game, use it to record great golf trips around
you know, fabulous courses so you can reminisce and look back on. There's
so much you can do in the systems. I recently got a press release
from you guys, which is what brought me back to giving attention to you.
You announced a PGA Retirement Plus program can tell me about that one.
Yes. So the GRP program with the PG was set up goodness. I
think it's about fifteen or sixteen years ago, and it was effectively to go
and help out pros in the first part. I think it was titleist to
get in trouble for that might not have been titleist, but I think it
was who said, look, hey, we've got all these guys. They're
great at helping us provide our product to their members. We want to do
something for them. So GRP allows companies to contribute a bit to retirement policies
of PG pros. And again it's like, hey, look, if you're
going to stock us, we can help you in this way and do this.
And it's not so much the facility that's reaping the benefit. They obviously
get great margin, but also those pros and those assistant pros in those clubs.
So we were thrilled to be offered a position on it. And we're
the only tech company to be involved ever with GRP, So yeah, it
was fascinating. It was part of a trip I took to Frisco to see
the new PAGA headquarters and speak with some of the team about a few other
things. And which is a phenomenal facility. If you, if anybody's ever
around Dallas, go up there and have a look. It is stunning.
So yeah, so absolutely thrilled. Again. We launched that last week and
we've already had a number of PG members reach out to us, especially ahead
of the PG Show. So yeah, hope hopefully, you know, we'll
see some benefits, they'll see some benefits, and hopefully we'll get some more
shots users. That's great. Tell me about how we can find more about
Shotscope on social media and on the internet. Yeah, so the best place
to go shot scope dot com. You can gather I mean, look,
if you're just interested in what we've talked about, there's free books about performance
data. I think we've got seven of them now that will give you some
general insights about how to use data to help your game, some case studies.
And then social media. I think we're at shot Scope on x I
still caught twit her, but at shot Scope on Instagram. Those are probably
the easiest places to find us and look, give us a follow, and
again hopefully we can help you ask some questions next time you play the game
of Hey, why they make that decision? You know, I think if
we can do that as a company, we're well on the way to helping
you play a little bit better golf. Okay, last question, give me
a rundown of each product, because there's a bunch of them, and yeah,
and do this in twenty seconds. No, I mean you have a
variety of products for in a variety of price points. Can you give a
brief overview real quickly? Yeah? Okay, So starting with watches, We've
got the G five, which is a GPS only watch, comes with a
couple of different interchangeable straps. That is a one hundred and fifty bucks provides
front, middle, back distances. We have the X five watch, which
is two hundred and ninety nine dollars and that's your performance tracking touchscreen, ceramic
bezel premium watch. We have the Connects Tracking system, which is ninety nine
dollars connection and what is that that is a hardware or is that just sixteen
tags? And you can use that to connect directly to our app to record
your data. Okay, we have what is the price point on Connects ninety
nine dollars? Okay. We have the H four, which is our handheld,
is one hundred and fifty dollars round about that front middle back distances all
your GPS and it is also tracking enabled so it can capture your data.
We have the pro L two rangefinder, which is one hundred and fifty dollars
slope cart magnet, very good range finder for the money. We have the
LX on its own, which is two hundred and forty nine bucks two hundred
and sixty nine bucks something in that region with a cart magnet, red black
optics slope switch. And then we have the LX Plus which is the Lex
rangefinder and the H four And if you're buying them together, you save one
hundred dollars on retail from buying them separately, so it's three hundred and sixty
nine bucks. They connect together gives you all of that ability to have that
three and one product. Wow, I think that's everything. Go to shotscope
dot com and figure it out for yourself. Yeah, exactly. So,
yeah, have a good look through. But and again look we love questions,
So if anybody has a question falling on from this or wants to find
out more support at shot scope dot com, go and ask our guys test
them. They'll be back to you in minutes or hours and and they're they're
great at what they do helping everybody. Awesome, Gavin, it's great to
talk to you again and catch up and congratulations on the progress and still being
a viable once I started playing again, I'm gonna make tags making your name
in the golf new sets in conjunction with their latest pro x plus rangefinder GPS
handheld performance tracking Tags. Absolutely love their new design, which makes the range
easier to hold steady for accurate readings to the green. Also, the GPS
readout is magnet based, so I can keep it attached to the rainfinder or
put it in my pocket or mount it to my pushcart. It's a really
impressive design and offers more features than any other tracking hardware software combo that I've
seen from any manufacturer. Next week, we're bringing back Scott Fassett, creator
of the Decade golf course management system. It's a great conversation that will get
your head spinning when you learn how many ways we sabotage ourselves on the course
and learn the true meaning of golf smarter. It's amazing. I've watched videos
with Scott and people learning the Decade system and it's clearly things we've been talking
about for nineteen in our nineteenth year on this podcast on how to golf smarter
by using course management and just you know, playing it smart, not beating
yourself up anyway. Great conversation that's coming up next week now. If you
remember, it was episode nine hundred and twenty. Our Golf Smarter Ambassador lived
in Texas, but the course that he played was in Oklahoma, nearly seventy
miles away, and I was questioning do you travel very far? I mean,
why do you travel that far? And asking if other people do well.
He got back to me and apparently he's a VIP at the Windstar Casino.
It features great golf and great golf instruction, which provides him with full
access. So he listens to Golf Smarter during his regular commute. Now,
he was also excited to hear that we're now offering the flight Path Golf teas
as part of our gifts when you share where you live and play and then
announce the number of the episode of our weekly show. So I invite you
to become a Golf Smarter Ambassador with the incentive of getting a choice of three
great gifts for your effort of telling us again where you live and where you
play, and then introduce the episode. Here's what you can choose from.
You get a free link to Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental, a
glove or glove and glove storage compartment from redroostergolf dot com. And then our
new third option for you to choose from is the eight pack of Flightpathcolf t's
from flightpathgolf dot com. Just write directly to me and I'll send you simple
instructions on how to record an episode opening that takes no time at all.
Check out today's show notes to find links about each gift that you have to
choose from. To see and hear the most compelling and helpful short tips and
insights of our podcast interviews for both Golf Smarter and Golf Smarter Mulligans, which
we'll be back in April. Please follow us on social at Golf Smarter,
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