The Industry
Callaway Golf Company is one of the leading designer and manufacturers of golf balls and golf clubs (irons, wedges, putters, fairway woods, and drivers) located is the sporting goods industry. Callaway also sells accessories including golf towels, umbrellas, golf bags, headwear, golf gloves, timepieces, footwear and apparel. The company's golf club and putter sectors are its main sources of revenue. The goal of the company is to create new equipment that is an improvement upon previous as well as competitor's products. The company sells it products to golf retailers, sporting goods retailers and also licenses its trademarks to third parties for royalty fees.
Callaway is a horizontally integrated company. They achieve this through acquisitions of companies, which helps increase the products they offer. Callaway has the following wholly-owned subsidiaries: Callaway Golf Sales Company, Callaway Golf Korea, Callaway Golf Europe, Callaway Golf Canada, Callaway Golf South Pacific and The Top-Flite Golf Company. Callaway also has many brands through which it distributes products including: Callaway, Ben Hogan, Odyssey, and Top-Flite.
Callaway Golf is the leader in the market for US retail golf market but faces very strong competition in a mature market. Because this is a mature market there are many well established companies with well known brand names. Some of the key competitors of Callaway include: Acushnet Company, SHC, Adams Golf, Adidas-Salomon AG, and Nike (Callaway Golf Company, Nov 2004). The golf club market is highly competitive. Looking at the metal irons and woods, Callaway's competitors include: Adidas-Salomon AG (Taylor Made) and Acushnet (Titlelist, Cobra). Along with the golf club market the golf ball market is also hi ...