Discount Clone Golf Clubs
90% percent of golf clubs sold in the U.S. are manufactured in fewer than 10 golf club foundries worldwide primarily in China.
Clone Golf Clubs are manufactured at the same foundries that manufacture golf club heads for most of the major brands you see in pro shops as reported by Time, such as: Callaway, TaylorMade, Nike, Titleist, Cobra and Adams Golf Clubs. As Chip Brewer, CEO of Adams Golf said. "The Chinese produce golf clubs of consistently high quality at unbeatable costs."
So how can clone golf clubs cost so much less than the golf's major equipment manufacturers (OEM) if they are manufactured at the same facilities with the same materials and with the same technical precision?
70% to 80% of the cost of a top brand golf club is to cover advertising, sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, etc. In addition the price of golf clubs have skyrocketed since the early 90s when most of the major golf companies went public on the stock market and shareholders demanded increasing profits year after year. That is also when companies started changing models every 6 to 12 months to drive sales. These new and improved models are usually nothing but superficial modifications of existing models but with major advertising spend. And what golfer does not want to believe that a new driver will make all the difference in his game.
So what is the difference between a "pro line" golf club and a "clone" or "knock off" golf club?
There is the direct counterfeit, which is a dead-on copy that carries the legitimate product's trademark, and that's illegal, which we do not handle, do be careful of ebay. Also illegal is a club that is very close to a direct copy and is termed either "confusingly similar" (if it infringes on company trademarks) or "substantially similar" (if it infringes on design patents). What is legal is the generic look-alike that does not infringe on a company's trademarks or patents. Some features of a driver, its head size, for instance, cannot be protected, but others can. But with confusingly or substantially similar knockoffs, the line between legality and patent or trademark infringement is often fuzzy and is subject to legal challenge and interpretation. As club heads come to market faster and faster to drive sales, new club head designs have fewer patentable design features. That is why you see companies such as Nike trademark the color of yellow and TaylorMade trying to trademark White club heads. We do not deal in counterfeit golf clubs, be very careful of ebay, we have been in the golf component business for over 25 years and have found the very fuzzy line. We supply golf components that are as similar as legally possible and custom built golf clubs with customizing to the golfers swing and physical build to a greater extent than any "pro line" golf club.
