GSA Golf: Business News

Business news

VisTrak Product Overview

Similar product market overview

September 23 6:30 pm

300 DPI Glossy brochure

September 22 4:00 pm

Product assembly time way too high

The current assembly time for all systems (SCX, LX and EVi) is around 16 to 20 hours per unit.

And that's not including all the time to test, calibrate, package and ship the systems.

If I add in all the after sales support, advertising and software development time (over 10000 hours)

then I doubt GSA Golf would be making much more than $3.00 an hour.

Still, this business is my passion and what I signed up for, so I shouldn't complain.

I will be working on methods to stream line the production process in order to half the production time to around 8 hours per unit

September 20 7:30 pm

GSA Golf now only selling direct to consumer

1. A second attempt to contact potential resellers with our 30% margin wholesale prices has again fallen on to deaf ears.

i.e. not even a "thanks, but no thanks" response to hundreds of reseller news letters.

I have thus decided to only sell my systems direct to consumers at lower prices and thus cut out the resellers and their margins.

New lower prices are:

2. New independent system reviews coming soon

September 2 1:30 pm

The Golf Launch Monitor market and GSA Golf's sales volume goals

According to published statistics, world wide sales volume for Golf Launch Monitors will be at least $ 200 million in 2024.

It was already $175 million in 2023

Assuming a very conservative estimate that the average unit price is $5,000, that would mean 40,000 a year or 3,333 a month.

I say "conservative" because you can buy golf launch monitors for as little as $500 these days.

So, how many golf launch monitor manufacturers are there that are sharing this 40,000 sales volume?

Here in the US and the EU, there aren't that many. 10 maybe?

I can't think of many more than that. And world-wide, probably not more than 20 major players.

That would mean each manufacturer is selling 2000 units a year (40,000 / 20) i.e. 166 a month.

Baring that in mind, then GSA Golf's sales volume goal of just 12 units a month is more than realistic.

Especially considering the super low prices of the systems that offer advanced features that are usually only available on systems that cost 2 or 3 times the price.

Note that the sales volume of similar products to the SCX (i.e. Uneekor, ProTee VX etc) selling in the $6,000 to $10,000 range,

is estimated to be in the 600 to 1000 a year range. That's 50 to 90 unit sales a month!

September 2 11:40 am

GSA Golf launches Multiple Google Ad campaigns

Okay, so here we go with the new Google Ad campaigns for the season

Above are the first Google shopping ads that are active today.

In addition, the issue with the regular GSA Golf text adword campaign is now fixed and the ad is now showing again.

Together with the GSA Golf's page 2 organic ranking and the new - vastly improved - VisTrak product range , this should be sufficient exposure for a successful season.

September 1 2:40 pm

This thought just occurred to me on this quiet Sunday afternoon.

Is it possible that my organic page 2 listing click rate of 100 to 400 clicks a day for "golf simulators" is normal?

After all, the golf simulator market is a somewhat niche business compared to other main stream products like

iPhones or wide screen TVs that generate tens of thousands of clicks a day,

So, maybe 100 to 400 clicks a day is normal for a "Golf Simulator" listing on page 2.

If that's the case, then what would be the point of spending thousands of dollars on Google AdWords when all you'd get is around the same number of visitors?

According to my research, it's always best practice to continue with an adWords campaign even though it ranks lower than your organic ranking.

Reason being, it's best to have 2 showings of a search result than one.

September 1 12:00 pm

Production of all GSA Golf Vistrak systems underway for the new season

Objective is to always have at least 3 ready made up systems ready ship at a moments notice.

It was noticed, however, that the product assembly time for products is a tad more than expected though.

I'd hope to be able to produce 5 systems a week, but realistically speaking and - without outsourcing production - it's probably only going to be around 3 a week.

If outsourcing production, then there's no limit on production capacity, so Sky's the limit in that respect.

Marketing budget and selling direct to consumer vs via resellers

Without a huge jump in marketing budget, 3 system sales a week (i.e. 12 a month) is unlikely anyway.

Current GSA Golf marketing budget with Google AdWords is just $500 a month - which is woefully too low.

12 system sales a month - selling direct to consumer (i.e. not via resellers) - would gross around $18,000 profit a month for GSA Golf -

even without all the revenue generated with the enclosure side of the business (i.e. screens, drapes, panels, flooring etc) ,

so there'd be plenty of funds to increase the budget 10 fold. i.e. to $5,000 from $500.

If selling via resellers with a 30% markup, then GSA Golf's gross profit (without assembly labor costs) would be around $9,000 a month.

A healthy mix of the two strategies would thus seem to be the most appropriate strategy here.

August 23 6:30 pm

The main GSA Golf products have now been boiled down to just the SCX IR and the LX2 now

While there are still derivatives of the SCX and LX2 available (i.e. Eagle, EVi, LX1 etc) most focus will be on these two main products for the foreseeable future

August 19 4:40 pm

Gearing up for the new season

All parts for production runs of the new SCX IR, EVi and LX systems are now on order and should be here by next week.

The cased visible light track version will now be made redundant (i.e. too many versions) as will the SCX Pro,

but I'll keep the non-cased SCX track light version for the moment although I doub't many will purchase this product as the price is too close to the cased SCX IR.

August 18 6:10 pm

Other than the occasional tweak or small fix to the software,

most of my time for the rest of this year will be spent on product assembly, marketing and user support.

August 17 4:00 pm

LX1 and LX2 mods

The above (quick and ready) images are of the prototypes made up today of the new LX1 / LX2 IR panel versions without the IR panel and with the LED lenses removed.

I decided to keep the LED panels in the CM Vision heat sinks and just remove the glass front panel as well as the LED lenses.

In contrast to mounting the CM Vision lights directly onto the base panel ( that tended to be somewhat wobbly),

inserting them into the black anodized IR panel frame proved to be far more ridged and sturdy.

Once the IR acrylic panel is inserted, the systems will appear as a black box as shown below in the Photoshop renderings.

I found a nice new cover panel for the club tracking camera LED lights today too, which are on order and should be here later this week.

As all software for the LX1 and LX2 is completed, production of the LX1 and LX2 panel versions will start later next week.

August 17 12:30 pm

LX1 and LX2 mods

Major lighting and casing updates coming for the LX range.

Tests today revealed that removing the LED lenses in the CM Vision lights, greatly increases the light spread

so that the ball and club is evenly illuminated over the entire FOV of the cameras.

I got this crazy idea in the middle of the night thinking "I wonder what would happen if I removed the lenses on the LEDs? Would the light spread increase?"

Assuming it wouldn't work, I tried it out and was amazed to find that it worked incredibly well.

This is due to the fact the lenses collimate and focus the light to a smaller but more intense area.

While this is what you want if the object you are illuminating is many feet away,

this is not required if the objects (ball and club) are only inches away as is the case with a floor mounted launch monitor.

Thus, all IR LED lenses are now being removed from the lighting systems used in the LX1 and LX2 launch monitors.

A side effect of removing the lenses from the IR LEDs opens up new casing possibilities.

As I'm having to open up the CM Vision IR lights in order to remove the lenses anyway,

I may as well remove the LED panels entirely and put them behind an IR panel (as shown above) and do away with the large CM Vision casings altogether.

The size of the overhang LED light used in the LX2 can then be drastically reduced as well.

Prototypes are being made up this weekend to see which look better

August 15 3:10 pm

Looks like all the SEO I did recently on this web site has paid off.

After yesterday's Google crawl and index, my organic ranking jumped from page 4 to page 2 !

Just below Foresight Sports!

Hi! I'm Martin Paul Gardiner

Electronics and software development engineer and founder of GSA Golf

New GSA Golf showroom opening later next year in Naples, Florida