When I was playing in Arizona earlier this year, my husband decided, after checking out the gnarly rough and abundant trees on the Sedona Golf Course that maybe a few extra balls in his bag wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I offered him some bubblegum ladies’ balls that were given to me as a gift, but he said that they would clash with his outfit as he headed into the pro shop.
I didn’t think anything more of it, until I saw that the balls he came back with were “green”. Okay, not green as in color, but green as in eco-friendly.
Always interested in new golf products, I took a closer look and saw the packaging was made with 100% recycled materials. Okay, that’s good, but that’s pretty easy to do these days.
But then I read that the balls themselves were made from 100% renewable materials. That caught my interest, so I decided to find out more. When I got back to Vancouver, I called up William Carey, Executive VP for Dixon Golf and asked him about their Dixon Earth golf balls.
I learned that Dixon isn’t exactly “new” to the golf ball industry. Originally the company was the golf ball manufacturer for many of the major brands in the US. However, as the big labels started moving their manufacturing offshore, Dixon needed a new revenue stream.
So, the company started manufacturing privately-labelled golf balls and got heavily involved in the Ad Specialty industry, where “green is the new gold”, especially with large corporations.
Not one to miss out on a good business opportunity, Dixon did some research and discovered that there really weren’t any environmentally-friendly golf balls out there.
As We All Know, Especially Here In Canada, Recycling Is The Right Thing To Do So Full Credit To The Dixon People For Seeing The Opportunity And Acting On It
They started looking at creating a biodegradable golf ball, but discovered that they couldn’t design a ball that was both biodegradable and high performance at the same time.
And as we all know, in golf, performance is everything.
So Dixon decided to do the next best thing – they produced a fully recyclable ball instead.
Some background…
Today’s golf balls contain a number of components that can’t be recycled - heavy-metal pollutants like tungsten, cobalt and lead, as well as synthetic materials and compounds which are not renewable.
When you consider that there were 240 million golf balls sold last year (many of which end up in lakes and rivers and forests), wouldn’t it be nice if those balls were environmentally friendly?
Dixon thought so and the first 100% fully-recyclable golf ball was born. They don’t degrade any faster than a normal ball, but when they do, they do no harm.
“We created a core that we could grind up with the cover and make useful components with it after the fact.” said William Carey. “And once we had the ball designed, we created the recycling program to go with it.”
Originally the program allowed customers to send back their old balls to Dixon (who would recycle them), and receive a credit towards fresh balls. Unfortunately, most people like me who are too lazy to package up the balls and mail them back resulted in a lower response than Dixon wanted.
So in January of this year, Dixon went the next step and launched their “in store” recycling program. Now, customers can bring back their used balls to a golf shop that supports the program and get a dollar for every Dixon Earth ball they return – a dollar that they can use towards the purchase of Dixon Earth Balls.
What’s even better is that people can bring in any golf ball (except range balls) and get a 50 cent credit for each ball returned that they can use towards their next purchase of new Dixon balls.
Now, that would work for me. I have more junk balls in my bag (and garage) than I can count. Usually they end up as my “water balls”, but I’d rather trade them in for new balls. Also, I have a friend who found over 11,000 balls last year up at Big Sky.
Can you imagine having $5,000 to spend on new golf balls? I told him that he should open his own Dixon golf ball store up at Whistler ;). But then this begs the question, “What does Dixon do with all those other balls that aren’t 100% recyclable?”
According to Carey, “We really want to get recycling in golfer’s minds. So we take the non-Dixon balls we collect and test them, refurbish them, and do whatever we can to learn how to recycle any golf ball, not just ours.”
Dixon launched the recycling program into the Ad Speciality industry a year ago and found that businesses really loved it and many organizations wanted them for their tournaments. That success convinced Dixon that they needed to take the program into the golf market.
Carey explained, “Usually it’s done the other way around. Usually you find a product that is successful in the golf market and then it’s taken into the promotional products or Ad speciality industries. But we did it the other way around.”
Dixon introduced the program into the pro golf side In July/August last year; the uptake of the product and program is growing, especially in the US, but also internationally. In fact, in the European Golf Show last year, Dixon was awarded 2nd place in the best new product category.
So who's using these golf balls? Actually, more people than you might think...
Dixon’s Earth is the official golf ball of the eGolf Tour (http://www.egolf.com/tour.aspx ) – the 3rd largest pro tour in the US (you may remember it used to be called Tarheel), as well as eGolf’s Amateur Tour.
Just recently, the eGolf Amateur Tour and Dixon teamed up on an Earth Day initiative. During the week long event, 27 tournaments were held around the U.S. and about 2,000 players were asked to bring in their old golf balls for recycling.
In return each player was given Dixon Earth Balls to try out and test their performance. Amazingly, over 30,000 golf balls were recycled.
Speaking of performance, I asked my husband what he thought of the Dixon Earth balls he played at Sedona. He reminded me that he scored the best round of the week using those new balls. Just luck? Maybe...maybe not.
PGA TOUR Partners did some independent testing of the Earth ball. They gave it a 92% approval rating, and reported that Dixon Earth outperformed the Nike One Platinum, Callaway Tour ix and Titleist Pro V1.
I also read a pretty positive review on The Hackers Paradise forum http://thehackersparadise.com/home. A few months ago, 3-Time World Long Drive Champion, Sean "The Beast" Fister, became an ambassador for the Dixon Earth Eco-Distance ball.
"I chose the Earth ED ball first and foremost because of its performance," said Fister, "… I've found the Eco-Distance ball to be longer off the tee than any other ball I've played…and that's great, because that's my business!"
So they have a long drive champion on board, and a lot of people are trying them and seem to like them, like my husband. But how does a company like Dixon compete with the gorilla incumbents in the market today who pay millions of dollars in sponsorship money to PGA and LPGA Tour players to use their balls?
“It’s an interesting dilemma because, quite frankly, most people on tour will play whichever ball manufacturer pays them the most,” chuckled Carey. We haven’t decided if we are going to have PGA Tour players playing the ball yet [Dixon is in the process of creating a tour caliber ball]; our marketing is more grassroots.
"We’ve had a lot of mini tour players and women tour players come to us wanting to play the ball because of its performance and what we are doing. My guess is over the next couple of years you will probably see a few pros playing it, but not because we are paying them the most; it’s because of what we stand for.”
I hope that will be the case, but I expect it will be a tough road to the major tours. But then I thought… if you can’t get the tour pros to play the ball due to their exclusive contracts with their sponsors, what about celebrities?
And who better than the latest hot celebrity to host a PGA tournament, and owner of the first LEED-certified golf course in the United States, Justin Timberlake? I suggested that JT would be a great ambassador for Dixon Earth. Carey’s response - “Hook us up!” Ha,ha, William… if only I could ;)
I also suggested that perhaps one of the big golf ball manufacturers might look at Dixon as a potential acquisition. I am sure they, like all major manufacturers of consumer products, are under pressure to be more environmentally conscious.
Mr. Carey didn’t jump on that idea, instead saying that their goal is to make a good product, keep customers happy by providing a high performance ball, keep the price right and keep the program going so people can recycle. That’s their formula for success.
It’s just a matter of growing that and getting the word out. Now there’s where my marketing hat came on. Getting “the word out” is what keeps us product marketing consultants awake at night.
But these days, we’ve been handed a pretty powerful marketing tool, when used properly can reap huge rewards. Social media is hot and getting hotter every day. Many companies are using it to virally market their new products, but Dixon really hasn’t put much effort into that arena yet.
They have a fan page on Facebook, but are not really active on it (they have 8 fans) and their Twitter page has only 24 followers (and they follow no one). Message to Dixon…you are missing an opportunity – there are thousands of golfers on Facebook and Twitter. Get with the program!
Not that Dixon isn’t working hard at their marketing, but they tend to use the more traditional methods to gain brand awareness, such as sponsorships and partnering.
Dixon supports quite a few charity tournaments and they are working with eGolf and a number of major groups and organizations that they can’t talk about yet.
One project that caught my attention was their collaboration with Sweet Spot Golf. Dixon is designing a ball that will line up with Sweet Spot’s unique putter design, turning the combination into a putting training aid – something we might see at the Women’s National Golf Schools in the not too distant future. Cool idea.
Dixon balls aren’t cheap, but they aren’t the most expensive out there either. Although some shops sell the ball for less, the MSRP for their Dixon Earth is $39.95/ dozen.
Their Eco-distance ball sells for around $24.95/dozen – comparable to most distance balls. But Carey insists that players who normally buy distance balls will be very pleasantly surprised at how much better the Eco-Distance ball performs, “Eco-distance is a softer ball and you will have a lot more success with it and a lot greater feel with it; it’s not a rock like some of the distance balls out there.”
When it comes to buying Dixon Earth, you can buy the balls online http://www.intheholegolf.com/store/dixon-balls.html and at a select number of retail outlets in the US.
They have a pretty good concentration of retailers in the southeast and Arizona. California is starting to pick up along with Nevada and some stores in the Midwest.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any close to home in the northwest. I tried their retail locator link on their site to find one near Blaine, then Bellingham and then Seattle, without luck.
I also contacted Golftown in Canada to see if they carried it and came away disappointed. Darn! Oh well, that goodness for the Internet!
Going forward, Dixon is looking at creating some other eco-friendly products (clothes, hats, accessories, etc). In fact, some of their new products will be made out of the recycled materials they collect.
I’m going to keep an eye on these guys. I like what they are doing and hope we’ll start to see them in Canadian outlets soon. Meanwhile, my husband has 1 sleeve left of Earth balls that he’s protecting like a squirrel hoarding nuts.
So it’s either off to the WWW for my own box, or make him an offer he can’t refuse. But either way, I’m going to play me some of those balls.
About the writer:
Gayle Moss is a freelance writer and prolific blogger about “all things golf”. After blogging daily for Golf For Women Magazine’s website (until they ceased operations in the summer of 2008), 2 years writing her own blog, Golfgal-blog, and many years ghost-writing for her corporate clients on technology and business, Gayle learned that the thing she loves to do, next to playing golf, is writing about it.
Gayle is an avid follower of the PGA, LPGA, Champions and European Tours. She’s an active participant in golf forums and is probably best known for her post-episode interviews of Big Break and Highway 18 contestants.
Contact: golfgal@on-mark-it.com This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
604-671-4516
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