Return To Main Blog Page Is Cleveland TaylorMade for Adidas? Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 7:09 PM
There is speculation about who might buy Cleveland Golf at a bargain price from Quiksilver, Inc., a California clothing company that’s owned Cleveland less than three years. The ownership has not proved successful for either company.

I don’t know anything about Quiksilver or its clothing line, but I do know that Cleveland has taken a beating over the past three years in all categories. I wrote a blog entry back in 2005 about the dominance of Cleveland wedges in the market, only to see the brand lose market share to Titleist, Mizuno and Ping because of lackluster designs and high prices.

TaylorMade may look at Cleveland Golf and see a potential partnership similar to what Titleist and Cobra have in the market: a premium high end brand for the low handicap golfer and a moderately priced brand for the lesser golfer. However, Cleveland has priced its woods, irons and wedges to compete against Titleist and TaylorMade, not Cobra and Tour Edge.

Would repositioning the Cleveland product line to appeal to the average golfer dilute the brand? Would the guy in the street looking at Cobra be willing to spend an extra $100 to buy Cleveland? Can Cleveland recapture it’s wedge dominance under TaylorMade’s management?

The original designer/founder of Cleveland Golf, Roger Cleveland, has been working for Callaway since 2000 and I don’t see that Callaway wedges have done particularly well. Roger’s best designs are probably behind him. The new Cleveland Wedge, CG12, is actually doing pretty well and looks more like the 588, Roger Cleveland’s design and the best selling wedge ever, than it does its immediate predecessors, the CG10 and CG11.

Can Adidas take on another acquisition? I suspect we’ll know for sure before the PGA Show in January.

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