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NOTE: In observance of July 4, the Golf Press Association will not publish The Apparel Wire. The e-newsletter will resume publishing on Thursday, July 6. We hope you have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day.
NEWS
Bite Footwear reports a 300 percent increase in its monthly sales average during the Edwin Watts Tent Sale Days, June 10-11, in Birmingham, Ala.
A CONVERSATION WITH ...
Mary Lopuszynski
Editor's note: Golf Press Association publisher Alex Miceli recently spoke with Mary Lopuszynski, director of licensing and merchandising for the U.S. Golf Association. The two-part interview, which concludes in the Thursday, June 29 issue, focuses on merchandising for the U.S. Open, which concluded June 18 at Winged Foot Golf Club, and many of the evolving issues with merchandising on such a large scale.
Q.: What was the square footage of the merchandise tent for this year?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: It was 36,000 square feet, 120-feet wide and 300-feet long.
Q.: Was that traditionally the size or were there some limitations because of the space at Winged Foot?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: Well, that's the size that we had planned and we couldn't make it any bigger. This was the biggest we could make it in the location that we have.
Q.: At Pinehurst was it bigger?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: It was 38,000 square feet of sales space. A little bit bigger.
Q.: Talk about the amount of time that you put into something like this, is it just basically a full year to prepare or does it even take more than that?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: It's a full year, as soon as we're finished with this one we'll go back to Golf House on July 10 and we'll start to work on Oakmont for 2007. So it is a full year, but like in the last calendar year while I focused mostly on Winged Foot, I've also done a little bit of work on Oakmont. So I would say a full year, with a little bit previous to that.
Q.: When you say work on it, obviously you've been doing these for awhile, this isn't a new thing, but I guess each year there are changes or things that you want to do differently from experiences you had in the past?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: Yes. It's a challenge because we are changing locations every year, and it changes operationally, some years we're -- like at Bethpage [in 2002], we were on tennis courts, so it was flat, easy to build, and the entrance and exit locations, all that was easy. But at Shinnecock two years ago, we were on ground where the exit end of the tent ended up being 12 feet off the ground. And the logistics, that makes it operationally difficult.
But the logistics of buying, you go to a different part of the country, the demographics are different, the weather is different. Every year you're always dealing with different things.
Q.: So the buying trends, how do you determine if you should have x-amount of umbrellas or sweaters versus vests or more shorts than pants?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: Well, somewhere like Southern Hills, where we were in 2001, or Pinehurst, where you expect warmer weather, you would skew your buy away from outerwear, even though you think, "Oh, OK, people will buy and give it as a gift or wear it in the fall or winter."
If it's hot at the Open, people will not buy outerwear. So it's going to sit. So you have to take that into consideration. But if you're in a place like Shinnecock, where even in the summer it could be cooler, or like Pebble Beach, then you would buy heavier with outerwear.
Umbrellas? It doesn't rain much in San Francisco, like when we were at Olympic Club. We had no rain. We had a little fog, so you're really not going to need much in the way of umbrellas. Here you never know. We could get a couple days of rain and not have enough.
Q.: Assuming this is correct, let's say you're 100 percent stocked when you open the doors the first day, how much more merchandise would you bring in normally over that period of time from outside vendors?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: You know? It depends. At Olympia Fields in 2003, we really didn't bring in any. And last year at Shinnecock we brought in quite a bit. Bethpage, because of the way the weather was and the way we kind of were watching the forecast, we needed to bring in a lot of outerwear for the weekend.
Some years it could be nothing, some years we could have a lot coming in. And it is weather based and there might be certain items that do better than we thought. Like for instance, in this part of country, Fairways & Greene and Polo are stronger than they might be. Fairways & Greene is really strong in the northeast, but maybe not as strong out in San Diego. So we bought that way, heavier in that direction. If it really is stronger than we thought, then they can supply us with those overnight.
Q.: What did you take out of two years ago at Shinnecock and last year at Pinehurst last year?
MARY LOPUSZYNSKI: You learn something every year. It's one of the biggest challenges that we have when you bring that many people in and they're all trying to shop, especially later in the day, Wednesday through Sunday, is keeping the flow moving. And not having a log jam. So we have reworked our fixtures somewhat, trying to make an effort to when we really do get slammed, that people still have the opportunity to shop and be able to move around.
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