It absolutely was an over generalization. That is what surprised me.
The reality was and absolutely remains, my "competition" was not Nike or Callaway or the like. Fifteen years ago, my competition was Bang, Geek, Hireko, Wishon and others of their ilk.
The absolute struggles then and now haven't changed and oddly I fear that they will not change in my lifetime (55 years of age) The golf industry sucks and is dead as I knew it for the, now 39 years I have been in it.
I started SMT in February of 2002 and made a monumental mistake. I chose to rely on dealers and a distribution network. In other words, my business success was predicated on the business savvy of people whom I never met or knew nothing about. I fatal error. The industry was at it's apex and I should have gone consumer direct and taken the lion's share. Profit margins were there for the taking but my choice was to follow the path that I charted a decade or more prior in my clone days.
The other stark reality, one that you don't know or realize is that dealing with the foundry or foundries directly in China you are at their mercy as well. Back in the day, the most simple thing like lack of electricity to the plant was a very real issue. Forget about the other things that so many of you BELIEVE that you think are happening over there.
The old saying comes to play... "ADAPT OR DIE". Lord knows it was a painful decision for me to actually adapt in my case. I changed EVERYTHING in my professional life to focus on fundraising after the loss of my mother to cancer. While I still dabble to a great extent in the golf industry and I did 308 golf outings last year, ADAPT was a far better option that to DIE.
Please make no mistake..... your comment was typed either from a position of haste as you mentioned or from a lack of intimate knowledge of what is and has really happened in the golf industry. But the brutal reality remains. hanging on would have been easy , just not smart.