I maintain the big thing that killed the independent clubmaker, club fitter was the Internet. As soon as people began to find out what we were paying for our stuff, the $hit hit the fan. Some examples: No longer would people pay $90 for reshafting a driver with a Grafalloy Pro-lite that cost me $30. No longer would they pay $450 for a custom fit and custom made set of 8, steel shafted irons when they could price out the components and find the component price was about $160 and that was for mid level components. No more would they pay $6.50 for an installed grip they knew cost $3.00.
In my best years (1999-2000) I had yearly sales of $150K for a standalone, one man operation. Basic economics were $60K for material and tool cost. $40K rent with insurance, utilities, advertising, etc, and $50K for me. This was basically 3 times my cost for inexpensive components say a reshaft with a TT Dynamic shaft that was costing me $7 and $2 for new grip for $27 to the customer. Move up to a $12 shaft and the cost was $35. Could not keep tripling as the component cost increased such as the $12 shaft versus the $5 shaft.
There were 4 clubmaker's shops in my area, northern suburbs of Boston, up until about 2001 when I sold and retired. Two of us doing upmarket stuff (the $450 set of irons say Bob Toski heads, TT Lite shafts, GP Tour Wrap grip), two doing cheap knockoffs ($300 set of irons say Hireko heads, shafts, and grips). We two up market clubmakers both had swing analyzers and clubmaker certifications. The others mechanically measured swing speed and had no clubmaker certification. I admit I looked into buying one of them out, keeping my ownership secret, and putting some lower wage person in there, but I decided not to. By 2004, all 4 were closed. An aside, I know one of the knockoff places used TT commercial grade shafts but put TT Dynamic shaft label bands on them. I did wonder if they knew the difference but they must have.
The few custom standalone custom fit shops I know that survived do mainly fitting and retrofitting OEM clubs to best fit the person. In my area there is only one retail golf shop left when 10 years ago, there were about 4 including Golfsmith and Edwin Watts. The one retail shop in my area has opened another retail shop on the other side of town. They do some basic repairs and reshafts but they do not build any clubs from scratch nor modify OEM clubs. They are good people and I wish then the best.