April 11, 2007; Phoenix Arizona: PING Golf was awarded the Gold award for its fitting cart at the 2007 POPAI Outstanding Merchandising Achievement (OMA) Awards in Las Vegas. The event, held on March 7, 2007 at The Venetian, honors the best POP displays for the last year.
Hundreds of display producers and suppliers entered the competition, but the PING Fitting Cart was the only display from the sporting goods industry to receive the highest honor of the Gold award.
PING pioneered custom fitting in the 1960s, and its Color Code System, which followed shortly thereafter, remains the most recognizable fitting process in the industry. The company continues to lead in this important step in the club buying process, as was documented in Golf Datatech’s 2006 Custom Golf Club Fitting: Consumer Attitudes & Experiences study. In the study, golfers acknowledged PING as the leader by a 3-to-1 margin over the rest of the industry.
PING’s current fitting cart is the third model the company has produced and the third to take home the coveted Gold award at the OMA contest. The first PING Fitting Cart was introduced in 1997 and all have been built by Trans World Marketing.
"Winning this award for the third time speaks volumes about our commitment to excellence. We are constantly striving to improve our fitting carts. With the success of our past carts, we have our work cut out for us when we replace them. This award continues to document that fact that when we come out with a new cart, it is going to be better than the one it is replacing," said PING’s Steve Bostwick, who oversaw the development of the fitting cart.
There are three main categories at the OMA Awards: Permanent, Semi-Permanent, and Temporary. Each of the categories is graded on design, engineering, innovation, consumer and retailer effectiveness, marketing integration and results. PING received the Gold Medal for the Permanent category.
The PING Fitting Cart was designed to equip golf retailers with the most functional cart in the industry, providing all the tools for custom fitting. The cart is also required to function both indoors and outdoors and provide security for the high end products it displays. It not only performs well, but is extremely durable. This combination helps create a very high ROI for PING accounts.
"The PING Fitting Cart is an icon of our company," said Bostwick. "Our fitting system is our most effective marketing tool. It is deeply integrated in both our marketing and retail strategy. Our fitting carts allow us to promote our custom-fitting message as well as provide a resource to our accounts that enables them to improve the golf games of their customers."
Contact:
Pete Samuels at 602-687-5487
