Club Conex - What’s going on?

[GetEagle]

Just did a little bit research about the ITC lawsuit, it seems club conex won the lawsuit not cause of their products counterfeiting or infringing the patents but cause the company did not show up in the counter since they are in China...Not sure if i'm right.  If club conex just simply won the lawsuit, they have rights to forbidding the counterfeiting products sold in US but now they are there exclusive distributor. That's odd. It's more like the ambitious big companies want to control the market.

[trhode]

The letter says that they “reached an agreement”. If they won the lawsuit, the wording would have said so. Am I wrong?

[Big Mike the Long Shanks]

On 2/23/2021 at 11:33 AM, knudson81 said:

 

Thank you for the heads up! I agree 100% that they could have marketed this to the WRX crowd and we would have really adopted it. How many of us have a couple shafts laying around that we want to test against each other on the course and the range? And if you aren't going all in with 20 shafts and every OEM driver it is fairly affordable.

Club conex is now basically pricing everyone out of the game.  Received the new "model pricing" today and everything is 3 to 4 times the price it originally was, including items that don't infringe on their patents.  They're basically a monopoly in club fitting tips, which i'm unsure how that even happens through a judgment like that.  It's a sad day for golf.  As a small business, we're out of the custom fitting game. Back to only manufacturer's fitting carts and now things are open for big stores like Club Champion to come in and shutter the rest of us. 

[Big Mike the Long Shanks]

8 hours ago, trhode said:

The letter says that they “reached an agreement”. If they won the lawsuit, the wording would have said so. Am I wrong?

That was the "agreement", basically club conex will price things out of market. It applies to all products from TopGolf/Allfit, even the ones that aren't part of their infringing lawsuit. Can't get anything without paying. 

[Big Mike the Long Shanks]

On 2/23/2021 at 3:30 PM, JohnPaul said:

The one thing I will add is that Anthony is a messenger for this whole situation.. It wasn't his call to make.

 

I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but I feel rather confident that he feels very similarly to how we all feel. He's been there since day 1.

 

Anthony is our best shot at getting upper management to change this new agreement.. Our best hope is that he can use our feedback as ammunition to build the case against this agreement.

A colleague of mine reached out and his solution was to change their whole fitting system to clubconex only - which will cost more than the initial gouging they're talking about doing, along with buying all the parts over again. He was a clubconex user for years and still uses them, but now has to hang it up as well since it's prohibitive. He doesn't get a lot of big name players in the door because he's been competing with a Club Champion really close to him.  Now that's completely out the door and they're going to own the area. 

[be0972]

Honestly, I don’t know how you guys competing against Club Champion aren’t crushing them!  My own personal experience with them was a joke (my fitting was heavily discounted). The tech side of everything was fine. Then they started building my quote, keep in mind this was their recommendation, not my request. Mizuno JPX919 with DGx100, rip out the DG and replace them with TIDGx100, trash the grips too new grips (MCC), then pure each shaft (hard pass)!  If memory serves the quote was more than 2x the retail price of the irons.  There was zero chance I was buying clubs from them!  I don’t know if their business practices have changed, especially since you can get just about any shaft option you want from the mfgr. now a days.  
 

I don’t know enough about their patents either but hopefully this just means the market a ripe for someone else to come up with something that doesn’t infringe. 

[SUMM1T]

Club Conex is owned by True Spec who is owned by 8am Golf. Their pockets are deep and they have no interest in small operations. In all honesty, they don’t really care about any other business besides their own. I am having a few lawyer clients of mine look over all of this because I’m out over my skis. The letter is very clear that they have every intention of pursuing legal action against ANY person/shop using their product now. They are handcuffing everyone into buying their membership. 

 

The saddest part about all of this is the lack of communication on Club Conex end from the start of all of this. It’s truly hard for anyone that isn’t doing large numbers in sales to buy in. 

[SUMM1T]

22 hours ago, GetEagle said:

Just did a little bit research about the ITC lawsuit, it seems club conex won the lawsuit not cause of their products counterfeiting or infringing the patents but cause the company did not show up in the counter since they are in China...Not sure if i'm right.  If club conex just simply won the lawsuit, they have rights to forbidding the counterfeiting products sold in US but now they are there exclusive distributor. That's odd. It's more like the ambitious big companies want to control the market.

 

AllFit did not show up to the case. They said it was too expensive to fight the case in general. 

[GetEagle]

sounds like who has moeny who control the market

[Big Mike the Long Shanks]

19 hours ago, be0972 said:

Honestly, I don’t know how you guys competing against Club Champion aren’t crushing them!  My own personal experience with them was a joke (my fitting was heavily discounted). The tech side of everything was fine. Then they started building my quote, keep in mind this was their recommendation, not my request. Mizuno JPX919 with DGx100, rip out the DG and replace them with TIDGx100, trash the grips too new grips (MCC), then pure each shaft (hard pass)!  If memory serves the quote was more than 2x the retail price of the irons.  There was zero chance I was buying clubs from them!  I don’t know if their business practices have changed, especially since you can get just about any shaft option you want from the mfgr. now a days.  
 

I don’t know enough about their patents either but hopefully this just means the market a ripe for someone else to come up with something that doesn’t infringe. 

 

Most small shops just can't compete with the marketing and sheer size of the club champion game.  It's kind of like trackman/ foresight - People recognize a name and gravitate toward it.  Not to mention the amount of money it takes to have a semi-complete fitting system. Not all manufacturers will provide demo type pricing. 

I would agree that Club Champion is gouging the market. They definitely have it cornered now though since True Spec is committed to killing the little guys off. I'm not sure who all will buy their setup after all the small shops are priced out. Club Champion has their own fitting adapters - also sued by truespec and lost if i recall.  They just didn't learn i suppose. 

 

The only ones who get hurt here are the golfers. 

[SUMM1T]

On 8/26/2023 at 10:53 AM, Big Mike the Long Shanks said:

 

Most small shops just can't compete with the marketing and sheer size of the club champion game.  It's kind of like trackman/ foresight - People recognize a name and gravitate toward it.  Not to mention the amount of money it takes to have a semi-complete fitting system. Not all manufacturers will provide demo type pricing. 

I would agree that Club Champion is gouging the market. They definitely have it cornered now though since True Spec is committed to killing the little guys off. I'm not sure who all will buy their setup after all the small shops are priced out. Club Champion has their own fitting adapters - also sued by truespec and lost if i recall.  They just didn't learn i suppose. 

 

The only ones who get hurt here are the golfers. 

 

Club Champion isn’t much of a competitor if I’m being honest. Majority of my clients are ones that have been burned by Club Champion or had some of their friends get burned.

 

I spoke with Conex about this new email I received and it isn’t as bad as I originally thought. Thankfully, I haven’t moved much of my fitting system over to AllFit. They said that the $2k initiation fee plus $100/mo is for those who wish to continue to use AllFit, NOT for those that are using or plan on using Club Conex.