David Reasoner, the 2013 New Jersey PGA Section Merchandiser of the Year for Private Facilities, a two-time Section Bill Strausbaugh Award winner and New Jersey PGA Section secretary and tournament chairman, is the PGA head professional at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, New Jersey.
To make your golf operation more profitable, it’s important to offer your members and guests unique and different items they can use outside of golf. Before Christmas, we brought in 24 pieces from Gerbing, which makes heated gloves, apparel and accessories for men and women, and they sold out in three days. We reordered several times before Christmas and have sold more than 400 products to date, even doing daily special orders when the shop was closed in February and early March. The product runs on a 7-volt mobile battery that is hidden in the left pocket of the jackets and vests and inside the gloves. This is a great technology that spreads across many markets: skiing, hunting, watching your child play football or just simply day to day errands. When you have a contained group, which for us is a membership of 450 families and their guests, who are going to be buying these products anyway, why not give them the opportunity to buy them from you?