Austad’s new owner takes a swing at improving the golf catalog’s performance through new creative, list and merchandising strategies

By Alicia Orr , Editor In Chief and Catalog Success

Under terms of the agreement, Mammoth Sports Group, which also owns several Mammoth Golf superstores and an e-commerce site, purchased Austad’s complete inventory, customer base and historical artwork with plans to quickly ramp up the catalog’s mailing frequency to 12 times a year and to make substantial investments toward improving the overall effectiveness of the catalog business—from the creative look of the book ... to the merchandise it sells in its pages ... to the marketing and media plan ... to the service it provides to its customers on the back end. Also on the drawing board for the not-too-distant future: Plans to formulate an integrated Web presence with Mammothgolf.com, which as of October 1999 was getting 12 million hits a month.