Ben Hogan Golf Closes....

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Here's the story:




https://forum.mygolfspy.com/topic/51902-ben-hogan-closes-its-doors/


https://www.thehackersparadise.com/news-ben-hogan-golf-closing-doors/

[Joe Bausch]

S2, you need to reformat your post.

[Cal Seifert]

When Hogan Golf first relaunched maybe 7-8 years ago I liked their set of irons that had the lofts on the soles instead of numbers. You could customize them and build a nice half set with equal 6* gaps or a regular full set. I thought that idea would catch on elsewhere but 43* PW’s might excite people more I suppose.

[David_Tepper]

Steve -

Thanks for the heads up. A real shame.

Maybe some big box retailer will buy the name and use it on a house-brand of clubs, like what happened with Tommy Armour.

Several years ago a clothing company (Perry Ellis) bought rights to the Ben Hogan name to use on a line of golf clothing. Here is the website.


https://www.benhogan.com/
 
DT

p.s. If any happens to see if/when Ben Hogan Golf has some sort of a liquidation sale on their remaining inventory, please let us know.

[Tom Bacsanyi]

Now do PXG!!!


But really though that's too bad. I had the Apex blades when I was in younger, and I had no business playing blades. But the 3 out of 10 I hit solid were buttery.

When Hogan Golf first relaunched maybe 7-8 years ago I liked their set of irons that had the lofts on the soles instead of numbers. You could customize them and build a nice half set with equal 6* gaps or a regular full set. I thought that idea would catch on elsewhere but 43* PW’s might excite people more I suppose.

My current set (Mizuno) is gapped 5* from 60* down to the driver at 10* with the 55* skipped (Only 10 clubs plus putter). Requires a bit of shotmaking prowess that (shall we say) I am...developing?

[Peter Pallotta]

That's too bad. For sentimental reasons -- we're all fans of Ben Hogan, and I learned to play using various sets of Apexes over the years, always with that #4 shaft, and for practical reasons too -- friends who had one or more iterations of the new Hogan irons said they were all good performers.
Totally coincidentally, just last night I ordered from 2nd Swing an old set of
Hogan Edges ie the c 1988-90 version. I was hankering to play Hogans again but couldn't return to any mb blades, so went with their first ever forged cavity back!

[David_Tepper]

Interesting story of what happened here:

https://mygolfspy.com/ben-hogan-has-closed-for-good/

Per the article it sounds like the golf club company was actually doing pretty well in terms of sales.
 

[Ian Mackenzie]

Inetersting tid-bit here. I live in Chicago and am in the private equity space and I have never even heard of these guys. Sounds like they are a debt provider/lender:


"It really boils down to the fact that our majority shareholder, ExWorks Capital of Chicago, filed for bankruptcy in March,” says White. “So we weren’t getting any funding at all.”

ExWorks specialized in high-risk-high-reward investments but its portfolio took a major hit in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID.
“They funneled a lot of money into other areas of their portfolio,” says White, “but by March, the whole thing came crashing down.”

White spent much of the past four months searching for new investors. That proved difficult because Hogan didn’t actually own the brand. Perry Ellis owns it and licensed the name to the Hogan company in order to sell equipment.

[Mike_Trenham]

Bill Goodwin who owned AMF in the 1990s told me he should have sold off Hogan Golf when he had an offer of something like $100 million but it was the most fun part of AMF to own getting to spend time with Ben Hogan.  Goodwin later sold the bowling part of AMF to Goldman Sachs for a mint.  In the end he sold Ben Hogan golf for a minority interest in Spaulding which was not doing very well.  Goodman and his family / partners also own Kiawah and Sea Pines.


I heard a story from an AMF executive in the 1970s that there were mandatory meetings for the leaders of all the operating companies to present their results and plans but Ben Hogan never attended however the golf margins were the most consistent and among the best.

[John Blain]

Bill Goodwin who owned AMF in the 1990s told me he should have sold off Hogan Golf when he had an offer of something like $100 million but it was the most fun part of AMF to own getting to spend time with Ben Hogan.  Goodwin later sold the bowling part of AMF to Goldman Sachs for a mint.  In the end he sold Ben Hogan golf for a minority interest in Spaulding which was not doing very well.  Goodman and his family / partners also own Kiawah and Sea Pines.


I heard a story from an AMF executive in the 1970s that there were mandatory meetings for the leaders of all the operating companies to present their results and plans but Ben Hogan never attended however the golf margins were the most consistent and among the best.

I worked for the Ben Hogan Company from 1986-1994. Bill Goodwin way overpaid for what was already a broken company and when he took control things went from bad to worse. He bought into an industry that he knew very little about. I want to say he made his money in computer leasing? To add insult to injury he didn't want to hire any experienced industry veterans to turn the ship around, he thought he could do it with people that had been successful running AMF Bowling. Bad move as those folks were clueless to the golf equipment industry. In the end he sold at a substantial loss.
Regarding him hanging out with Hogan I'm not saying it never happened but shortly after buying the company he moved it from Fort Worth to Richmond, Va. I doubt Ben even knew who was.

[Jim Sherma]

The sad part of Hogan closing up shop is that there was an actual linkage to the original business. This was in contrast to the modern marketing idea that the brand is some amorphous thing that is somehow divorced from the manufacturing and implied quality guarantee that a brand identity should convey. The way that the operators tried to revive the brand via the manufacturing side as opposed to the marketing side was nice. Sadly they did not own the branding itself.