Rocketbladez vs Rocketbladez Tour vs Nike Pro Combo's... Just interesting

RocketBladez & Rocketbladez Tour Comparison… 

Taylormade, the hype-masters, of the golfing industry are at it again. The latest marketing ploy revolves around “this little thing” and the promises are as big as ever. So I went out, got a RocketBladez 7 iron, Rocketbladez Tour 7 and a $20,000 golf shot analysis bay and got right down to testing the two clubs.

I know this is not really politico at all, however the business & marketing strategy behind Taylormade is very interesting, I would call it Apple-esk. The only difference is Taylormade is throws some actual performance figures and comparisons at you versus the Apple method which is all about brand association and class establishment. I digress.

The main reason I wanted to go out and hit these clubs is because of the crazy notion on their website that says their Rocketbladez 6 iron will go 11 yards farther than my current club of choice, Nike Pro Combo 7 iron.  As you can see below. 

There are two interesting facts about this marketing ploy which I found very interesting. The Rocketbladez brand as a whole is much stronger lofted than the baseline set by the average club/loft by PGA Tour professionals.  Most interesting the strengthened loft are not linear, which you would expect. In fact the 6  & 7 iron are actually much stronger than the average whereas the 3 iron and pitching wedge are only 3 degrees stronger. If you think about it, it’s actually incredibly smart, most demo irons are 6s & 7s. So the relative gain of these two clubs is much greater than the gain on the pw/9 or 4/3 irons. This non-linear strengthen plays havoc with gapping your clubs. I found that my gaps where inconsistent across the set and learning them just takes time. For clarification the Avg. pitching wedge loft is 47 degrees, the Rocketbladez pitching wedge is 45 degrees. However the average 7 iron is 35 degrees, but the Rocketbladez 7 iron is 30.5 degrees.  For those keeping track that is loft difference of 2 degrees in the PW versus a 5 degree difference in the “demo-test” mid irons. 

The second interesting fact behind this marketing ploy is actually just a complex formula which simply takes into account length of club and loft. So the Nike Pro Combo is -11 whereas the Titleist AP2 is only -10. They have identical lofts, however the AP2 has a longer shaft. If you increase the club length and the loft the gaps quickly fall.  This formula assumes that all levels of inertia transfer are identical, therefore they are basically saying this.. Our clubs are longer and stronger lofts, so it makes you wonder just how much “this little thing” is actually effecting the club. The Tour model is not as aggressively lofted, so as you would expect you would not hit it as far.  Which is exactly what I found, fun random fact here, I actually hit the new JPX-825 (on average) just a hair further than the regular rocketbladez. 

One last bit about Taylormade, which from a business strategy standpoint, which is brilliant is there to market release cycle.  This market strategy revolves around having the newest product on the market longer than their competitors. This is a formula proven by Nvidia, and is very successful. Especially in a market with a higher disposable income threshold compared to the national average. 

Before diving into stats, facts and figures, let me say a few things here. 1) I do not “hate” Taylormade or its products, the Burner Superfast 2.0 Rescue is the savior of my golf round when I am not driving the ball well. 2) That lone Taylormade is not going anywhere soon because I have not found a club I HIT BETTER. 3) The brains behind the business and marketing strategy is brilliant & successful, which is not easy in the B2B space. 

DATA TIME! 

So I hit 20 shots with each club, then put them into spread sheets calculated average and standard deviation for: Carry, Total, and Perpendicular Dispersion (right/left of target).  Interesting here and a point you should make sure to check when you go test clubs in a golf simulator like at Dicks or Golf Smith. Before you start hitting make sure the wind is on 0, and make sure to look at the grain level. Many places, to incentivize walk in transactions, will pull a little trick where they give the grain a 5% down-slope on the simulator. This gives the buyer a slightly inflated total, especially on the less lofted clubs. 

So here we go: 

Taylormade Rocketbladez 7 iron:

 

The best way to think/breakdown this data is picture miss circles. To put this into a real life relatable situation consider this. If I am need to hit my 3-wood from the deck I know a couple things. If I catch it perfect I will hit is with almost no Right-to-Left movement and it will roll out about 10 yards. However that perfect strike is not common enough to take dead aim at the flag. I know that about 70% of the time when I hit that shot it is going to have a Left-to-Right cut-like ball flight which will end between 5-20 yards right of where I am. Thinking in terms of this (miss-circle) is how I plot my way around a golf course. That could just be me, but for the sake of how I presented this data I will assume for the length of this article you will think like this as well. 

So for the Rocketbladez 7 iron 68.2% of the time the total carry of the shot will end up between 183.09 yards to 193.1 yards. Again this data is inflated because of the 5% down grain on the simulator so the more relevant number is the carry.  So 68.2% of the shots carried between 166 yards & 176 yards. Or if you prefer 95.4% of the time the carry is between 160 yards & 179 yards. Now that may sound like a pretty big gap, and it is! Especially in comparison to my current weapons of choice, the Nike Pro Combos. The right-left dispersion of the Rocketbladez is equally frightening with a Std. Dev. Of 9.3 yards! Again miss circles here, 68.2% of my shots fell within a radius of 9.4 yards of the target, or a total right to left dispersion of 18.8 yards. 

Taylormade Rocketbladez TOUR 7 iron:  

My Nike Pro Combo 5 iron:

Let’s compare shall we? 

The quickest way to compare the performance of these clubs is to look at the Std. Dev. in relation to each other.  The most important part of golf isn’t being able to hit a 7 iron farther than your friends, it’s about being able to land the ball closer to the target than your friends. A prime example of this is prominently displayed in the two groups of golfers I play with on a regular basis. The first is a group of friends who I befriended when I moved to Charlotte 3 years ago. These guys are all stupid long, just unfair long…. Oh 156 yards to the flag, hmmm 9 iron or 8? This is just plain stupid because for me that’s 7 iron. I digress, despite their length I win holes and sometimes whole rounds. Here we go again, the Board of Directors and I go out and I hit my 3 wood as far as their drives… But they whoop my butt almost without fail every time. Tee, green, close enough for chance at birdie or 2 put par. 

The point I am trying to get across here is that this obsession with length, while flashy, is not the best way to compare golf clubs. Dispersion/miss circles are far superior if you goal is to lower scores, I mean no-one has a long drive contest with 6 irons. As you can see here my Nike’s are far superior when you examine club performance in this way. It would be great if I could have an average carry of 171 with a 7 iron, but I would much rather have a tighter miss circles. To be fair, my clubs where custom fit, bent and ordered by a PGA pro after a significant amount of time in a hitting bay. 

This is a TO-SCALE comparison of the miss circles:

Notice how much smaller the Nike Circles are in comparison to the two Rocketbladez products. There are many other factors which one considers when you are looking to purchase golf clubs. Brand affinities, look and feel all come into account, so when it comes to golf club testing actual quantifiable data is extremely important. And often can be quite disappointing. 

For example I just bought a new driver, I showed up with 3 clubs to try with specific shafts. I really wanted  to like the new Nike Covert… Like really wanted to like it, and when I hit it I did like it. I would have bought it accept for this pain in the ass upstart Cobra-Puma club. I hit the AMP Cell a bit further yet much more consistently, so I walked out with the Amp Cell hating the fact I hit it better than the Nike. The pragmatic thinker will get over this sort brand loyalty quickly but it can be, and was for me, shocking. 

Trying to write what a high school teacher would refer to as a conclusion I found myself wondering why the hell I spent the time writing all this out. The best I can come up with is this: I originally did this test just because I was curious, and found the results interesting. This got me thinking and combined with the current book I am reading (Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard P. Rumelt) lit just enough fire under my butt to write all this out. Mainly I found it interesting and wanted to say it somewhere, mission accomplished. 

Is the green killing the greenery?

The movement towards capitalistic tendencies in the global marketplace sounds like a good thing and most people tend to agree on this point. I for one am in that camp, I am also a believer in many related economic theories such as economies of scale and net gains for specialization when trade is relatively unrestricted.  I find it hard to detect any inherent drawbacks in a global transition to a capitalalisc marketplace. In fact a more globally interconnected marketplace promotes peace by means of foreign investment and inclusion in multinational supply chains. But alas, I have stumbled across one and what a sucker punch it is.  In this case it his limiting access to photovoltaic products (solar panels) in a way that is quite unconventional.  Before I delve into this weird interaction between rationality, economics and the green energy movement let me start with a little useful information. 

The relatively modern "golden arches theory" postulated by author of The World is Flat, I cannot remember his name at the moment, states that no two countries with McDonald's in them ever went to war with each other. While this premise is no longer valid because of an increase in McDonald's risk tolerance a small adjustment for the modern age has been made, which is also stated in the latest version of the book.  The adjustment is this; no two counties who apart of the same significant multinational supply chain have ever gone to war with each other, the sited example is dell, but there are many supply chains crossing many many boarders. The supply chain involved in creating a Toyota Prius is just simply, shocking long and looks more like a geography quiz cheat sheet than anything else. The informal alliance, which is the multinational supply chain is a major deterrence to military aggression and I think a more I interconnected world is a safer world.

The point of this inordinately long intro is to emphatically state that I think globalization is more than just a positive or net gain but a gain outright.

What I stumbled upon was something that got me thinking about globalization and capitalization  which to my knowledge has not been analyzed or discussed up to the point. While I was working on a B2B strategy presentation for cmo-md.com (a very useful and insightful website focused on all aspects of the B2B space) I came across a section discussing ways to analyze and inform a company on the state of the market and how it reacts to pleasure from external pressure. The supply chains example provided in the presentation discusses one of G.E.'s p&ls which is in the pv (photovoltaic) market. The speakers talks about how the market shifted so drastically that GE got out of the market all together and sold the p&l off.   The reason for this was a sudden influx of component parts production companies, one of the global segments of the supply chains, all running a price strategy. The combined pressure from US, Japanese, German and Chinese low cost providers made it impossible for GE to stay competitive in the market without making excessive sacrifices.  These new companies all running price strategies proceeded to drive the price of products down to the point where profit margins where simply laughable. GE made the right call here, but that isn't the point of this whole thing.

What happens next however is, and it's astonishing. One would imagine that this dramatic drop in product costs would correlate to a drop in cost from the consumers standpoint. Doing us all good making the world a slightly greener place. This is supply and demand 101 stuff here, however this is exactly what did not happen. What proceeds to ensue is actually simple and understandable yet surprised and concerning. The project managers on the local side of the photovoltaic (solar panels) supply chain saw a drop in their expenses and thought hey, let's just keep the prices the same and we will make a killing.  Because the project managers are the first part of the local supply chain with limited competition they have no need to price strategically in order to grow or maintain market share.  Essentially this a natural economic bottleneck, which means the lower prices in production. Are only getting as far as the project managers and everyone after them sees the market as business as usually.

So what should have been a great day for globalization and the globe in general has now become a setback. The latest champions of greed, have created a situation where the manufactured parts and prices for photovoltaic technology is lower than it has ever been, but the manufactures are making less money than before nearly every part of the supply chain is constrained by stupidly small profit
margins, except these project managers who I shall hence forth refer to as sleazebags. In fact it is worse than that, the finished operational price to the consumer has actually gone up despite the decrease in cumulative overhead. The industry actually has a negative deliverable because of al this.

I am on the train. Heading into the office as I write out these thoughts and observations on my iphone which have been rolling around in my head for a while.  A new thought just endeared my head as I watch 4 BofA employees drink coffee to the soundtrack of the pa announcer say "no eating or drinking on the train." With some semblance of hope of maintaining my love of globalization.  The supply chain components acting irrationally are all on the domestic side of the supply chain.   The global components as far as I know all acted rationally, maybe not strategically, and adhered to the general principles and laws of economics.

If this is true, that the domestic side of the supply chain is the cause of these issues I have to wonder why. My mind jumps right to an idea which does not initially sound like it applies. The law of large numbers, because the local instigators aka sleazebags have a much much smaller number of employees, where they are less likely to see this is  inherently detrimental to their individual place in the market as well as unsustainable in the long term.  Ironically enough, this ties yet again into the cmo-md presentation I am working on.

If only "globalization of the local" was a possibility here, eat your heart out author of "The World is Flat" wish I could remember the authors name right now. It is a great book where you will actually learn a lot and be entertained.

Alas my stop is here, the main thing I wish to convey here is my shock and awe that capitalistic  forces actually reduced the growth of green energy and caused an increase in overall prices despite cheaper parts, to the point that the smart money is leaving the pv market all together.

What the hell capitalism and globalization!

Cheers, and I will leave you with.my favorite quote.

"whatever you do, do well and may success attend your efforts."

The Need for a New American Political Model

For a country which has cultivated the world’s largest economy based on free market capitalism, the United States is most assuredly not taking those principles to heart when it comes to politics.  The dominance of the two-party system is one of the biggest issues with American politics at the moment. The system and resulting parties are more than outdated, they no longer lend themselves to an effective means of governing through intelligent discourse and compromise.  Throw into the mix the current trends of increasing polarization of the American population and now we really do have something to worry about. 

This linear descriptor of one’s political affiliation is so emphatically limiting that you are forced into a zero-sum situation.  Either you are with “us” or “against us”. Essentially what this system is requiring is that you side with an inherently idealistic group on nationally relevant issues which are almost immeasurably complex. God forbid we, as a country, get to a point where the Republicans are right about some things and the Democrats are right about the others, but the correct solution needs to be instituted within one election period.  The current system guarantees failure in this case.  God forbid a Republican doesn’t flaunt his/her religion or a Democrat thinks that tax cuts are necessary.

Obviously it is ridiculous to say that all the American policy issues are a product of the two-party system, or the political structure, but it is a contributing factor.

More or less what the system looks like now:

 

Now I am just brainstorming here but what if the American political spectrum looked something like this. Vertical axis is the allocation of government funds, now TO BE CLEAR, I am not saying that this model is the best way to go or the axis are the best identifiers.  

 

Just look, you have doubled the “products” the American can chose from. To me this just seems like a better choice, because for those of us who tend to side with a party on the majority of topics but strongly disagree with some of their stances what can you do.  You bite the bullet and pick the lesser of two evils. Because what we have now really can accurately be construed as two evils.