Last year Adidas made it public that TaylorMade was up for sale.
All that was missing was the line: “Please, somebody, take this dog off our hands!”
It’s actually a package with TaylorMade, little brother Adams golf and golf clothing line Ashworth.
Basically, the three losers have recently racked up anywhere from $75 million to $100 million in losses.
If you need further bad news, consider that back in 2013, TaylorMade had around $1.7 billion in sales and turned a profit.
Today those sales numbers are around $500 million in sales and that huge “GULP” you heard probably came from the suits at Adidas headquarters.
At the PGA Merchandise Show in January, TaylorMade went for a huge splash by announcing that Tiger Woods was the newest member of the family, a high-maintenance one at that. But when you look what has happened to Woods in his latest comeback attempt, this move has really back-fired in the faces of everyone at Adidas, who had to sign-off on the signing of Woods.
Face it, TaylorMade forks out huge money to make sure that No. 1 Dustin Johnson plays its driver, same for former No. 1 Jason Day.
The newest threat to TaylorMade’s driver dominance is the emergence of Callaway’s new Epic driver, which has attracted A LOT of attention. On the flip side, TaylorMade’s M1 and M2 appear to be about the same as the previous year’s models.
The next 90 days will be crucial for Adidas. There are no suitors out there, none. They won’t shut down TaylorMade altogether but big cuts and changes are bound to be coming.
Stay tuned on this one.
