As the former owner of the busiest golf retail store in Europe, Doug McClelland may fairly be considered as the greatest authority in his field. After 40 years in the business, McClelland retired from Silvermere, in Surrey, in 2020 and now runs a successful consultancy business, helping golf brands grow and flourish. Here, he discusses how he built the business and what kept him ahead of the game in a rapidly changing retail landscape.

Did you get any business advice when you first started out?

I married an American girl and I used to travel a lot to California as her family were from San Diego. We used to go out for the whole of the summer holidays as a family for six or seven weeks. In that time I visited all the big golf retail stores. I thought if we can get this big type of golf store operation into England it would be a success. That was 40 years ago and back then, whatever happened in America happened in the UK five years later. I went to a place called Las Vegas Tennis and Golf, which was a big franchise operation. I picked the brains of all the guys who had the franchises with them. I went to three or four of those places and I’ve still got the notes I made about what they did and how they got the custom. They had the most extensive product range and the staff were all so knowledgeable about that gear. So when I got back I made sure that I organised product meetings with all of the suppliers and my staff, because they had to know the products that they were selling. All of this now is normal, but 40 years ago it wasn’t. So I had a bit of an edge in terms of thinking when I picked the brains of all these franchises and that was the basis from which I built up and structured my business.

Under your ownership, Silvermere was officially recognised as the busiest retail outlet on any golf complex in Europe. What were the keys to your success?

Service driven at the quality end of the market. My motto for the golf goods was “customer, customer, customer – service, service, service.” It was drilled into the staff. The customers pay your wages, nobody else. Repeat business is the secret of growth. It was all about retaining all of our customers so we didn’t have to advertise to get more customers. So we built up a really strong database. I had a great belief in instant service. What I mean by that is if somebody walked in and wanted something, we had it in stock. If somebody wanted a lesson, we had somebody there to give them one. If somebody wanted their club repaired, we had the facility to do it on the spot. When I left Silvermere I had 25 golf pros working for me, 12 of those were custom-fitters, because we had four custom-fit bays. We were busy all the time. We were open from 7am in the morning until 10pm at night.