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Hitting Home
Golf a major business strategy for JELD-WEN
By Paul Ramsdell, PNGA Media
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| The Reserve Vineyards
and Golf Club, photo by Tom Treick |
By now, for virtually everyone in the Northwest - and in increasing
numbers around the world - who either plays golf, is involved in golf,
or just follows golf, the name of JELD-WEN is becoming quite familiar.
It's an interesting phenomenon, because on the surface it would seem
odd that a door and window manufacturing company based in Klamath
Falls, Ore., would become almost synonymous with the game of golf.
It's all the result of some strategic, well-researched planning and
marketing - as well as good old-fashioned happenstance from being
in the right place at the right time with the right people.
Either way, JELD-WEN has ties with, of course, The JELD-WEN Tradition
on the Champions Tour. It also is a major sponsor of the World Golf
Championships, and has sponsorship roles with two tournaments on the
PGA Tour. The company has player endorsement deals with tour pros
Ben Crane and Peter Jacobsen, both Oregonians.
If you play the game, and walk on to the first tee at Eagle Crest,
or Suncadia, or Running Y, or are waiting for Brasada Ranch to open,
then you can thank JELD-WEN for being such a major player in golf.
"We like golf a lot because every day a PGA Tour pro or a Champions
Tour pro has to go out and earn their living," said Gina Monterossi,
the sports marketing manager for JELD-WEN. "There are no guaranteed
salaries, just like we have no guaranteed business. Every day we have
to go out and earn people's business. We liked the idea of that."
In four years of being deeply involved in golf sponsorships, the company
likes what it sees every quarter when it does a study on its brand
awareness.
"Our awareness has grown significantly in all areas, and we believe
it's due in part to our relationship with the PGA Tour and Champions
Tour," Monterossi said.
JELD-WEN's ties to golf can be broken down into two separate areas.
The sponsorship campaign has been a detailed and fine-tuned business
process for the past four years. The golf course resort business,
and accompanying real estate development business, started innocently
and by chance 18 years ago.
"It's been a gradual process," said Jerry Andres, the president and
CEO of Eagle Crest, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of JELD-WEN. "I
can tell you it was never JELD-WEN's initial intent to get into the
golf business."
But success breeds success, and real estate development became a way
to integrate and promote JELD-WEN's core business.
"It really has evolved and been successful," Andres said of the resort
side of JELD-WEN, which includes Eagle Crest and its 54 holes in Redmond,
Ore., Suncadia and its soon-to-be 54 holes in Roslyn, Wash., and The
Running Y Ranch and Harbor Isles, two of the four golf courses in
Klamath County in Oregon. Plus, a golf course community is in the
process of being added to the Silver Mountain Ski Resort in Kellogg,
Idaho, and Brasada Ranch is expected to open in Powell Butte, Ore.,
later this year.
"As the company has learned the real estate development business,
they like that, and now it has become a core part of JELD-WEN's portfolio
of companies," Andres said, but added, "it definitely was not the
aim in '88."
In the late '80s, JELD-WEN was one of five limited partners investing
with a general partner in Eagle Crest Resort.
"That's how it started, it started as an investment in a real estate
oriented destination resort - a small investment - in which golf was
one of the major recreational anchors," Andres said.
The early years did not go well, and soon Andres was brought in as
the general manager in charge while JELD-WEN remained one of the limited
partners.
"I just got the entire group that was there pulling on the rope in
the same direction, if you will," Andres said.
By 1991, JELD-WEN (the company's name is an acronym created from the
initials of the founder's parents and sister) had bought out the other
partners.
"We got it turned around, and in 1994, Dick Wendt, the founder of
the company, told me he wanted me to come down to Klamath Falls and
do the same thing down there that we did in Central Oregon, so that's
how The Running Y Ranch got started," Andres said.
The common aspect of the resort side of JELD-WEN and the sponsorship
approach is that the final decisions came from Dick Wendt, or his
son, Rod Wendt, now the president and CEO of the company.
"They have a huge passion for golf," Andres said. "Both are avid golfers
and the entire Board is very golf oriented."
So when the sponsorship idea was first presented, it was favorably
received.
"I think whenever you have an interest in a sport at the highest levels
of a company, there's less explaining to do, less selling to do, because
they already get it," Monterossi said.
But a company doesn't grow to have more than 20,000 worldwide employees
on the chance that the leaders enjoy a hearty round of golf.
"We try to be very strategic about the sponsorships and the relationships
that we enter into, so just because they're a golf fan doesn't mean
we'd do it if it didn't fit strategically," Monterossi said.
When the decision was made to become the title sponsor of The Tradition
and bring the major championship on the Champions Tour to The Reserve
Vineyards and Golf Club in Aloha, Ore., it was because JELD-WEN had
a new strategy.
"Four years ago, we embarked on a national branding campaign. We had
grown primarily by acquisition over the years," Monterossi said.
"It became increasingly more difficult to support each brand through
marketing. We weren't making the impact that we needed to, so we decided
to take all of our brands and merge under one name, which was JELD-WEN,"
she said.
The company sells doors and windows to individual homeowners, but
also to major builders and contractors. It was essential to reach
both entities.
"As part of the advertising/marketing program, we decided to look
at sports to see if that could enhance this branding campaign," Monterossi
said.
"When we looked at sports, we thought that golf fit the best at serving
these different groups.
" And that's still the thought, because the company is considering
additional sponsorship possibilities as well as ways to get the JELD-WEN
brand name more closely associated with the resorts and real estate
development side of the business.
When Andres was asked if JELD-WEN was looking at any possible expansion
of its resort holdings, he had a quick answer.
"The answer is yes. And I could answer probably with three yeses,
or four yeses," he said. "There are a lot of things on the drawing
board."
If current trends are any indication, then the word "golf" probably
is on that JELD-WEN drawing board as well.
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