It’s that time a year again! It creeps up so quickly – Trade Show Season. This past week we attended the 2018 PGA Merchandise Show. If you have never attended the show, it is quite an event.
This year, we met with many old and new dealers. It was a great experience! I also had some time to check out some new vendors. There were some great new products offered, such as heated and cooled seats, Bluetooth audio speakers, DC to AC conversion kits, and much more.
One of these new suppliers manufactures Bluetooth audio speakers. They are the good folks at Yatra and they had a really great and affordable Bluetooth speaker option. They were nice enough to give us a sample to take back to our warehouse to test out. So far the guys at Stenten’s are really liking the speakers. We will keep you up-to-date on more info as we continue testing the product.
Another interesting product that we came across at the trade show was Silver Wolf’s new DC to AC conversion kit. This conversion kit is designed to be sold as a motor controller upgrade kit. The model that they had on display was for a Club Car Precedent. Using their controller with the new AC motor, they can get a Club Car Precedent up to 19 miles an hour. When using an EAC motor, you can use unlock codes by a Bluetooth connection into the controller. This allows you unlock even greater speed, such as 24 and even 32+ miles an hour. These upgrades, however, would be offered at additional cost to the end-user. Initial projected dealer cost on this unit would be around $800 with the unlock from 19 to 24 miles an hour being between $100 to $200, then another step for the unlock for 24-32 miles an hour. This product is currently in production and is expected to be rolled out in March 2018.
Finally, I stopped by Cool Ass Technology. This supplier provides heated and cooled seats for golf carts. The MSRP on this unit was $2000 for a single back and bottom. They did offer another option for when you re-skin seats with vinyl seat covers, which came in around $200 dealer cost. However, this scaled down version does not offer the seat cooling option. We will have to look into this more in the future, but it might be the way to go.
Along with the new suppliers and products, we also saw some old faces like Club Car, Yamaha, EZGo, Nivel, and Trojan. I was able to attend the Nivel Innovation Party on Thursday evening and had eyes on some of their new product line. Nivel is offering a new roll cage from Jake’s, available for all carts. In addition, there were new body stylings to expand their line from last year. And some new light options, which include halo daytime running lights built into the light kits.
All in all, I believe that this was a great trade show and I am very thankful to have met all of our new and existing dealers. I will keep you up-to-date on how we progress on the new products we discovered. If we decide to add them to our line up, I’ll be sure to send out an email blast giving you all the details and specifications.
