GolfBuddy, one of the world’s best-selling handheld golf GPS systems, will enter the fast-growing European rangefinder market in 2009.
With two popular, high-specification handheld units, and work already underway to offer golfers maps of more than 5,000 courses across Europe by the end of this year, – GolfBuddy Europe is expected to replicate the phenomenal success it has achieved in the USA, where it holds a significant market share.
The company’s operations in Europe will be located in Dublin, Ireland, under the leadership of John Ennis, who has over 25 years of experience in the golf industry. John will be the general manager and a 50-strong sales force in 32 countries is being appointed.
“I am tremendously excited by the launch of GolfBuddy, a proven and popular golf product, into the European GPS rangefinder market,” said John Ennis. “The company has gained a good market share in America by offering golfers unrivalled power, accuracy, technology and simplicity. GolfBuddy delivers in all these areas and we are confident that European golfers will recognise this and reinforce GolfBuddy’s status as one of the best-selling and most popular GPS rangefinders in the world.”
GolfBuddy launches into Europe with two high-spec models, GolfBuddy Pro and GolfBuddy Tour, and is the only rangefinder to be delivered to golfers with courses from around the globe pre-programmed into its memory, making it instantly usable straight from the box.
Every unit is packed with features including, automatic course and hole recognition, multi-language capability, score-tracking for 1,000 rounds, shot distance measurement, customizable target setting and the ability to store up to 20,000 courses in the memory.
Both the Pro and Tour units come equipped with the same advanced features, with the Tour featuring a color screen.
“GolfBuddy GPS rangefinders give golfers access to great technology to help them improve their scores, while at the same time remaining simple to use,” added Ennis. “With added functionality like score recording for up to 1,000 rounds and the ability to swap pre-loaded American courses for European counterparts, and the free downloading of additional courses, GolfBuddy really is the only GPS device a golfer will ever need.”
GolfBuddy’s course library (over 14,000 in the US, and almost 20,000 worldwide) continues to expand at a significant rate and downloads for more than 6,000 European courses will be freely available by the end of 2009.
“We are mapping courses in Europe at a tremendous rate and before the golf season in 2009, the majority of the European courses will be ready to go,” said Peter Choi, vice president of sales for GolfBuddy.
Consumers will be able to purchase GolfBuddy directly from traditional retailers or from www.gpsgolfbuddy.com Each unit will come with a ‘quick user guide’ in one of five languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish and English, together with a universal adapter for charging the batteries.
GolfBuddy Europe Ltd Tel + 353 45 894 355 john.ennis@golfbuddyeurope.com