Despite, like many businesses, having no income over the course of the Coronavirus lockdown, the TGI Golf Partnership has kept every member of its staff working full-time to assist its partners across the UK and Ireland.
Over the course of the lockdown, the retail services group, which is completely owned by PGA Professionals, continued to help its 450-plus partners to ensure their businesses were in a great shape when things opened up again.
Eddie Reid, TGI Golf Managing Director, said: “As a group of independent retailers and equal shareholders each and every PGA Professional in the TGI Family contributes to the turnover and profitability of the business – that, along with the fact they pay no monthly or annual subscriptions, makes them ‘partners’, not members.
“Therefore, at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis it was a very easy decision not to furlough a single member of staff, but to double our efforts and offer our partners a strategy to help them through the crisis.”
TGI Golf’s four retail consultants – Chris Taylor, Peter Smyth, Ricky Gray and Simon Keeling – who would normally be travelling the length and breadth of the UK and Ireland, have so far conducted more than 200 video calls and 400 telephone calls over the course of the lockdown.
During these calls they offer partners advice and assistance, covering a vast array of topics from organising financial plans and setting up online shops to ensuring partners’ stores were safe to open again.
Reid continued: “Our team were there from the very start to support our partners with a personalised step-by-step guide to plotting their course through the minefield. As a group of independent retailers, it wasn’t possible to put together a ‘one size fits all’ programme and assume that will work. Our retail consultants and head office staff worked with individual partners to put programmes in place and offer support.”
TGI Golf’s Enewsletter Programme was offered free of charge to all partners throughout the lockdown, while they also received continual communication through email and the group’s private Facebook group.
There have also been regular video updates from the TGI Golf team, with expert Robert Nicol (TGI Golf Insurance) and Andy Herridge (TGI Golf Finance) brought in to help make sense of insurance claims and financial assistance, clearing up much of the confusion that took hold in the early days of the lockdown.
“In times of trouble how you react lives long in the minds of all those effected. Hide away and bury your head in the sand and you’ll forever be remembered for the wrong reasons. Stand up and support those who need it and you’ll be long remembered for being there,” said Reid.