REION Report
 Vol.1 – Double Eagle GINZA

The first REION Report is about "Double Eagle GINZA", a multi-brand golf shop for adult people who enjoy golf in their own style. In the shop, with its rich lineup of high quality items such as gears, golf wear and small articles, services such as shaft customizations and lessons from professional instructors are also offered. We asked the store manager, Tatsuo Kinoshita, how REION is used in this environment.

Rich assortment of products and services designed for high class golfers

"Double Eagle GINZA" was opened on March 12, 2017, on Namikidori in Ginza, Tokyo. It is a multi-brand golf shop for those adults who want to have items and services which are one rank higher. The strength of this shop is the ability to multi-brand products and unique services. It proposes the coordination of golf wear for each season by brand mixing. They also have the strength of multi-branding imported brands that you can find only in Double Eagle GINZA, not in other affiliated shops, and their shelves also have custom-made articles.
Most of the customers are men and women in their 40s to 50s who enjoy and love golf. To enjoy golf more in their own way, people frequently visit the shop as married couples on weekends or drop by on weekdays on the way home from work.
Mr. Tatsuo Kinoshita, the store manager, says "Many customers visit us more for services rather than for buying goods, and we propose suggestions to cope with such needs. We see them every day thinking of ourselves as a home doctor with whom you can discuss everything relevant to golf."
The shop with its muted colors inside feels extremely spacious. Small shelves with detailed works which look like specimen cases make up the interior, creating an atmosphere of a room with one's own personal collection.

Fitting and lessons utilizing the simulator

Double Eagle GINZA boasts of their services. The seasoned fitter proposes the optimum set of clubs for each customer. Customizations including head type, shaft length and thickness of grip is possible and the craftsman immediately adjusts the club in the studio inside the shop. By finely checking the swing in the fitting room, you can try to find the best condition that matches your own way of playing and your own taste.
In the fitting room, where fitting and adjustment of gears as well as a point lesson from a professional instructor are carried out, "about Golf," the golf simulator used in PGA Tour Superstores in the USA has been introduced. Across the entire wall of the fitting room, a graphic image of a golf course is projected, with the trajectory and speed data being displayed when you hit a ball, allowing for further fine tuning of the gear and your swing.

Cooled wet towels are offered to perspiring customers

In Double Eagle GINZA, a bottle of mineral water and a cooled wet towel are offered to those customers who have received a fitting or a one point lesson in the fitting room.
To show the "about Golf" screen, the interior wall of the lesson/fitting room is painted black and the level of illumination is rather low. In this atmosphere, the mat white REION standing on the shelf does not disturb the space. The color of the wet towels is "Petit Chocolat," a color very close to brown, which is familiar for the shop's atmosphere and interior.
According to Mr. Kinoshita, customers tend to feel warm and soon start to perspire after swinging the club. "One customer stays for 30 minutes on average in the fitting room and uses two to three wet towels. Since cooled wet towels, rather than dry towels, are the best to wipe away perspiration, they use a lot of the wet towels. Because the LED lamp lights up when the REION is opened to illuminate the area just around your hand like a spotlight, it's easy to take out wet towels during a lesson."

High level service is a matter of course.
Human resources and technology make the difference to others.

To Double Eagle GINZA, their customers are those who know golf well and are familiar with buying goods and receiving services in Ginza. To make such customers visit again, the staff like Mr. Kinoshita all endeavor to achieve enhanced service quality every day.
"To put it in an extreme way, you could collect and display as many products as you want, but that does not work with services. Each member of staff needs to improve their communication skills and be sensitive about various topics and current events. On top of their skills and knowledge of golf, they also need to enhance their human qualities, which is very important."
Mr. Kinoshita told us in the end that the role of the wet towels over the course of their endeavors to enrich such services, is as follows.
"We want our customers to feel and say 'We had a good feeling today and did some great shopping' and 'This is a nice place to visit, I want to come again.'" I believe that hospitality such as calmly offering a cool wet towel and mineral water should reach the hearts of these customers if we keep it up. So, I think they make up an essential part of our overall service."

Double Eagle GINZA

Ginza Namikidori Building B1F, 2-3-6, Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Phone：03-3538-3363

Interview conducted in June 2017