Name: Danielle Nadon
Position: Head Golf Professional
Club: Loch March Golf and Country Club, Kanata, ON
Selling More Non-Golf Items
With its aggressive growth strategy, BPG Buying Group’s membership has grown to encompass 150 leading PGA of Canada head pros from across the country. That includes Danielle Nadon, the super-charming head professional at Loch March Golf & Country Club in Kanata (an Ottawa suburb).
In 1987, she was Canada’s first Francophone female to become a head professional – coinciding with the opening of Loch March, which she describes as, “a public course with a private feel.”
A long-time student of late Canadian golf legend George Knudson, Nadon’s first stay at Loch March lasted until 1991, after which she spent 13 years as a teaching pro at her T-To-Green school, and four years as a golf professional for Chateau Cartier Resort.
She returned to the helm at Loch March in 2010. And five years back she became a member of the Quebec-based Boutique Progolf / BPG Buying Group Plus Group, deeming it, “a wonderful, wonderful” experience.
“BPG is the people, No. 1,” she says.
“I love the camaraderie. And you get so much information from talking with the members.”
Then, there’s the savings derived through BPG’s early payment discounts and rebates, and the efficiency of its centralized electronic billing system, where just one cheque needs to be written out at the month’s end.
“It’s so easy,” the mother of one relates. “If I have concerns, I don’t deal with the company, I deal with BPG.”
Nadon was named CPGA National Teacher of the Year in 1985, and is a past president of its Ottawa chapter. Her many years of involvement with du Maurier Golf Classic events (as a player and a volunteer) included serving as co-chair of the Canadian Women’s Open in 2008.
Her charitable efforts have included a decade of working with the late CBC radio host, Peter Gzowski on the Literacy Golf Tournament, taking her coast to coast.
By contrast, the annual BPG Buying Show brings her peers from the top courses across Canada to her hometown of Ottawa – the perfect chance to make friends, share trade secrets, and gain all kinds of product knowledge.
“I’ve been going since before I was in BPG,” she relates. “It’s very helpful. You get to meet a lot of people you’ve heard about before, and we play in a golf tournament at the end of the week.”
This graduate of the Algonquin College Business program finds women are “much more a part” of the golf equation than when she became a CPGA Class A pro 40 years ago, at the age of 19. Now at her pro shop, they’re often buying clothes for themselves and their husbands.
“I do pretty well on ladies’ wear and men’s wear,” she says. “I have a particularly nice shop for women.”
She also cites a growing demand for non-golf-related items, be it a pair of casual jeans, or an iPhone cover, or glassware to be handed out as a tournament prize.
“I think the market of 2018, it’s going to be a little more non-golf items where you will increase your sales,” she adds. “BPG has a great variety of golf and non-golf items. I carry luggage, I carry all kinds of stuff.”
