Callaway 1998 Annual Report Download - page 4

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STEELHEA
BIG BE
CALLAWAY GOLF COMPANY
2
In management’s letter to Shareholders in our Annual Report for 1997 we stated, “[W]e want
to remind you that the last several years have been very good ones for Callaway Golf Company.
There are no guarantees that such good fortune will always befall us, but we believe that if we
work as hard as we have in the past, 1998 has the potential to be the best year in the history
of the Company.”
Well, we were wrong. Even though I believe everyone worked as hard as ever, 1998 turned out
to be the worst year in our history in some ways. Detailed information presented clearly on
other pages in this report tells the story of our 1998 operations. I am not proud of this, nor is
anyone in the Company.
But I am proud of, and gratified and encouraged by, the following:
■The Board of Directors and the entire management team of today learned hard lessons and
some good and important things from our unhappy experiences in 1998. I believe that in
future years, beginning with 1999, we will benefit greatly from these experiences. The new
management team is leaner, more capable, and more positively energized. In my opinion, this
is true in every department of the Company, even after having completed a significant
reduction in numbers of management level people and after the Company’s first large-scale
reduction in work force, which took place in late 1998.
■As a result of these lessons learned in 1998, we have restructured and redirected the
Company. Our efforts are now focused on producing and selling the world’s best golf clubs.
By the end of this year, our focus will also be directed toward producing and selling the
world’s best golf balls – on the schedule we planned originally. We will continue to direct
our resources – talent, energy, and money – in an ever-increasing degree toward the creation,
design, production, sale and service of new and better products – ones that continue to be
more satisfying to golfers than our competitors’ products.
Dear shareholders
and f riends