Aldila’s Light Touch Beats Par for Course : Manufacturing: The Rancho Bernardo maker of high-tech golf clubs is thriving in a flooded market.

The Aldila plant in Rancho Bernardo has a high-technology aura about it. On the factory floor, employees make products from space-age plastics and rare-earth components. In the research and development lab, new designs and materials are scrutinized under microscopes and put through a battery of instrument tests.

Incongruous as it may seem, Aldila is a sporting goods manufacturer. Specifically, it makes shafts for golf clubs. And not just any shafts: Aldila’s are made from blends of graphite polymers, plastic, epoxy and rare-earth materials that are lighter and stronger than the steel shafts that have dominated club design for 60 years.

Stated simply, the strength and lightness of Aldila shafts enable manufacturers to make golf clubs that can be swung harder and faster. The result: longer golf shots than those hit with steel-shafted clubs.

Despite a somewhat flat market overall for golf equipment, demand for Aldila’s golf club shafts is beyond what the company can satisfy. Its sales, which will exceed $40 million this year, are double what they were three years ago. Total payroll of 500 is 2 1/2 times the 200 in 1988. The company claims more than 50% of the graphite shaft market.

Customers include some of the best known golf club brand names, including Taylor Made, Karsten (maker of Ping clubs), Wilson, Spalding and Callaway Golf--the Carlsbad-based producer of the Big Bertha driver, which, despite a retail price of $275, is the single hottest golf club on the market today.

Callaway Golf buys almost all its shafts from Aldila, said President Richard C. Helmstetter, who described Aldila as one of the “very first and true innovators” in the graphite composite shaft business.

“Golfers have discovered there are innovations in materials that can improve the way they play golf. And one of the most significant innovations is Aldila’s, with the lighter weight and very strong shafts that help you hit the ball farther,” Helmstetter said.

The benefits of graphite shafts do not come without a price. A set of clubs with Aldila shafts is likely to cost at least 30% more than those with steel shafts, a premium that can add up to $300 to the price of a set of clubs. The premium is higher for shafts with a rare-earth material such as boron, which makes the shaft even stronger.

As have other golf equipment manufacturers, Aldila has benefited from the so-called “golf boom,” the growth of the sport during the 1980s in numbers of golfers, rounds played and, by extension, equipment purchased.

The number of “core” golfers, those playing more than eight rounds of golf per year, had risen to 11.8 million in 1990 from 9.7 million in 1986. The number of rounds played in 1990 was 502 million, up from 419 million in 1986, according to the National Golf Foundation, an industry-funded informational office in Jupiter, Fla.

More golfers playing more rounds of golf translates into an increased demand for equipment. And a plethora of new golf club manufacturers have started business to meet that demand. Over the past 10 years, for example, golf club manufacturers have grown to 120 from 30, said Lorin Anderson, assistant editor of Golf Shop Operations, a trade magazine based in Trumbull, Conn., that goes out to 15,000 golf pro shops and manufacturers.

Attracted by relatively cheap labor and good weather, many of those manufacturers have located in San Diego County, and Aldila is typical of the increasingly high profile the golf club manufacturing industry has taken on locally. The county now is home to an estimated 40 golf equipment makers, a roster that includes such well-known pro shop names as Taylor Made, Cobra, Founders Club, Acushnet-Titleist and Callaway Golf, said Max Schetter, director of economic research for the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce.

Not all the manufacturers have avoided the water hazards and out-of-bounds markers. Anderson said the market is flooded with too many manufacturers, attracted by the growth of golf and the relative ease of entry. That entry has been greased by high-tech molding techniques that have simplified golf club manufacturing to the point that the days of skilled craftsmen machining clubs from metal castings or persimmon wood blocks are quickly fading, he said.

“Although the sport certainly grew in the 1980s, we never subscribed to the ‘golf boom theory,’ ” Anderson said. “Equipment sales grew between 6% and 8% per year in the late 1980s. In 1990, it was up 4% to about $800 million. This year (equipment sales) may be flat. There are too many guys selling the same product.”

The golf equipment industry these days is a tough business, except for companies such as Aldila that offer unusual products with clear benefits to players, Anderson said. “Golfers will always try something new if they think it will help their game a little,” he said.

Aldila has had its ups and downs since its founding here in 1973. The company has weathered intermittent financial squalls and two changes of ownership. Design problems that have since been worked out caused shafts to break too easily through the late 1970s and early 1980s, earning the company a stigma that took years to overcome.

Kim D. Carpenter, Aldila’s senior vice president of marketing, said the turning point for the company came in 1987 when metal wood clubs came into vogue. The heavier weight of the metal heads meant the weight savings that accrued to the use of graphite shafts was a clear benefit. Endorsements of Aldila shafts by players such as Payne Stewart and Nancy Lopez have also given the company credibility.

The shafts themselves are made with eight to 16 sheets similar in size to gift wrapping. The sheets are rolled around a metal form and then oven-cured. Added components such as boron filament--which sells for $400 a pound--make the graphite even stronger. Graphite’s properties have made the substance attractive to a broad range of manufacturers, from jet engines to tennis rackets, and Carpenter said his company is poised to expand into other lines, including bicycle frames and baseball bats.

Aldila was founded by San Diego entrepreneur James Flood in 1973, then acquired by John Moler and San Diego auto dealer John Hine Sr. in 1975. The company was sold again in 1987 to a partnership headed by current President Gary Barbera, a former Oak Industries executive, and by Vince Gorguze, a retired president of Emerson Electric of St. Louis.