The Cupertino Courier
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Photograph by Zach Beecher
Swing Time: Keith Kreft, CEO of Never-Search Inc., tees off at the Blackberry Farm Golf Course in Cupertino.
Map keeps golfers on the right course
By Cody Kraatz
After researching and mapping 18,500 golf courses, 1,600 driving ranges, 9,000 instructors and 3,000 golf stores across the United States, Keith Kreft plays a lot less golf than he used to.
"My wife and I like to go out on a Saturday, if we have nothing else to do. We go out at 4 or 5 and play nine holes at Blackberry [Farm Golf Course] and then go out to dinner," says Kreft, the inventor of Never-Search for Golf, a digital mapping program that includes all the golf-related businesses in the United States.
"I love the game. There's no more beautiful place than being outside. It's like being in a garden."
Never-Search may have become a slight handicap to Kreft's golf time, but if that's what it takes for the business to be successful, he is willing to sacrifice a few rounds.
The Never-Search map already is sprouting red flags, golf balls and swinging golfer symbols.
"The maps go beyond golf. I thought that if I could do this for golf ,I could do it for anything," says Kreft, who hopes eventually to add wineries, coffee shop chains and restaurants. The map allows a user to pick certain locations as favorites and exclude the rest.
"The idea is that you personalize your map," he says. He has been met with enthusiasm from the golf industry and at trade shows where he hands out trial copies of the software.
"Every vice president of sales or marketing says, 'I'll take 25, 30 copies of the map,'" he says. The business version sells for $500, and the consumer version sells for $19.95 plus shipping and handling.
"Never-Search has a piece of software that is really priceless to people in the industry if you're going to be soliciting business at golf courses," says Michael Isaacson, a Northeastern U.S. sales representative for Golflogix Systems, Inc., a Toronto-based company that sells GPS units for golf carts.
On a typical business day, Isaacson visits five golf courses in Massachusetts; Never-Search makes this much easier. He paid $249 for a Northeast Region map after Kreft gave him a 30-day trial at a convention in Orlando. Companies can also buy a Western Region and Southeast Region version of the map for that price.
"Once you get involved with it, you can't let it go. It's the easiest way of approaching a business day I can imagine," says Isaacson.
Kreft was vice president of engineering for Snap-on Inc., but left in 2003 when the company wanted to move him to Detroit. Seeing the direction the auto manufacturers there are headed, he decided to set out on his own course.
Entrepreneurial idea
He drew up a list of entrepreneurial ideas and inventions and settled on the golf map idea. He already holds 11 patents, so inventing is second nature.
His inspiration came when he was representing Snap-On at a convention in Ogden, Utah, where it took him two hours to find a high-quality course to play a round with clients from Toyota Motor Corp.
"I thought, boy, there's gotta be a better way to look at these things from a proximity basis and with qualitative information like slope, rating, green speed, the course designer--everything you want to qualify whether that's a course you want to play or not."
He adapted software originally created to map fire hydrants and utilities for cities. For now, Never-Search is not available for Apple computers, only PCs. It takes about five minutes to load on a computer from a DVD, and then a few more to register online and install all the map details.
It can be mobile if it is loaded on a laptop computer or hooked up to a GPS receiver, but Kreft had no immediate plans to load it on handheld GPS receivers.
"It's pretty straightforward to set it up. I'd like to see it once it's fully up and running. It will probably be even better," says Peter Small, national program coordinator for New Jersey-based Creative Agency Group. The company, which sells insurance to private golf courses and country clubs, expanded six months ago and began selling insurance nationwide. It uses Never-Search as a marketing tool.
"It's a good starting point for us. You can check a box so it only shows private clubs, which is great," he says, estimating that there are about 4,500 private courses in the country his company could sell to.
To learn more about Never-Search for Golf, go to www.never-search.com, email keithkreft@never-search.com or call 408.605.5860.
