Most fitting studios display a wall of logos. We display a wall of shafts sorted by measured frequency, and the logos are turned inward because Bao got tired of people picking by graphic design.
That is not a stunt. It is the practical consequence of a decision made in the first year: this bench signs no volume agreement, holds no distributor territory, and earns nothing extra for steering you toward any particular head. Whatever wins your ladder gets ordered, and it wins by posting a better fourth-rung number than the alternative.
Roughly 200 units
Iron and wood shafts in steel and graphite, spanning about fifty grams to about one hundred and thirty, tagged with butt, mid and tip frequency plus weight on our own scale. Sorted into profile bands, not by manufacturer. If your card says you sit in a band, we can hand you four candidates from that band in under a minute.
Rotating
Loose heads with adaptors for the wood categories and a fitting cart of single irons in a six, seven and eight across a spread of sole widths and progressions. These get replaced as models turn over, which is roughly annually and is the single biggest running cost in the shop.
Full range
Rubber, corded, hybrid and wrap in every core size we can get, plus the full ladder of undersize to jumbo. Tape is stocked in three thicknesses so a build-up can be reproduced exactly rather than approximated with extra wraps of whatever is on the roll.
Consumables
Turned ferrules in a spread of bore sizes so a joint can be finished properly rather than hidden under a pre-bored part that does not quite seat. Two epoxy systems: a slow-cure for full sets and a faster one for single-club same-day work.
The rack is a test library, not a catalogue. Almost nothing you take home comes off the wall — it gets ordered to the specification your session produced.
We buy through the ordinary component channels, which means the major head manufacturers, the established shaft houses, the grip makers and a handful of smaller specialist suppliers for grinds and putter components. There is no brand we refuse to order and no brand we push. If your session ends with a head we have never installed before, that is a normal Tuesday.
| Component | Usual wait | What makes it longer |
|---|---|---|
| Stock shaft, common weight and flex | 2 to 5 days | Nothing much. These are warehoused domestically |
| Iron heads, current model | 7 to 14 days | Non-standard loft or lie requests going back to the manufacturer |
| Iron heads, previous generation | 2 to 6 weeks | Availability, and sometimes they simply cannot be had |
| Boutique or low-volume shafts | 3 to 9 weeks | Production runs rather than warehouse stock |
| Custom grind wedges | 3 to 8 weeks | Hand work at the far end, which is the point of them |
| Milled putters, custom specification | 4 to 12 weeks | Finish and stamping queues, which nobody can hurry |
Bao will give you the real number before you commit, not the optimistic one. If a nine week wait is unacceptable, say so in the bay and we will find the closest thing that is on a shelf somewhere this week.
One
Counterfeit shafts are a real and growing problem, particularly in the premium graphite categories, and they are convincing. If you bring in a shaft bought from a marketplace listing and it does not measure anywhere near where that model should measure, we will tell you and we will not glue it into your head.
Two
Cast heads have a limited tolerance and it varies by model, alloy and how many times somebody has already been in there. We assess before we bend and we will refuse rather than hand you a hosel with a hairline in it. That refusal is free.
Three
If the fifteen minute audit says your existing irons are two degrees flat with dead grips, the answer is a bend and a regrip. We will say that even when you arrived intending to spend considerably more, and roughly one visit in five ends exactly there.
The absence of a logo wall costs us something. Manufacturers offer real support to shops that commit volume, and turning that down means the test cart is bought outright and refreshed out of ordinary revenue. It is priced into the session fee and we would rather it were, because the alternative is a fitting where the answer was partly decided before you arrived.