7 Days Left to Apply for an AGM Certified Retail Manager Scholarship

Applications for the AGM Certified Retail Manager scholarship close on August 31, 2026.

If you've been meaning to get to it, this is the week. The form takes far less time than you think, and there are five scholarships available.

The details, in one place

What it is. RepSpark is funding five scholarships toward the Association of Golf Merchandisers Certified Retail Manager certification.

What the CRM program covers. Practical training in merchandising, marketing, inventory management, financial performance, leadership, and customer experience. It is built for the person actually running the shop, not for a classroom.

Who can apply. Current AGM members interested in earning the Certified Retail Manager certification.

Deadline. August 31, 2026.

How to apply. Submit your application here.

When you will hear. Winners are announced September 15, 2026.

Questions about AGM membership or the CRM program. Visit agmgolf.org.

Why we funded this

Simon Sinek has a line that has stuck with a lot of people: "People don't buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it."

We think that applies to more than buying. It applies to who you choose to back.

RepSpark could have sponsored a tournament. Instead we put the money into certifications for individual merchandisers, because we believe the most undervalued person in golf retail is the one behind the counter making a hundred small decisions a week that decide whether the shop makes its year.

Meghann Butcher, Founder and CEO of RepSpark, said it this way. "We're deepening our commitment to the golf industry, and this scholarship is a direct expression of what we believe that commitment can provide."

Justine Cook, Director of Membership and Education at AGM, described what the program is for. "The Certified Retail Manager Program was created to help golf merchandisers build confidence, strengthen their business skills as leaders."

Confidence and business skills. That is the whole thing. Product knowledge you can pick up. The confidence to make a call on a buy, defend it to a general manager, and own the result is harder to come by, and it is what separates a good shop from a great one.

The four values we hope to see in your application

RepSpark runs on four values, our WHY. They are not a poster in a break room. They are how we hire, how we build, and how we will read every application that comes in.

Here is what each one looks like when we see it in a golf shop.

Bias for Action. We are accountable, committed, and tenacious. We are positive, intentional, and we care deeply.

In a shop, this is the merchandiser who sees a style selling through on Tuesday and has the reorder in that afternoon instead of waiting for the rep to swing by in three weeks. It is not recklessness. It is the refusal to let a good decision sit.

We Deliver! We are innovative, meticulous, and laser-focused. We are process-driven, thorough, and we take pride in our work.

This is the person whose inventory counts are right, whose floor set goes up on schedule, and whose member event merchandise shows up the week before the event and not the week after. Nobody hands out awards for this. Everyone notices when it stops happening.

Hungry to Grow. We are creative, forward-thinking learners. We are open, honest, and always improving.

Applying for this certification is already evidence of this one. You are choosing to get better at something you are already doing well. Tell us what you are trying to learn and why now.

Better Together. We are collaborative, purposeful team players. We are fun, humbly confident, and drama-free.

Golf retail is a small world. The merchandisers who last are the ones who make their PGA Professional and assistants better, who tell a sales rep the truth about what is not selling, and who pick up the phone for a peer at another club. Humbly confident is the phrase we keep coming back to. Sure of your work, easy to work with.

What makes an application stand out

Be specific. A story about one buy you got wrong and what you changed afterward will land harder than a paragraph about your passion for the game.

Tell us what the certification unlocks. Not the credential itself, the thing on the other side of it. A bigger buy budget. A conversation with your GM you are not ready to have yet. A team you want to build.

Be honest about the hard parts. We would rather read about the season you missed the number and what you learned than a clean highlight reel.

Write like you talk. We are not scoring grammar.

One week

We work with brands across golf every day, and we are around green grass shops constantly. The people who run them are, in our experience, some of the most resourceful operators in retail. Small teams, tight margins, demanding members, weather that ruins a weekend forecast on Thursday night.

If that is your life and you have been putting off this application, put the coffee down and go do it now. Five scholarships, seven days.

Apply for the AGM Certified Retail Manager scholarship before August 31, 2026.

Good luck. We are looking forward to reading them.

RepSpark connects more than 100,000 retailers to over 250 brands and their sales teams, and has a strategic alignment with PGA of America. RepSpark has been named to the Inc. 5000 list for five consecutive years and maintains SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance. Learn more about our values at repspark.com/about.