We made it to Episode 79 of the Behind the Golf Brand Podcast. In this week's episode, I interview my good friend Kerry Moher the co-founder of Red Rooster Golf Gloves.
To nail your game, you need to be able to feel your club. You need a glove that fits like a second skin. It needs to have the softest, thinnest, supplest leather, be made expertly, and make you feel (and look) like you’re ready to tee off at The Open. At Red Rooster they believe that a golf glove should help you play, and feel, great. And that everyone—including kids trying the game—deserves to have a great golf glove. This is why we created the Red Rooster.
What is great about Red Rooster, outside of their quality, is a GLOVE PURCHASED = GLOVE DONATED.
When you buy a glove - they give a glove to youth golf! Their Play It Forward Program Partners (First Tee Triangle, First Tee Ontario, Kevin Haime Golf Centre) are helping to shape the lives of young people around the world – this is their way of “Playing It Forward.”
We made it to Episode 79 of the Behind the Golf Brand Podcast. In this week's episode, I interview my good friend Kerry Moher the co-founder of Red Rooster Golf Gloves.
To nail your game, you need to be able to feel your club. You need a glove that fits like a second skin. It needs to have the softest, thinnest, supplest leather, be made expertly, and make you feel (and look) like you’re ready to tee off at The Open. At Red Rooster they believe that a golf glove should help you play, and feel, great. And that everyone—including kids trying the game—deserves to have a great golf glove. This is why we created the Red Rooster.
What is great about Red Rooster, outside of their quality, is a GLOVE PURCHASED = GLOVE DONATED.
When you buy a glove - they give a glove to youth golf! Their Play It Forward Program Partners (First Tee Triangle, First Tee Ontario, Kevin Haime Golf Centre) are helping to shape the lives of young people around the world – this is their way of “Playing It Forward.”
Today we play golf. Let me show you how we do it in the pros. Yeah. Welcome to behind the golf brand podcast. I never missed with the seven nine a conversation with some of the most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs behind the biggest names in golf. My friends were the golf clubs. I lived on the golf course. I lived on the driving range from pro talk. You should learn something from each and every single round you play to fun from on and off the green. Why would you play golf? You don't play it for money. Just let me put the ball in a hole. This is behind the golf brand podcast with Paul liberatory.
Speaker 2:What's up guys, Paul from golfers authority. Welcome to the behind the golf brand podcast. This week, I got my friend, Carrie Moore from red rooster golf. Red rooster is a new golf club company. It came out within last year. It's pretty sick. They sent me a bunch of'em and they're high quality. So I'm really excited to have'em on the show today. And you guys try to check'em out. So without further ado, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks Paul. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Where are you? Where do you live?
Speaker 3:Uh, I'm in Ottawa, Ontario. So it's, uh, we still got some snow on the ground. Spring was in the air last week, but it feels, feels like the middle of winter today. So we're still, probably early may. We'll kind of get into our golf season
Speaker 2:Slowly gonna come into golf season right now. Like slowly,
Speaker 3:Slowly. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I played golf on Sunday and it was beautiful. I was like 78.
Speaker 3:<laugh> beautiful. So I was down in North Carolina last week with my business partner, Brad. So we've got distribution for our Canadian market out of, uh, Ottawa and distribution for our us market out of, uh, just outside Raleigh, Holly Springs. So I was down there. Spring was in the air was, uh, was beautiful. We got to play some courses around Pinehurst and uh, so wet my appetite.
Speaker 2:You're like a little bit, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Are you a golf pro?
Speaker 3:No. Uh, I played college golf, so I played division two college golf.
Speaker 2:You're good, bro. Don't I mean,
Speaker 3:I can get it out there. What's
Speaker 2:Probably like a plus what?
Speaker 3:No, I'm a two handicap.
Speaker 2:Geez. You're like so much better than me. So growing up. So did you grow up in Canada?
Speaker 3:I
Speaker 2:Did in Ottawa.
Speaker 3:I moved all over Ontario, but uh, high school was in Ottawa.
Speaker 2:Are you a Ottawa senators fan?
Speaker 3:I am.
Speaker 2:They have the coolest Jersey. I always,
Speaker 3:Yeah, they, yeah, it's cool. It's too bad. The, the team is, uh, is going ebbs and flows. They were, they were so good for so long and they've been, uh, they're in this pretty lengthy rebuilding phase, but, um, I'm still a big fan, so hoping that, uh, greener pastures are ahead.
Speaker 2:So when you played, so you played high school golf and like, and as a kid, did you play in Canada? Is that I mean, I'm assuming
Speaker 3:You grew up there. Yeah, I kind of got into golf a little bit later. I started playing when I was like 15, 16 and, um, picked it up and, and enjoyed it. Um, my area, we didn't have, like, we had a golf team, but we played like a tournament.<laugh> one really. I played through the summers. I had, you know, most of my closest friends played golf. I fell in love with it right away and started playing some tournaments and could kind of break 80 after I think it was after my first summer when I was 16, when I got a membership and, and then just kind of, uh, started to explore my last year of high school, looking into a scholarship and ended up down in, in Kentucky at Kentucky state university, a small division two school had amazing time there loved the game ever since, and played with some guys who, you know, got into the game at the high sort of level pro level or at the club pro level. And, um, I've just kind of continued to play. And then recently I've got four young kids and got three girls who were just kind of starting to get into the game. And that was kind of the impetus for red rooster was to try and do something in and around it to, to do something fun for the game, but also to do a give back to youth golf.
Speaker 2:So is red rooster, your full-time gig
Speaker 3:Kind of, I've got another business. You probably see it behind me lumberjacks. I've got a couple of acts throwing venues. I got one here in Ottawa and one down in Athens, Georgia where I, I went to grad school. So I'm kind of juggling the, the two of them, but, um, red rooster, we, we launched it last year with a Kickstarter and things are really picking up. Oh, we've began operating for less than a year.
Speaker 2:So you grew up in Canada, you went down and played division two in Kentucky. Right. And then did you go back to Canada or did you go right into grad school?
Speaker 3:I went back to Canada, came back to Ottawa, um, worked for a couple of technology firms and, um, just kind of knew that I, I had a lot of entrepreneurial spirit. And
Speaker 2:Did you feel like your soul was dying inside when you were there slowly?
Speaker 3:It was, you know, if you've watched office space,<laugh> like, that was, that was sort of my life
Speaker 2:Load air. Did you buy a bunch of PC load airs?
Speaker 3:It was, uh, like I had, my first boss had like the steaming cup of coffee and, uh, we had the cubicles and it was, oh, I had those, it was a bit painful for me. Um,
Speaker 2:It was so sucking for me. Like I did that after first I bought law school was I went in house at Honeywell and I felt like my heart was like dying inside me. Cause it was like,<laugh> I like, they put me in cubicle as a lawyer and I was like, are you serious? Like, like seriously, this is for real. And like, I mean, I met some of the best people ever, like, I mean, I love my coworkers. I'm like they're lawyers too. And they were cool and I loved them and good, good people. And it was like my, I didn't have a cubicle. I shared a cubicle of four people, which was, which blew my mind. Right. Like,
Speaker 3:Wow. Yeah. That's I mean,
Speaker 2:I remember thinking, like I went through all this law school to sit in a cubicle, like this can't be happening. Right. And I remember that feeling
Speaker 3:Well, it's good. It's good experience. So it's good to figure out what you, I just didn't. I, I actually enjoyed the job. I enjoyed the company and the people. I just knew that I wanted a bit more flexibility and I wanted like a little bit more direction. So I ended, that's how I ended up at university of Georgia. I went there to graduate school to have an amazing
Speaker 2:MBA
Speaker 3:Program. Yeah. I was an MBA program where had a focus on marketing and entrepreneurship and, um, that's cool. So that's kind of where my business journey started.
Speaker 2:So like you already had the entrepreneur bite, I guess. And then it helped. Yeah. As an entrepreneur, like people ask you like, oh, I, you know, how do, how do you become an entrepreneur? And I'm like, you just don't become one. It's like either you have it or you don't like it's, you can work. I mean, you might find it over time. I'm saying you were born with it, but like, it's kind of, there's just different flavors. I feel like of people and some people like being in a cubicle or like being in a corporate world or like do I'd rather blow my brains out. Like, honestly, I feel like it's kind of cool that you learned, well, you got an education in it, right. Essentially. I mean, you know, by going to get your MBA and doing more the howtos and the whys. Right. Cause I didn't, I didn't get an MBA and law schools didn't teach you that stuff. The law school was more about the law. Right. And like how to argue, which I still lose my arguments with my wife, but, um,
Speaker 3:<laugh>
Speaker 2:I, I could win'em I still want
Speaker 3:Them sometimes it's better to lose.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I just a lot better to lose just this moment. Yeah. So when you're an entrepreneur, so when you were getting your MBA, is that when you had the idea for the act throwing?
Speaker 3:No, not necessarily had a bunch of different ideas when I was, we had to, um, you had to, to develop different business plans and pitch them at, at case competitions, we actually had a children's smoke detector and we, um, we won a number of different business plan competitions. And that's cool. I think you just learned to look at different markets and evaluate them and, and figure out how to, uh, develop a marketing plan and evaluate the product and the pricing and the sourcing. And so I ventured off of that, I started my own marketing firm and I worked with a, a bunch of different clients in a bunch of different industries. And I learned a lot. And then for 15 years or so, I, I joined forces with one. We built, uh, an online learning company called fresh air educators. And it was, um, just a really fun ride, lots of really smart people. We developed online courses for your boat license, where your hunter education certificate, um, and so on. So we, we did that for a long time and divested of that a couple of years ago and still do some sales and marketing work with the group at KKA I and fresh air and, and kind of PI pivoted off of that and decided that I'd get back into kind of doing some things on my own. I started the ax throwing with a business partner of mine from graduate school at, at UGA. And then the red rooster just came about in the last sort of lull with the pandemic. I love golf and I've always wanted to do something in and around it and started to have a little bit more time on my hands to think about what exactly that might look like.
Speaker 2:Wow, you've done a lot of businesses. That's crazy. It's not like some people have an idea and they go with it. Right. But like, you've, you've been an entrepreneur for a while and you've grown companies and you divested and you sold, sold out to, you know, and then also when did you get done with school? Like what year was that?
Speaker 3:I finished at university of Georgia in 2003.
Speaker 2:It's like, you're the same age. So then so nearly
Speaker 3:20 years ago.
Speaker 2:No dude tell me about it. Yeah. What, like, I I'm like doing the math about my, like when I graduated high school and I'm like, what the F and then my kids are watching American idol the other night and I was like, oh my God. And you know, kids are like 1820, and I'm was like, what the heck, dude? You know, like now I'm trying to teach my kids. Like time goes by really fast, just FYI. Like you don't think it does as a kid. It's like on super speed. I'm just gonna let you know that.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Just go tell your kids that right now for me.
Speaker 3:Quick tip. Um,
Speaker 2:So you had the tech company sold that start the ax toing company. Why'd you open two locations?
Speaker 3:Well, we, we opened up the first one we opened at, in the university at the university of Georgia in Athen.
Speaker 2:I would open in Ottawa first. I would've been at a college campus.
Speaker 3:I think it was a little bit, so, I mean, there wasn't one in Athens and I think like part of it was just, I, I love Athens. It's just such a cool town. I really enjoyed my time there. And it was a bit of an excuse to get back there to be honest, but the business has done really well. Um, we didn't want to open one in Ottawa, but there was, there was kind of a need. There's actually two other acts throwing places in town, but they were all sort of central to the east end. So we, we found a, just a really good location and that cool that business has done well. We're opening ano a third one in lake of
Speaker 2:You material entrepreneur, bro.
Speaker 3:So, uh, well I got a great team. It, that was just really fun. Like with fresh air educators, the online learning company, one of the things I'm most proud of with that business was we really got the team together off site and we did a lot to, you know, team build, but to, to build a rapport and trust. And so we did, you know, everything from, you know, white water rafting to, um, you know, different hiking, excursions, camping, and so on. And, and aro is a great team building activity, no matter what your team does, maybe you're legal, maybe you're in retail, but it's nice to get off site, do something new, do something that most people haven't done before and get to, you know, learn a little bit about each other. So that was kind of the, the idea behind lumberjacks was do something fun for other businesses, you know, a business to kind of like help support them and help them kind of build their team. And, um, and people come in with such a great attitude and it's just a lot of fun. It's a fun, kind of simple, easy business online. Learning's pretty complicated. There's a lot going on there. And, and lumberjacks is pretty easy to wrap your head
Speaker 2:Around like the other side of it. Right. It's more like,
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker 2:It's kind a cool name. Guys. Want your website for fresher? Educate ed, educate educators. It's all like outdoor stuff, right? Like, yeah. Hence the name fresh air. Like at first I was, you know, I'm like, oh, it's so fricking smart. That's and I looked at it, I'm like, oh, that's cool. You're like, you know, like where you can find all your courses too, like different, you know, organizations or, or like that's what Arizona fishing game. Right. For
Speaker 3:An example, that's right. Uh, one of our partners. So we would build the online courses so that either you would take, you know, all of your hunter education or your boater education online, or you'd take some portion of it and then meet with a partner like Arizona game and Phish to get, you know, some in person instruction. So we did a lot of animation and video. Um, it was, uh, you're porn
Speaker 2:Cat. This is crazy. I had no idea about this. I, all I knew about you was that you had the ax throwing thing. That's why I learned that like you did better rooster, but I didn't know, like, this is cool. That that's really cool. I mean, so essentially was like fresh year ed educators, like a, a SAS essentially, or what would you consider it more of?
Speaker 3:Was it more of
Speaker 2:A, a SAS, like a software as a service or was it
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's good money in that.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, we, you know, we were building really engaging interactive online courses and most of our agency partners were sort of focused more on the facilitation of the in person. So we made, made a good team.
Speaker 2:Well, it's cool too, because it's like, it's definitely a niche and it was definitely something that was probably lacking and consolidation of like to do it. Right. You know, because like, if it's a budgeted item for a governmental agency, it will never get done, you know? Or like, it'd be really bad. Or if they decide to do it, then it cost a fortune and someone's gonna, they're gonna get ripped off. You know what I mean? So it's almost like you had the street credit with other agencies, like, look, we made this for so and so, I mean, it's like, oh, okay. No worries. Yeah. That's cool to you guys. That's smart.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was scalable. Right. So let Arizona game and Phish probably couldn't build like a full video animated course on its own, but it could leverage the fact that we built, you know, a foundation for like a California, Colorado, and they
Speaker 2:Happy pretty close. You know what I mean? Like what they're, I mean, I know laws are different every state, but I mean, to have the collateral needed to make this stuff is probably close, right?
Speaker 3:Like, yeah. Probably the old 80 20 rule came into play
Speaker 2:There. Yeah. And then also I could see too where like, you know, if they decided, if they wanted to do it himself in house, you'd have to hire somebody full time. Right. So that's gonna cost 60 to a hundred thousand dollars a year. And then it's like, no, that's really cool. So you did that and then you started doing the ax throwing. Were you still playing a lot of golf? Probably not. You're probably just playing when you had time. Right?
Speaker 3:I wa no, I, over time, I, I, I was playing less and about 10 years ago, my uncle got diagnosed with cancer and he, he, he liked golf. He didn't, he didn't love it, but he had never been to Ireland. And my last name's Moher, both sides of my family are Irish. If you can't tell. So we planned this trip and we went over there. I had been playing golf like periodically. I didn't have a membership anywhere I played. I played when I'd traveled a little bit, we went on that trip to Ireland and I fell in love with the game again. I was like, wow, like golf can be this good because the courses there were just incredible. Um, and it, it, after that trip, I kind of, I started, I started playing more and I started being, I think even a bit more discerning in where I'd play. You know, I was like, you know, I wanted to play more interesting courses. I'd played a lot of golf, but I hadn't played a lot of great golf until that trip. And so I got back and started to, to do a little bit more. I joined, uh, the Royal Ottawa here in town, which is a great private club that has great facilities and got playing more started introducing my kids to the game. So it's been, um, it's been nice, but yeah, but probably the last 10 years, I played more than the 10 prior to that.
Speaker 2:Well, we started having kids too serving less time to actually play as well. Right. It's like on top of it. So it's kind of, that's like me, it's like, I almost say, I mean, people say, oh, you, you do golf stuff. And it's like, you must be really good. And I'm like, I mean, I tried to, like, I've made a website to like, try to get better. And I do all this stuff to like, learn and get better, like everybody else. But like, I'm no pro you know, like I wasn't like, so it's almost kind of, especially in the age group that we're in, when you start having kids and like activities, it's like, you've less and less and less and less time. Like, you know, I might as lucky if I was playing golf once a month and not as if I was lucky. Right. Um, now I have a little more flexibility, but so let's talk about red rooster. So then when did you have the idea for red rooster? How this come up?
Speaker 3:I, I've probably been thinking, I mean, I've been thinking about doing something in golf for years, and there, there wasn't really like one sort of aha moment. But if, if I boil it back at, at least to my current partnership with my business partner, Brad Fritz, she's a former PJ tour player. We were doing just a buddy's trip to Pinehurst area. And I remember, you know, I'd spent a lot of money to get there and we were playing some really nice courses. And of course, you know, I've got my expensive membership and I've got my expensive golf clubs and, and I took a pretty good, you know, ING from the guys for, like I had, you know, a really brutal glove that was really old. And it started the, it was sort of like, why would you do that when you take golf pretty seriously? Like, what is it about gloves that you don't seem to value? And I just, I hadn't really thought about it. I was, I, I didn't value them. I thought, well, they're just gloves. And I, I was kind of like a bit of a cheap skate with golf gloves. And like, with the rest of my game, I was spending lots of money. So it made me question like, like how important are they? Um, and in talking with Brad, you know, tour pros, they get gloves are practically disposable. You know, he would only use a glove for a round or two. And I couldn't even wrap my head around that, but score is paramount to them, you know? And so they're not gonna leave anything to chance. They're not gonna play with a ball for a whole too many or a glove for around too many. And so it got me thinking like, gloves, aren't that expensive? Why wouldn't I get more of them? What's a good glove. Like, is there a difference between them? And I started to really dig in, I started to try all the different gloves, the different brands, and, and it led me to where they're all made, which, you know, most of the golf gloves aside from Titleless FootJoy are made in Indonesia, there's a steady supply of Cabretta leather. And, um, and when I went over and visited with all the factories, you could see that it's, it's a really detailed sewing process. And so it, it Le leads itself to different centers that focus on leather works. And, um, it's a really sort of, they're all handcrafted,
Speaker 2:It's skill it's skill. It's not,
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a skill. Um,
Speaker 2:It's not a machine. It does it it's like, like they have to sew'em for reals, like by hand or, you know, through a machine. But you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:Even when I went over, so I, I ended up by, that's
Speaker 2:What I love about Carrie you guys. Cause when Carrie told me he did this, like nobody does this, oh, I went over there and when book at suppliers, I was like, for reals, you like really did that. Like, cuz no one does that. I go, oh and Alibaba and I like bounce some cheap, you know, glove manufacturer.
Speaker 3:Well, I did do Alibaba. Um, oh and every
Speaker 2:Single and you learned and you're like, blah,
Speaker 3:I was like, these aren't these aren't great gloves. I, I knew right away. And of course, I mean my, my business partners, a tour pro, so he was, I mean, to be fair, he is a bit of a glove snob, so
Speaker 2:Good. Because you need to know that cuz you're not and neither mine. Yeah. Like you wouldn't know. I mean, you didn't know if it was like crap, like right away. Like if it breaks and you put it on or something, but
Speaker 3:No, a year ago, I didn't know. Or two years ago, I didn't know, near as much, like I've become a bit of a glove glove snob myself now just understanding the difference and how they're made. But yeah, no, I, I went over cuz I said, you know, I, I have to understand how these gloves are made. If I'm gonna get into this business, I'm gonna sell these. I need to understand what's the process look like. And I, I was a bit naive. I didn't know anything about tanners and leather works. So that blew my mind, just the four to six week process to take a skin and turn it into this really soft Cabretta leather. And then, and then the glove making process was really, it was really impressive because I, I thought more of it would be automated, but it's these teams that, you know, hands sow these gloves. So every stitch is, is responsibility of one team member and they do one thing and they do it really well. And they hand it off to the next team member who does a different stitch or does a different cut or is part of the quality control process. So it made me feel even better, you know, I, and, and I appreciate the gloves even more. I've got when you're just like, when you look at one of the golf gloves and you look at all that stitching, this is all done by a person.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, it's like, there's a lot of care that has to be put into the glove and people just think that it's, it's something that's not right. And I think especially, so when you went to Indonesia, like what happened? You went there and you're like, whoa, what the heck? It kind of blew your mind?
Speaker 3:Well, the I've done a lot of I've I've always been in sort of business development, sales. And uh, so I had lined up these meetings. I had worked with it, um, Indonesia trade commission and they had lined up these meetings. I had a really hard time getting any meetings because these are big factories and they work with a lot of the top brands.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You're nobody they're like, I don't have time, for example.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Right. They don't need, they're busy. They don't need some new upstart golf glove maker. They don't need the business and they don't need the headaches because they've got, you know, big clients that they want to, you know, keep them protected. So it was, it was actually really hard to, you got the first meetings and I've had meetings, you know, years ago with like bass pro shops and you get the seven minutes in a trailer and you're sort of on your way. And it was that type of experience I'd flown halfway around the world and they were just sort of like gonna do the service, like thanks for coming, appreciate your interest. You know, take care. We'll talk soon. And so luckily I was, you know, stranded there. I was there for the next two weeks. So I had to sort of find reasons and excuses to come back. And I eventually, um, you know, was able to win over, um, a, a couple manufacturers to even kind of get in the door and even have, uh, a deeper,
Speaker 2:So how many places did you visit?
Speaker 3:I visited, I, I visited 10 to 12 factories. I got on the floor of four that were sort of worthwhile and look like, some of them were like, I show up and say, you know, I'm glad I'm here cuz this isn't, you know, a factory I'd be comfortable with. That was a real wide range. You
Speaker 2:Know, first real, this is like, you never hear of this. When I, when you told me this, the first one, I was like, I mean, this is the right way of doing business. Right. Most people just don't do that. They just kind of like Chuck on it to a bunch of manufacturers overseas and hope to God, they'll get a sample and be like, oh, this is good enough for us to sell. Right. Like essentially what happens. But like you did it like a real industrial person trying to figure out like, who is the manufacturer that I want to work with? Not based off of our website, not based off some sample, they send me that could not be, you know, like that's, I've never like seriously. There's like, I don't even know how many brands actually do this. I mean, the ones I do know doing this are like real brands at this point. They're not just like crossing their fingers and hoping that they're just suppliers not gonna go out of business. You know what I mean? It's more like, oh yeah, this is an established company. So like you narrow. So you saw four places essentially, and then narrowed it down and then how'd you like line up? How'd you pick the one you liked out of everybody.
Speaker 3:I, I had already done some sampling and then we did some collaboration. So we did, then I run a full production run is usually a minimum of a thousand gloves.
Speaker 2:Holy.
Speaker 3:So we kind of whittled it down to, to two major manufacturers to actually do production runs and see if there was, you know, a difference in the production run versus the samples, you know, samples can be misleading. So production
Speaker 2:Was thousand. So you do 4,000 or I'm sorry, a thousand gloves. Right? So you do a thousand gloves as a production run and, and that's a lot of risk, right? For you guys, because if you get a thousand gloves and they're not like the sample, you're gonna be like, we can't sell these. No one's gonna buy'em no crap. Right. So I mean, you have,
Speaker 3:It was a bit of a risk, but at that point, I mean, I visited those floors. I'd built those relationships. I was, I was reasonably confident.
Speaker 2:You hedge the risk, like pretty close, like knowing you're not getting a garbage, you're just, this is verification that it's still a good product. Like that's right. What you saw is what you're gonna be receiving. So then you did that. And then how many, how many sample runs did you do in total? You have
Speaker 3:A lot of lines. We did those two sample runs and we did beta testing. So we, we used those to, we did different contests and giveaways and different things so that we could get those gloves out to the general public, to some influencers, friends, and family, and get people to test the gloves to actually try.'em it, it's one thing to, you know, this looks beautiful, but you know, you gotta go and use it and to see like how long would they last? Um,
Speaker 2:Where's the break? Why the break? How? Yeah. Like all this stuff is the bleed. Yeah. Uh, is it the right sizing? You know, like what they're saying is a large, is that really a large, um, so when did you do that? Like what year was that? So this is 21
Speaker 3:That was last February, last February and March. We did the beta testing.
Speaker 2:And then you said that you had done or people buy into it. What's the thing called
Speaker 3:The Kickstarter
Speaker 2:Kickstarter. So you just, so when did you decide to do Kickstarter and when did you do Kickstarter?
Speaker 3:We did the Kickstarter. It was essentially may. It was early may to early June. It was a 30 day campaign. So after the, we did the,
Speaker 2:Did you have experience with a Kickstarter before that?
Speaker 3:No. No. I'd never done.
Speaker 2:That would be a cool way. We should try it out if it worked. I mean, you already had the product, right. Essentially. Cause you'd gotten the thousand of'em. So you had something you could sell or did you get rid of that thousand before you did Kickstarter?
Speaker 3:Well, we thought we were being super good. So when we ordered the, the thousand Sam, as soon as those came in, we knew like both manufacturers were amazing. So we had, we had really good product. We already knew what the results were gonna be. We put it out, there were no surprises. Everyone was like, this is a really good glove, you know? And then we had made, then we doubled down and we ordered what we thought we would sell in the Kickstarter in February. Um, from one manufacturer we put kind of all our eggs in that one basket, which they were both really good. It was one a and one B we had, it was wasn't um, it was a tough decision because they were both so good. But we, we sort of thought that we were
Speaker 2:You chat, man, you hit the gold. Like that's like the hardest thing. Right? Cause it's like, you knew as soon as you opened that packaging, you're like, oh, this is real. This is not.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We, we knew the sampling was great. Once I was over there, we did even more sampling while I was there so that we could stretch the different styles and stuff. And I was really confident that these two manufacturers would deliver and they did. But when we doubled down on the Kickstarter, we were anticipating actually like having the inventory so that when the Kickstarter was done, we would've fulfilled it right away. And that didn't happen. The, the lead time for these gloves went from 60 days to, you know, 120 to two 40
Speaker 2:Lab bummer.
Speaker 3:It was, it was a, it was sort of a trickle down from COVID the, the leather was in short supply. Um, the factories were being hit with waves of COVID restrictions that didn't allow them to, um, even have employees in the F the factories were shuttered for, you know, a couple of months. And even when they got,
Speaker 2:Even though you thought, like you had already figured it out, gained the system, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We did.
Speaker 2:You prefigured it out and you're like, okay, cool beans. We got this. And then even though this is a year two of COVID, it's like, it puts a, it kind of derails it a little bit, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We, we were definitely thinking we were pretty clever and, and it ended up and
Speaker 2:You are, I mean, you did the right things. It wasn't like, I mean, so when did that happen? So that was like, so, so from last year from like, you start, you started Kickstarter, what month was that? April?
Speaker 3:It was in may. Right. So, and we, we, we had ordered enough gloves to cover the Kickstarter in February and they were supposed to be ready by may. Like, as the Kickstarter was starting, we should have had the gloves. And then it was just like, oh, delay here, slight delay again. And it, it started to get away in this, but we were a bit naive. We were like, oh, you know, they're, they're coming with just, and it, it really dragged on, we didn't fulfill that Kickstarter completely until September, but
Speaker 2:Still pretty good, still pretty commendable that you were able to get it done by September, because I mean, some Kickstarter never deliver and some take a year because of whatever people get off. So, I mean, I think people have become more understanding with COVID and with shipping and all the things. It's all, I mean, I had this conversation the other day with somebody I'm like, you know, do we, but it's about free shipping, right? Like, and I know there's ways that you can play around free shipping, but you know, the cost of shipping's gone up so much, the cost of getting goods over here is so much the time. Now you gotta bring the time factor in like, yeah, it's cheaper to ship by boat, but then it's like, will it ever arrive? Right. Because you'd be sitting outside of California forever.<laugh> so it's like, so then you do air freight, which is like, literally twice the price. Oh yeah. You know, which you probably know this too, but people out there probably don't know that, you know? So then it's like, okay, now it costs twice the price, which is a lot, a hundred percent more. And now it's like, okay, now, how do you pass that on? Do you pass that on to this consumer? Or do you not? And then it's like, shipping's gotten so expensive right now. It's ridiculous. Like, I mean, it was already ridiculous for the last two years, but now with gas, it's even more. I, I talked, I talked to a guy yesterday, he goes, we were gonna fly. We were gonna ship some stuff to Idaho. Right. We were gonna drive it ourselves. It was a simulator. Right. We're gonna drive. We're gonna drive custom, made simulator to Idaho for his house. He's like, and when we did the numbers, we had a plan. And then it's like, in the last month, the gas has went up. What? Twice as much was two hours more a gallon, essentially. He's like now cheaper for us to ship it by ups and just unreal, private to like, cause she goes, even shipping prices, one up gas is more expensive than doing it. I'm like, I'm still, it's still very commendable that you guys are able to get that done by September, considering everything that's going on in the world. Um, this is thing I want people to know too. Gloves are hard. Okay. Now people think gloves are easy gloves. Don't cost a whole heck of a lot to make. Well, depends. But they're hard because if you get the wrong manufacturer you're hose and that's, it you're hose. Nothing you can do about it. You gotta find another manufacturer. And so for what red rooster is done, though, in a very short amount of time, it hasn't even been a year. Right? I mean, this is March. It's literally been a year ago is when you went down,
Speaker 3:It's about a year. Yeah.
Speaker 2:To like they're legitimate, you know? And there's, I'm not saying lot. There's only a handful of glove companies I can say are legitimate glove companies. There's a lot of people selling gloves on their website. That's completely different. But like, so with we rooster, you guys are, we just talked, we talked about this the other day, like there's a million fricking sizes for gloves, like, right. So it's like, you can't just do small, medium, large, that's it? Large XL. Like that's like level one glove company right there. Like, because how many for you guys are some blow your mind? How many sizes you guys carry?
Speaker 3:26, 26.
Speaker 2:Now I named four. So there's 22 other sizes. We didn't even name right. That. And I got, so when I did gloves, somebody said, oh, do you have, do you carry this? And I'm like, what is even that like, no, I don't not carry cadet. What's cadet. Well, I kind of cadet was I'm like seriously. And then he is like, oh, do you carry kids? Oh, do you carry women? Because they're all different size. You can't be like, oh, it's a small glove. A woman would wear that. No, it doesn't cause like 26. That's a fricking insanity.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It, I didn't even. So when we did the beta testing, that's when 30% of that audience requested cadet sizing. So they, they got the gloves, they liked them. And they said, you know, if you offer this in cadet, we'd buy,
Speaker 2:Did you, so lemme ask this as a business question. Did you give them the glove or did they buy the glove
Speaker 3:During the, we, we gave those away the beta gloves were, we were building our, our list for the Kickstarter. So we were, and we were, we, we, we got most of our interest by putting out we had a golf glove habit survey. We ask people, you know, simple questions. Like how often do you change your glove? Um,
Speaker 2:And, and then if they did, if they did the survey, then you sum a free glove is how you're
Speaker 3:Doing it. In some cases we did, we, we hit different lists and we, we did some, you know, advertising. We, we tried all kinds of different marketing tactics to just see like, what was the interest in our product? And also like, was the market, you know, looking for this solution, namely, did they like the, you know, if everyone said, there's lots of great gloves out here, they're all perfectly priced and of high quality. And they're delivered in exactly the right time. You know, we wouldn't have had everything, but all the answers kind of led us to, most people have a kind of this love, hate relationship with gloves. They, you love a new, fresh glove. You usually like have to buy another one. When you get a hole in it or something you haven't properly planned and you go into a pro shop and, and you pay too much and you don't feel good about it. And then you use it for too long after that because you feel like you, you know, you've gotta get extra.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um, so not only did we have to make a really good glove, like Brad just wouldn't get involved. If we were gonna make something that was just sort of run of the mill, we had to make something that was as good a glove as we could make. And then it was about the delivery method. And that's why we've we offer, it's a flexible subscription. We call it. But quite often, like you need a glove to show up on your door as a reminder that it's time to change your glove. We often say youll,
Speaker 2:Never remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You can't be trusted to change your glove on the right time. You just don't do it. You're like I can get another round or two out of this. And when that glove arrives in the mail, you're like, maybe I'll use that one for the practice or the one
Speaker 2:You you're definitely gonna use a new one. Cuz you're excited. Oh, I glove and I don't have to remember to buy it.
Speaker 3:Yes. Uh, that that's, that's the idea on the subscription. So it, it can come like every month, uh, every couple of months you can skip a shipment if you don't need one, but it's
Speaker 2:Been, it's optional. Right? Like you don't have to do that. It's a service you
Speaker 3:Yeah. You can just buy the gloves. Um,
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or you can do a subscription now if somebody does subscription, is it cheaper?
Speaker 3:It is. Yeah. You save 10% if you do the subscription, but it it's, it is more about the con conven and more of the reminder that like the gloves come. So you don't have to think about when you should be changing your glove. I'd say that's more important, but you do save a little bit of money. If you subscribe
Speaker 2:In September, you get the first orders out to the people that, how did you do well on Kickstarter?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we did. We, we sold over$75,000 worth of product to more than a thousand backers. So it was
Speaker 2:How do you even market on Kickstarter? Just you publish it or do you, I don't know how Kickstarter works on the back end. So like as a person wanting to do Kickstarter, like what, what happens?
Speaker 3:So you, you have to build Kickstarter is sort of, it's, it's a portal. You you're building like a little sort of like infomercial site. So you build this scrolling page that, you know, shares your product and your mission and vision. And then you're essentially sort of pre-selling the product. So we pre-sold, you know, you could buy a glove, you could buy three gloves or six gloves and you could buy one of our glove cases. Um, so there was different packages and we even had some unique golf experiences where you could play like TPC sawgras, um, or, you know, Kinlock and some private, um, unique golf experiences with myself and my business partner, Brad. So it's kind of a mix of products that you put up and you, some of them are limited in scope. Um, some of them are time sensitive and, and then you choose the length of the campaign. And ours was for 30 days. So we, we raised$75,000, but I think after like three days, we were already at like 30,$35,000, we were about,
Speaker 2:What do you think caused that? Like, what do you think made people support it?
Speaker 3:It was a lot of it came from the beta testing and the, we had built a list and, and the survey, we had 3,500 people answer our golf glove habit survey,
Speaker 2:But then how did you, how did you with the survey, how did you get them to actually do that? Like some people were like,
Speaker 3:Whatever, we worked with different partners who got some of our beta gloves and were willing to share with their audience. Um, so we would send out the survey and say, Hey, you know, um, a hundred people who answer this survey are gonna get a free glove and we'd get a thousand people to answer it. Um, so people were sort of like giving us market research in exchange for like the possibility of, of getting one of these free gloves.
Speaker 2:Did you like survey monkey or what, or you just build something out yourself or what did you do?
Speaker 3:It, it was survey monkey. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So like you would go to a partner quote unquote, and be like, Hey, send this out to your email list or send this out to on social or whatever. And you're gonna give away X product to so X people for just, you know, they probably put their email address in. So they, if you do pick them, they'd be like, Hey, we'll send this to you. Oh my God. So freaking smart dude, to
Speaker 3:Carry that. That was it. So we, we built this list and then the way the Kickstarter works is like the first day of that campaign, you know, you tell everybody, right. You can, every this list, your friends and family. And, um, and it's a bit of a gamification, um, exercise. So people are coming to this website and they're seeing the activity and they, you know, if they like the product or if they've interacted with it, if they trust you, then they'll, you know, support you. Um, knowing
Speaker 2:Now when you sell something on Kickstarter, you do it for full price, like the real price, or are they a special price? Because it's on Kickstarter.
Speaker 3:It was a special price. They were discounted sort of early bird pricing, I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 2:So that's a lot of people, a thousand people. I mean, it's a lot of money too. I mean, right. I guess it's like seven. So then in total, how many did you, how many things did you sell? You
Speaker 3:Said we sold thousand. We sold 2,500 gloves.
Speaker 2:What the heck? What was, do you think people did it too, because like you're giving'em it's gamification prize so that people were like, oh yeah, I wanna go to TPC sawgras so I'll just, I'll buy it. See what happens. Do you think that's what it was or just with everything you learned,
Speaker 3:The, those, those unique experiences were separate. Um, so you'd get some gloves with those, but it was mostly that those were an opportunity that those were ended up being purchased by some like good close friends and family. It's more of a support of saying like, Hey, we like your idea. We'd love to see you guys succeed. And here's a way to kind of like help you out to, to help your launch and help you. You guys, you know,
Speaker 2:Move forward my kind of product and like, oh, we wanna support you with that. And that's all freaking smart. I only know two people that who's done Kickstarter now, and they're both glove companies and they both did very well.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:You and Palm, Palm gloves did Kickstarter. Okay. That's how they, that's how they launched. Um, there probably be more, there's probably more that I don't know about, but, um, I think Testa to you, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Thanks. The, the one thing we learned from it is that golf there's, there's not, not, not been a lot of success with golf brands on Kickstarter because it tends to be, the whole ecosystem is very like tech focused. So I would say
Speaker 2:Like right now, especially with golf, getting bigger that like,
Speaker 3:It may be help. It may be helping, it may be a different time, but I think a lot of people think like this Kickstarter kind of does it for you. Like if you launch on Kickstarter, people just come out of the woodwork. But Kickstarter was just a platform where we could send people and they could send
Speaker 2:You have a website or no, like, I guess this kind of makes it feel differently. Cause
Speaker 3:You probably had, we had a website, but it was pushing people to Kickstarter at the time. Like we didn't, we didn't have any gloves, so we weren't selling anything. So it was a way to kind of like, you know, gather everybody's support to see the bit of the gamification, but we didn't have, we drove all the traffic to Kickstarter and Kickstarter was a way to kind of like capture the support. We didn't get like all these Kickstarter backers from other projects coming to support ours that happens with tech stuff. Because sometimes people, people buy things on Kickstarter every week. The newest gadget, but golf is, is a bit different. If anything, our audience hadn't supported anything on Kickstarter before and had a hard time like creating an account and kind of getting in. It was in some ways it was a bit of a burden, but it was O overall a good experience.
Speaker 2:Well, it also kind of, uh, solidifies your idea, right? And it says, look, this is a good idea. This is a value. People do want this, you know, it's not like you ju it's just, I don't know. I think it's, it's fascinating cuz I, I just think it, I don't, it's rare, you know, like you're saying, it's not like a lot of people have done this. I've known two out of a hundred brands. They've done it now essentially. Okay. So there's probably more people that done it that just don't talk about it. Cause it didn't work out for them. But like you said, like you had, you were pushing people to it. You weren't just like, oh, if I post on Kickstarter, it's gonna make all my money. You know what I mean? It's gonna do it for me. Yeah. I doesn't. It's like, it's just a platform for you to be like, here's my idea. Here's what we're gonna do. Here's my video. Here's whatever. But it's not like, they're not, they're not pushing people for you. It's just a place to put your stuff and, and hope that people are interested.
Speaker 3:That was my experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's cool. Tell me what you guys, what do you guys offer right now to consumers? What is your forte? I guess?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So our, our main area is, is our golf glove. So we've got nine different styles. We've got our kids' glove, which is called the R um, that's, that's also the glove that we donate. So that's, that's the piece that sort of, you know, Brad and I, when we were starting the business, we kind of looking a couple years out and saying, you know, if this thing takes off, we're gonna want to have some sort of give back golf, spin. Um, really good to me, you know, Brad's made a career, um, in the game. And if we were to give back, we had looked at like, like what are some of the different organizations that we could kind of work with? And, and then, and if we could work with'em, what would we do? Would we donate some sort of portion of profits or proceeds? And we ended up deciding that, you know, the best thing we could do is, is give a glove back to some, some kid who's just getting into the game for the first time, because golf's a bit intimidating and you don't really know all the rules and it doesn't always feel the most welcoming. And, and especially as far as gloves are concerned, they don't know that you wear a glove. So they'll often show up to their first event and get maybe some instruction or, or sort of golf 1 0 1 and like the instructors of gloves, but you know, the kids don't. And, uh, so we reached out to the first tee and, and specifically the first tee triangle, which is in Brad's area, it's Raleigh Durham. And we asked him, we said, you know, how many kids who went through your, you know, intro to golf program last year had gloves when they showed up to the activities. And the CEO was like, zero, none. They don't know about gloves. They don't have them, we don't give them to them there. And so we were like, well, wouldn't it be great if we could, you know, donate our gloves to organizations like the first teeth and make a really good first impression. So that's, that's kind of rounds out what we do. We make, you know, our pitches, like we make tour quality gloves at fair prices. We deliver them direct by flexible subscription. And for every glove that you buy, we donate one to youth golf.
Speaker 2:I mean, I honestly, you guys make really good gloves. Like I'm, I really appreciate the story. Cause it feels like people don't the, the quality and level of care that you guys are trying to do is not common. And I think it's amazing. Like I think you guys make superb gloves, but also you're doing it the right way and you're giving back. So I think it's like this trifecta essentially, I guess my last question for you is this year, like what, what are you guys focusing on giving new products coming out? Or are you just sticking with the gloves and the carrier
Speaker 3:We've got, we've got some new gloves. We have, um, we have four new styles of gloves, our spring and summer gloves that are, that are coming out. They're, um, really colorful and bright. Um, we're also working on a, give you a, this is the, the latest sample of our rain rooster glove. Super cool. And
Speaker 2:Rain glove. That's cool.
Speaker 3:Um, so we're developing that. We're just in the sort of final stages of finalizing this glove, which we're really thrilled with. Um, we've got some new accessories, we've got head covers, towels, tees, some performance hats, like these kind of, uh, some ball markers. We're leaking out a bunch of stuff this summer. So we're um, that's cool. We're excited. We're um, we've got a, a lot to kind of roll out every week. There should be something new and we're just starting to build a bit of momentum. We, it was very slow from kind of the end of the Christmas rush, January and February and all of a sudden March things have been really starting to pick up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Now the season started slowly starting. Well, where can people find you? I guess if you wanna check out red rooster.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, we'd love some follows on our social channels. We've starting to put out a lot of content there, having fun, interacting with folks there. Um, but red rooster, golf.com. That's our website. You can check out our products. Um, we're doing a deal right now where it's 40% off. When you sign up to any one of our subscriptions, you get 40% off the glove case, which is, uh, also just a product we're super proud of. It's um, you know, hold your wallet and a couple of gloves, keep'em flat and dry, um, last longer. So if you sign up for our flexible subscription, you get that glove case in your first glove for 40% off.
Speaker 2:Wow. So what's your website,
Speaker 3:Red rooster golf.com.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, I appreciate being on the show today. I think what you guys are doing is amazing. I love how you're actually doing it the right way and that you're putting a lot of thought and care in what you're doing. I mean, 26 skews. I mean more than that, but I mean like whatever, it's crazy Madison and Sam, it's just, there's no excuse, right? You're not like, oh, we don't make that. Sorry. It's like, oh no, we have that. Don't worry. And now you're trying to move into like other hard goods as well as a rain glove. Like no one touches that market. So it's almost like it's super cool. And I think you it's it's fan, I love your story because it's like, it's very entrepreneurial and business related. It's not like you had an idea, you made some stuff and you tried to sell it. It's like it was very well thought through. And I think this is gonna be really big. So thank you for being on the show today. You guys need to check out red rooster golf gloves, and I I'm a fan and this is the short time I've known them. So it's, it's really cool. So I will see you guys in the next episode.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of behind the golf brand podcast. You're gonna beat me a golf stay connected on and off the show by visiting golfers authority.com. Don't forget to like subscribe and leave a comment. Golf is always more fun when you win, stay out of the beach and see you on the green.