661: How We Sold $100k Worth of Golf Gloves on the Side

0:00:13 This listeners sold $100,000 worth of golf gloves on the side from his day job, and he’s here to break down the highs and lows of starting a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand, willing something new into existence.
0:00:21 I think it’s a pretty cool story from chipgolfco.com, Chip with two Ps, Randall Pulfer. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:26 Thank you so much for having me, Nick. I’ve been a longtime listener of the show, so very, very excited to be here.
0:00:41 Love it. Always love to showcase listener success stories. Stick around in this one. We’re going to cover how Randall came up with this idea, how he found the right manufacturing partner to make it reality, plus the marketing efforts that have worked to start to generate some profitable sales.
0:00:55 Now, I want to start with your idea-generating process for this. Again, you go to chipgolfco.com to check these out, but it looks like the main value prop is to take a quality golf glove,
0:01:12 where historically the choices, well, you want it in white, white, or white, but make it fun, right? To give it a little bit of a design that showcases the player’s personality. Talk to me about the inspiration, the idea to, well, maybe we can innovate on the design side here.
0:01:26 Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. So, I myself am a golfer, as is my co-founder, Tyler. And, you know, Tyler and I met in college. And one of the things that we, you know, knew early on was that we both had entrepreneurial aspirations.
0:01:40 And, you know, we wanted to find a product that we could sell. And we wanted to do it in an industry that we were passionate about. The golf industry was kind of booming. And we saw, you know, all these new companies coming out with these funky shirts and different styled hats and belts and everything.
0:01:53 And yet, for some reason, golf gloves was like the one product that just, like you said, literally remained black and white. And we said, that just shouldn’t be. We looked online. We found a couple companies doing it, but the designs were pretty lackluster.
0:02:02 And, you know, doing our competitive intel, we ordered a few of them, and they were extremely low quality. Patterns would peel off. They just wouldn’t really last that long. They didn’t really feel that good.
0:02:09 I, myself, love a good leather golf glove. High quality. They last a long time. Makes for really great grip of the club.
0:02:09 Yeah.
0:02:17 And we said, why can’t we combine these two? A high quality glove, some good designs we’re seeing in all other aspects of golf. And so that’s kind of where the idea started.
0:02:33 It’s an interesting example of trying to find some blue ocean in a big market, you know, and a big market with kind of a rising tide of interest. Hey, here’s an outdoor activity that anybody can go and do. And it reminds me a little bit of StrideLine.
0:02:46 This is like the athletic licensed socks where, you know, hey, you can already buy shirts and hats and jackets and everything else with your team’s logo on it. But have you thought about socks? You know, here’s a little bit of a new space.
0:03:07 Similarly, we just did the sunglasses episode with Mike Ettenberg. It’s like, well, you know, my uniform is dictated by work. But here’s like one little element where I could add my own style and personality to do these sunglasses for first responders. And so it sounds like kind of a similar play where nobody else is doing this or nobody else is doing this well. So here’s an opportunity to play.
0:03:17 Yeah, no, it’s definitely like a niche in a very big market. I think a reason a lot of the bigger players haven’t done it is gloves have historically just not been like a super high margin item.
0:03:43 I think a lot of these companies, it’s not their biggest seller. They’re much better off focusing on shirts and clubs and balls and everything. And so we said, well, we can focus on it. I mean, it’s perfect for us, you know, wanting to just have some side hustle income, see if we can’t grow this product. And, you know, we’ve found ways to continue to improve that margin. But, you know, it’s been a challenge in that sense. But it’s also opened up a huge opportunity for us. And like you said, kind of a big market with a lot of big time players as well.
0:04:12 I want to pause and ask, you know, why physical product? Because a lot of times you’ll say, okay, I’m interested in golf. I have a passion for this. I see the growth chart going up and to the right. And so we’ve seen people do like content sites like Sean Ogle’s Breaking 80 comes to mind on like the content side. We’ve seen people do, okay, I’m going to, you know, sell into the golf space. I’m going to, you know, do drop shipping for these, you know, big garage size golf simulators or something.
0:04:42 I think people could set up or we had David Paxton was doing like daily golf steals on an affiliate model where I’ll, you know, source the best deals on gear and send those out every day. And on the e-com side, okay, naturally, I’m going to have higher startup costs, because I got to order a bunch of these, I’m going to have potentially lower margins, I got to go pay for ads, like there’s a more, there’s more moving parts, like what attracted you to this model versus, you know, any of these others that could have, you know, scratched that same itch in the in the golf niche.
0:05:12 Yeah, no, I mean, I’ve always kind of had an entrepreneurial mindset. And one of the dreams that I had when I was a young kid was I wanted to create a product and I wanted to see it in a store or I wanted to run into somebody in public and they’d be wearing it. Okay, something like that. So I’ve always been geared towards products. I also have an engineering undergrad. So a lot of what we do is physical product related, you know, we’re not necessarily all in on computer science or things that are very tech. It’s very product heavy. And so that’s kind of where my initial interest was.
0:05:23 Interest came in. And then to your point about like choosing, you know, what product at the time I was living in an apartment. So I didn’t want to have a product that was going to take up my full apartment. I wanted something that was going to be a little bit smaller.
0:05:35 And that’s kind of where gloves just kind of fit the perfect that fit the bill for lack of a better term. I mean, it allowed me to store it. It’s a natural repeat purchase as well, which I thought was really interesting where gloves are designed to not last forever.
0:05:49 Sure. They wear out after a while. Yeah, they wear out after a while. And that’s sort of the intended, you know, that’s how they’re supposed to function. I mean, so it provides this unique business model where, you know, shirts, for example, people buy them and they usually keep them. They can wear them for a really long time.
0:06:06 Gloves do kind of have to be replaced every once in a while. So yeah, I mean, the physical product stuff is just something I’ve always been interested in wanting a physical product. I can certainly tell you it probably would have been easier if I chose not to do something with inventory, let alone the number of SKUs that we have. But it’s been it’s been fun.
0:06:33 Yeah, I mean, it does check some of these boxes of being really small, lightweight to ship, you know, decent price point where it’s not completely, completely commoditized. So there’s, there’s definitely some advantages to that. And it’s something where if I can, you know, I can design it once I can have it made, and I can sell the same thing, you know, not the same, not as elegant as software to multiple different customers. But like, you know, there’s, there’s some advantages of scale there, too.
0:06:53 So I don’t mean to take a total, like, dump on on this idea. But just curious to get your thoughts on that. So what happens? What happens next? So you’re saying, like, we want to do the gloves. And now we got to find somebody to manufacture this or like, what if we just what if we just sold little stickers or decals to put on top of your existing golf gloves? Like, where do you go next?
0:07:03 Yeah, I mean, I have never brought a product to market. And so kind of my first thing is most people is just Google start Googling around. We tried Alibaba tried to source some samples from there.
0:07:27 And they all came back from various different countries that when we did a lot of our product market research, most of the big players were producing their gloves in Indonesia. So we kept Googling, you know, Indonesian glove manufacturer, and eventually came across a couple, sent some cold emails, as most people do, and got some responses back, did some sampling. And, and that’s how we found our current manufacturer that we work with. So it was just the old Google machine.
0:07:44 All right, what you do in design yourself. And again, you go to chipgolfcode.co chip with two P’s, you can finally you take a look at some of the designs. They’re not overly complex, kind of like a repeated pattern, like almost emoji style. But like we do this design yourself. Did you have to bring on a designer? What was that process like?
0:08:13 Yeah. So the designs we’ve done completely in house, which for someone, like I said, engineering background, I’m not the most creative, most artistic person. The first rendering of this was just in PowerPoint, just to get the, you know, the initial samples done. And we’re actually starting to get a little bit more creative with some of our designs and taking them outside of just the thumb and the Velcro latch, which if you see, that’s most of our, where our designs sit. Because, you know, we actually did a little bit of product market research and found that people do like having the simplified white glove.
0:08:42 And that’s why we wanted to keep the majority of it white. That being said, we are moving into some different designs where we’re starting to design other aspects of the glove, like the, you know, the actually entire thing. So yeah, most of these were just done in house and they were rough at first. We’ve gotten better as we’ve gone. But yeah, the sampling process took a while to finally get the scale and everything right. And every time we did it, it was two to three months, you know, by the time the manufacturer actually can do the screen print and get it to you, ship it to you, go back and forth, it can take a little bit of time.
0:09:01 Yeah, it’s painfully slow. And those early, it’s like, okay, come on, because we can’t really iterate and provide feedback until we get the thing in our hands and do all this stuff. But I love this idea of, hey, we noticed, you know, on the Wilson package or, you know, whoever else is making these, you know, big name brand golf clubs.
0:09:27 It was made in Indonesia. So there’s a big hint. We can go try and find the same manufacturers. I remember talking with Chad Rubin years ago, and he was just talking about this direct-to-consumer play where you could almost find the same factory where Lululemon is getting their leggings made and just say, can I white label these? You know, can I, you know, make this design enhance? It was like really, really interesting how you could go out and find those actual facilities.
0:09:35 And, well, I don’t have the same level of branding and marketing budget that they do, but maybe I can undercut that. It was like, oh, here’s an interesting way, or here’s my unique spin on it.
0:09:47 So you go get the samples, you get a design or, you know, a fit that you like. And here, you kind of alluded to this as the challenging piece of all, you know, hands are not one size fits all.
0:09:55 So now I got to, you know, order four or five different sizes of these. I got left-handed, I got right-handed, but trying to put together a minimum order.
0:10:01 What was that minimum order? Do you mind sharing what the startup costs look like here?
0:10:15 We did like an initial survey. We had pulled some Facebook groups, just like golf enthusiasts and said, hey, we’re thinking about making this product. What do you think? Can you input your size, your email? Try and get sort of an initial, almost like pre-order list.
0:10:24 But also, we wanted to gather information on, like, what is the distribution of sizes out there? How many people are medium-large versus extra-large? Things like that.
0:10:31 Because when we’re talking about an initial order, we wanted to make sure that we, you know, ordered it to a rough proportion that we actually think we’d be able to sell through.
0:10:38 Is it, like, evenly distributed, or is there, like, a bell curve where, you know, two-thirds of the people are medium or whatever?
0:10:44 Yeah, it’s pretty normally distributed. Usually, most people are going to be medium, medium-large, or large. Those are kind of the three most popular sizes.
0:10:53 The majority of golfers out there are righty golfers, meaning that they wear their glove on their left hand, which we’ve had some confusion on people ordering.
0:10:57 I’ve tried to make that very clear, that it’s on your left hand for right-handed golfers.
0:11:04 But, yeah, so the initial order quantity from our manufacturer was a minimum order quantity per design of 1,000.
0:11:09 And so, you know, we were trying to say, okay, well, can we mix sizes in there?
0:11:12 They’re like, yep. Can we mix designs in that quantity?
0:11:17 No, it’s got to be unique per design because they got to print the custom leather, and so that’s sort of their startup cost.
0:11:18 Okay.
0:11:21 And so, we ended up deciding that we were going to just go with two designs, right?
0:11:23 We weren’t going to roll out a website with just one design.
0:11:28 We wanted to give some elements of choice, even though two designs really isn’t that much better.
0:11:32 So, our first two designs were our Texas Hold’em and our Feeling Lucky.
0:11:35 We figured, you know, golf, gambling, sort of go hand-in-hand.
0:11:36 It’s a pretty popular thing.
0:11:40 I also love the name Texas Hold’em, kind of playing off the Texas Hold’em theme.
0:11:41 So, I love that.
0:11:43 That was the first design we did.
0:11:52 And the Feeling Lucky is just kind of your green clover, the idea of being lucky, hole-in-one, golf initiated, you know, in Ireland and Scotland and that sort of area.
0:11:53 Okay.
0:11:54 So, those were the two designs we rolled out with.
0:12:07 We did 1,000 of each of them, and between the actual raw materials, the shipping, and everything, it ended up being a little bit over $10,000, which, you know, for two people a couple years out of school was a pretty big investment.
0:12:09 Thankful for my co-founder, Tyler.
0:12:15 We were able to split the upfront cost so it wasn’t like I was completely going out on a limb on my own.
0:12:16 Yeah.
0:12:21 But, yeah, it was a pretty sizable investment, a little bit more than I think I would have initially anticipated when we got into it.
0:12:36 Yeah, but you’re doing these manufacturing runs and hopefully find a partner that is like, okay, this is probably lower than they would like to do, too, but, you know, maybe this company grows over time and we can scale up as that happens.
0:12:46 Now, how did you figure out, okay, so I’m a little over $10,000 to get 2,000 gloves landed, and then you figure out how much to charge on the other side for these things.
0:12:54 I’m trying to think of, like, when the last time I bought a pair of golf gloves, it was probably $15, $20, like, from the pro shop.
0:12:56 Like, I don’t know, what kind of price did you land at?
0:13:01 Yeah, so we went into PGA Superstore and just walked around and we were like, what are these competitors pricing these at?
0:13:08 And for the premium ones, they were upwards of $18, $20, sometimes $22, $24 for just a good leather golf glove.
0:13:13 So we said, okay, you know, I’m not sure that we’ll be able to fully compete on price, but we did try.
0:13:14 We said, okay, we’re going to price this at $18.
0:13:17 We really didn’t do a ton of math.
0:13:19 We just walked in and said, hey, they’re selling for $18 to $20.
0:13:21 We’re going to sell for $18 to $20.
0:13:24 We also love the idea that there’s 18 holes of golf.
0:13:25 Make it $18.
0:13:25 Kind of fit.
0:13:26 Let’s roll with it.
0:13:27 Sure, sure.
0:13:27 Okay.
0:13:34 So we did that and, you know, we’re thinking, all right, you know, our cost per unit is like, you know, eight, nine bucks or whatever.
0:13:36 And, you know, that leaves us plenty of margin.
0:13:43 And then, you know, as we started to get into it, and again, this is sort of my engineer’s fallacy, I just didn’t factor in marketing at all, right?
0:13:46 I’m thinking, we’re going to make a great product.
0:13:48 People are going to be lining up to buy it.
0:13:49 It’s going to sell itself.
0:13:50 We’re going to be great.
0:13:56 And then all of a sudden you realize that, nope, you actually are going to need to market this product and there’s a cost per acquisition.
0:14:00 And so very quickly we realized, you know, $18 probably wasn’t going to cut it.
0:14:04 At the time, we were also charging for shipping on top of that.
0:14:07 So, you know, total cart value would be maybe $23, $24.
0:14:17 And, you know, we got some advice early on just to include shipping, makes, you know, the conversion rate a lot higher, just build it into the price.
0:14:19 People hate being charged for shipping at the end.
0:14:22 So we ended up bumping our price up to $24.
0:14:30 And once we started to expand to other channels, Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, there’s all these additional fees.
0:14:35 And one of the ways that we could make it make sense was to increase the price on those platforms.
0:14:40 Well, we didn’t want to have the product mispriced on various different platforms.
0:14:42 And so we ended up just bringing it up to $28.
0:14:45 It takes care of kind of the fees on a lot of the third-party platforms.
0:14:48 And we haven’t had a ton of resistance to that pricing.
0:14:50 It is definitely on the more premium side.
0:14:54 But again, our product is very differentiated, not only in the quality, but in the design.
0:14:58 So we feel like, you know, it’s okay on the upper end of that price point right now.
0:15:07 And we do offer bundling savings and, again, try and increase that average order value to get the price per unit for the customer down and still make it make sense for us.
0:15:08 Got it, got it.
0:15:12 No, that’s helpful to hear that it doesn’t have to be set in stone, right?
0:15:20 You know, you could test something out and soon you realize, well, now we got to go out and acquire customers or there’s these different fees involved.
0:15:20 Yeah.
0:15:24 And so you’re open to testing different things.
0:15:32 It sounds like more with Randall in just a moment, including that initial market validation survey and how they made their first sales right after this.
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0:18:06 I didn’t want to go back to this initial survey that you talked about of, well, what’s the size distribution, right?
0:18:11 We don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of extra smalls at the end of the season and not know what to do with them.
0:18:15 Were this just friends and family fellow golfers?
0:18:24 Like, how did you come up with a critical mass of people to respond to this initial questionnaire, like this market research phase?
0:18:25 Yeah, it was friends and family.
0:18:28 We went on Facebook groups and just looked for golf enthusiasts.
0:18:37 Yes, I know, like I listened to a couple golf podcasts, so I looked for golf podcast groups and then we would just go in there and say, okay, here’s a lot of people that listen to similar podcasts as us.
0:18:39 They probably have similar interests.
0:18:40 It’s golf related.
0:18:42 Let’s post it in there, see if they’ll help.
0:18:49 And I think I was unbelievably amazed at how many people, you know, again, it’s, I’m asking for maybe a minute or two of their time.
0:18:54 But still, it’s like a stranger to stranger, people kind of willing to help us out, give us positive feedback.
0:19:04 So we ended up gathering, I want to say a couple hundred responses, which not huge, but it was enough for us to make a semi-informed decision on kind of the size distribution, if you will.
0:19:08 And not to mention, we also got feedback on like designs that people would like.
0:19:09 Would they buy this?
0:19:10 What would they pay?
0:19:15 Things like that, which, again, helped us kind of set the initial price and even some of our marketing strategies.
0:19:16 All right.
0:19:28 So now you get your gloves landed and you’re at this, you know, build it and they’ll come type of moment of like, you know, the line, envisioning the line out the door of the website.
0:19:31 But then, you know, how do you drive that initial traffic?
0:19:39 Do you go back to this, you know, list of 200 semi-hand raisers where it’s like, oh, it’s not super apparent there’s going to be a pitch down the road.
0:19:43 But, you know, how do you figure out how to move some of these first units?
0:19:43 Yeah.
0:19:50 Well, I will tell you, there’s no scarier thing than sending off 10,000 to, you know, someone you never know across overseas.
0:19:52 Somebody in Indonesia.
0:19:52 Yeah.
0:19:55 So I will say when the product finally showed up, I was very relieved.
0:20:00 One thing that, you know, I just didn’t even really think about was packaging, right?
0:20:06 The gloves came in like these plastic sleeves and like they were just the gloves.
0:20:08 And I was like, oh, my God, we need packaging, obviously.
0:20:13 So we ended up finding a company in China to make our packaging for us.
0:20:16 And we ended up starting with like, we actually got one here.
0:20:20 It’s like a zipper type of thing to store it.
0:20:23 So it’s like super lightweight, can ship really well.
0:20:24 Oh, yeah.
0:20:26 So we started with that, but I had to order those.
0:20:28 And then additionally, we needed to label them.
0:20:30 So shout out to my wife.
0:20:37 I ended up printing a bunch of labels for both the design and the sizing just on like our printer at home.
0:20:39 And we spent, I mean, days.
0:20:41 We had to label 2,000 of these things.
0:20:42 We were putting the size label.
0:20:49 Like we were just like, you know, manufacturer, assembly line, just passing them down, putting them in, stuffing them, labeling them, all of that.
0:20:52 So it took us a long time to get that all set up.
0:20:54 And then we were doing this out of my garage.
0:20:57 So we had to go buy some organizers and try and organize them all.
0:20:59 So we got the inventory all set up.
0:21:03 And then to get the initial customers, we started with friends and family.
0:21:07 We revisited kind of that initial email list that we got.
0:21:11 We started posting a little bit on social media, just trying to get some organic volume.
0:21:15 And again, naive as I was, just kind of assumed that, oh, my God, people are going to see this.
0:21:16 There’s nothing like it.
0:21:18 And they’re going to be lining up to buy it.
0:21:20 And I could not have been more wrong.
0:21:26 It is something that you do consistently have to demonstrate the value of the product and the differentiation
0:21:29 and why it’s worth someone spending their hard-earned money on it.
0:21:32 And that process took a long time for us to learn.
0:21:34 You know, we had never touched Facebook ads.
0:21:37 You know, we had tried organic and it was slow.
0:21:40 And we were like, well, we got 2,000 gloves in the garage.
0:21:41 We got to start moving these.
0:21:46 So we started experimenting with some paid social, started on Meta.
0:21:50 And it was a very iterative, you know, low-budget process.
0:21:54 But eventually we, you know, put out an ad campaign, saw what worked, saw what didn’t, made some tweaks,
0:21:58 reinvested some more money, kind of continued to grow it that way.
0:22:03 But it was largely via paid social traffic that helped us move the first couple thousand units.
0:22:11 What kind of ad did you find worked well for that in terms, if you can give an example of the imagery, the headline, anything?
0:22:12 Yeah.
0:22:15 So we ended up finding on Upwork a photographer.
0:22:18 And we were saying, hey, we need some good product photos of these.
0:22:19 We don’t have anything on the website.
0:22:20 We need them for ads.
0:22:24 So they had made some really high-quality photos that are actually still on our website today.
0:22:26 Those are the main photos that we use.
0:22:30 And honestly, our, again, naive ads, it was just, here’s a picture of the product.
0:22:31 Here’s the name.
0:22:32 Here’s why it’s awesome.
0:22:34 Please buy it.
0:22:36 Like, that’s basically the extent of the ad.
0:22:37 And it worked.
0:22:42 And like, that was honestly the nice thing about our product is the pictures themselves jump off the page.
0:22:46 It’s not like someone trying to sell, you know, something that everybody else has.
0:22:48 It’s just, why should you buy it from me?
0:22:50 This product is naturally differentiated.
0:22:54 So if you’re targeting it to the right people, they see it and they’re like, wait a minute, what is that?
0:22:56 Like, I’ve never seen anything like that.
0:22:57 Click into it.
0:23:00 And then you sort of trust the website to kind of convert them.
0:23:01 But it was a challenge, right?
0:23:04 Because we weren’t converting at a super high rate.
0:23:06 And it was, you know, are our ads inefficient?
0:23:10 Is it because we’ve only got two designs to choose from on our website?
0:23:11 Like, what is it?
0:23:12 It ended up being both.
0:23:15 So we ended up adding more designs and getting better at advertising.
0:23:16 But yeah, it was definitely tricky.
0:23:18 And it was a slow, slow burn at first.
0:23:23 Yeah, there’s so many factors that run into, they go into running a profitable ad campaign.
0:23:24 Well, was it the image?
0:23:25 Was it the headline?
0:23:26 Was it the landing page?
0:23:31 Like, was there, you know, lots of different places where people can fall out of that funnel
0:23:36 or lots of potential leaks in the bucket there trying to address all of those, plug all those
0:23:37 different holes.
0:23:38 But that’s interesting.
0:23:44 Was there a cost of acquisition on meta?
0:23:47 And the beauty here is like, well, you could target people who are into golf.
0:23:51 That kind of like psychographic type of targeting can be really powerful.
0:23:54 But was there a target cost of acquisition you were going for?
0:23:57 Ideally, I mean, we wanted it to be between like six and eight dollars.
0:23:59 Like, that’s something that we could be.
0:24:01 And at the time, we were really only selling one glove at a time.
0:24:04 Maybe every once in a while, we got a two glove order, but it was usually one at a time.
0:24:09 And so that was the number that we felt like we could make a little bit of money on enough
0:24:12 to sort of roll into more inventory and target that.
0:24:18 The nice thing is our target demographic of, you know, men, 20 to 50 ish, especially during
0:24:20 peak golf season, which is over the summer.
0:24:23 That CPM demographic is often very cheap.
0:24:28 So we didn’t realize that at the time, but it allowed us to not be super efficient and still
0:24:31 have relatively low cost per acquisition.
0:24:36 You know, as we’ve advertised to wider audiences in different times of the year, especially during
0:24:40 like Black Friday when CPMs are crazy, we are having to be a little bit more creative in terms
0:24:43 of increasing average order value, right?
0:24:48 To make the higher acquisition cost of, you know, sometimes it’s 15, even upwards of 20,
0:24:51 depending on the target audience there to acquire that customer.
0:24:54 So, I mean, ideally, we’re single digits.
0:24:57 I think more often than not in practice, it’s slightly higher than that.
0:25:00 And, you know, that’s where we’re trying to get better with some of our more organic
0:25:05 advertising strategies, plus email lists where we can reduce, you know, the aggregate
0:25:06 cost per order.
0:25:09 It’s something that we definitely need to get better at.
0:25:12 I mean, the cost to acquire our customers via social media is only going to get more expensive
0:25:13 with time.
0:25:17 And, you know, in order to build a sustainable business, I think finding ways to do it without
0:25:22 going all in on paid is a very important thing that we’re still very much, very much learning.
0:25:27 Anything you found effective to increase that average order value?
0:25:32 I want to say I saw something that was like, maybe it was a split test, but I thought I
0:25:36 saw something like buy three, get one free, either type of promo or something like that.
0:25:39 We consistently run a buy three, get one free promo.
0:25:42 But one of the things that has really helped is we have a new plugin on our website through
0:25:43 Rebuy.
0:25:43 Okay.
0:25:48 It’s basically like you add a glove to your cart and it says, okay, you’re only X amount
0:25:49 away from free shipping.
0:25:49 You add another one.
0:25:54 It’s like, oh, you know, you’re, you can get this free glove dryer thing.
0:25:56 This like new accessory that we have.
0:25:59 If you add another glove and then all of a sudden you’re at three and you get one free.
0:26:03 So it’s, it’s sort of moving the customer along the journey.
0:26:04 So that’s been really helpful.
0:26:09 You know, I think as we’ve gotten more designs, I think it’s natural for people to want to
0:26:09 buy two.
0:26:13 So just trying to find ways to get people to, you know, get one as a gift or get returning
0:26:15 customers, things like that.
0:26:19 As far as like getting more people to the site organically too, the thing that has stood
0:26:23 out to me is being as open, transparent, and honest as possible.
0:26:29 Like, I think one of the, you know, best videos that we had was actually talking about one of
0:26:35 the defective glove orders that we had and showing like how it happened, why it happened, being
0:26:36 transparent about it.
0:26:40 And we actually got more sales from that video, the one that was talking about how our
0:26:44 product had been low quality than any of the other videos.
0:26:49 And so we’ve tried to be more just open and honest and bring people along the journey because
0:26:54 people really want to support, you know, businesses like ours that are small, growing, learning.
0:26:58 And so that’s something that we’ve really leaned into both on the website and our ads and a lot
0:26:59 of our content.
0:27:01 And that’s worked out pretty well for us too.
0:27:02 So what, so what happened?
0:27:07 There was a screw up with the order and tell me about that.
0:27:08 Yeah.
0:27:10 So we were doing our biggest order to date.
0:27:12 I think we were ordering a couple thousand gloves.
0:27:14 It was our most popular design, the stars and stripes.
0:27:16 That one we sell out of consistently.
0:27:18 She said, all right, we’re going to order a big quantity.
0:27:22 We had already done one or two orders with our manufacturer on this glove before.
0:27:28 And we get the gloves in and they look the same as every other order we’ve done.
0:27:30 We got them in right before, you know, May.
0:27:33 So it was peak selling time, May, June, July.
0:27:35 You got Memorial Day, 4th of July.
0:27:37 People are going to be buying these up like you wouldn’t believe it.
0:27:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:27:39 So we start selling them.
0:27:40 We’re moving them quickly.
0:27:40 We’re feeling really good.
0:27:43 And then all of a sudden we start to get some negative reviews.
0:27:45 Hey, this design is peeling.
0:27:47 This, this glove stinks.
0:27:47 All this stuff.
0:27:48 And we’re like, what’s going on?
0:27:50 Like this has not happened before.
0:27:53 And so people were complaining that the design was peeling off.
0:27:57 So I went into my garage, I pulled one out and I just started rubbing my finger on it.
0:28:00 And lo and behold, the design starts to peel off.
0:28:01 So we talked to our manufacturer.
0:28:03 I said, what’s going on with this?
0:28:04 They looked into it.
0:28:08 Turns out they had accidentally printed the design on waterproof leather.
0:28:14 So when obviously people get wet, they’re sweating, whatever the case is, that design is going to come peeling right off.
0:28:16 And you couldn’t tell just by looking at it.
0:28:19 It wasn’t until we had had like several hundred out there.
0:28:25 And so now we’re in scramble mode and it’s, oh no, you know, we’ll refund anyone who bought it.
0:28:26 We either refund or exchange.
0:28:33 We took, you know, all the Sergeant Stripes gloves off the website, which at the time was a bulk of our inventory.
0:28:41 So that really slowed us down and it was sort of this, oh crap moment of like, you know, can we survive this from like a cash flow perspective?
0:28:45 Is this going to hurt our brand image to a point where we’re not going to be able to recover?
0:28:46 You know, what was the case?
0:28:50 And so we ended up getting out in front of it, made a video, said, hey, this is what happened.
0:28:52 This is why it happened.
0:28:53 Honest mistake.
0:28:55 If you bought, please let us know.
0:28:57 We will do whatever we can to make it right.
0:29:02 And luckily our manufacturer was able to make a new order and they were willing to refund us because they knew it was their mistake.
0:29:04 So we just had to wait in time.
0:29:04 Yeah.
0:29:10 So it didn’t completely screw us, but it was sort of that like, oh my God, how did we not do better quality checks?
0:29:22 And, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel of this whole thing is that this has actually led to a lot better process between us and our manufacturer where hopefully we can minimize these issues going forward.
0:29:31 And again, sort of a cheap lesson, like when you think about where we were versus where we are now, this happened actually last year, but our scale is much larger now.
0:29:31 Yeah.
0:29:35 It easily could have been a much more significant impact.
0:29:38 And so luckily we got ahead of it and hopefully made the fix for a long time.
0:29:46 But it just goes to show you, like, you can always do more product quality checks on all your products, especially when they’re coming from all over the place.
0:29:51 That’s great that the manufacturer stood behind it and didn’t charge you for that reorder.
0:30:00 And you got the customer list, you could say, hey, well, let’s once, but it’s going to be a couple months, you know, lead time shipping across the oceans before we get these to you.
0:30:05 But hey, bear with us where this video end up getting posted.
0:30:12 Is this just kind of a social channel marketing thing for you to be like, hey, crazy, crazy thing happened.
0:30:17 We shipped out a bunch of waterproof peeling gloves on accident.
0:30:21 We post most of our videos across both Instagram and TikTok.
0:30:24 TikTok is something that we really leaned into more and more over the last year.
0:30:27 And that is really where it went more viral.
0:30:33 I mean, it didn’t get, you know, millions of views or anything, but it got, you know, considerably more views than most of our videos get.
0:30:41 And I think, you know, what was really encouraging was a lot of people in the comments saying, you know, this is so cool that brands are willing to stand behind their quality.
0:30:44 They’re even willing to talk about mistakes.
0:30:45 Like this is what people want to see.
0:30:52 And that was sort of a light bulb moment for me, too, is because, you know, every time I went on social media, it was very salesy, right?
0:30:54 It was like, hey, this is the glove.
0:30:55 These are the benefits.
0:30:56 Please buy.
0:30:59 But especially on TikTok, people go there for really one of two things.
0:31:01 They either want to be entertained or they want to learn.
0:31:03 Those are the two primary things.
0:31:05 And if you can do that while also selling a product, great.
0:31:10 But more often than not, people see something that’s salesy and they sort of move past it.
0:31:13 And this video was very different from what we had done in the past.
0:31:15 And that’s where the engagement sort of picked up.
0:31:26 And it was just great to see, you know, the community of people that came to support us and told us, you know, to just keep going and mistakes happen and that they would be rebuying and all of this stuff.
0:31:31 But we did have to do a little bit of damage control on some of the people that are not on social media.
0:31:33 And didn’t maybe see that video.
0:31:37 So we actually sent it out in like an email and we’re just like, hey, this is what happened.
0:31:39 You know, feel free to get in contact with us.
0:31:40 Very good.
0:31:43 You bring up an important point.
0:31:46 This is, you know, echoed from a friend of mine years and years ago.
0:31:55 He gave me what he called the rule of the internet that people are only ever online for one of two reasons, like you mentioned, to be entertained or to solve a problem.
0:32:01 So if your content can play in one of those spaces, I think you’re going to be in good shape.
0:32:07 The interesting place here is like you almost, you know, okay, you could say, yeah, I guess it solves a problem.
0:32:10 Like I need to get a better grip on my club, right?
0:32:12 And I want to do it in a way that expresses my personalities here.
0:32:21 But in general, it’s like harder to play, in my opinion, in the entertainment space, because then you’re competing with ESPN and Netflix and everything else.
0:32:29 But if you can solve a problem, especially like Q&A type of stuff, like generally an easier place to play, in my opinion.
0:32:38 But so we’re going to, in what’s interesting about the golf gloves is it’s like kind of at this impulse buy price point.
0:32:43 Typically golfers, like I’m going to stereotype, like a more affluent demographic anyway.
0:32:45 So they say, well, okay, 28 bucks.
0:32:45 Sure.
0:32:48 You know, now I can impress my friends at the next round.
0:32:49 Like, hey, where’d you get that cool glove?
0:32:54 So there’s some maybe bragging rights or uniqueness to it that could lend itself to that.
0:32:59 But it’s kind of at that impulse buy price point where it’s like, well, I’m not going to think too much about this.
0:33:04 Or you’re not going to do a ton of competitive research going out like, well, who really is, you know, the best golf club?
0:33:06 I’m going to trust that it’s a standard golf club.
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0:35:52 So doing the social strategy, I did want to ask, because you mentioned, okay, we expanded to Amazon, we expanded to Etsy.
0:35:59 I want to talk about, you know, going after these other marketplaces and maybe the pie chart breakdown of where those sales are happening.
0:36:00 Yeah.
0:36:06 So the reason we really wanted to prioritize getting on some of these other platforms was they’re really just natural search platforms, right?
0:36:07 People are going on there.
0:36:09 They’re searching for golf products.
0:36:18 One of our biggest challenges was bridging the gap between people who buy, like you said, the impulse buy, usually in-store, versus getting people to buy online.
0:36:21 I, myself, as a golfer, I’ve never once bought a golf glove online.
0:36:23 I’m usually buying it in a store when I need it.
0:36:32 So we had to sort of change the way people view this and said, no, like this is a product, an article of clothing, apparel, like similar to other things that you would buy.
0:36:33 Yeah.
0:36:42 And really get people to be almost more proactive in buying them as opposed to, oh, I show up to the course, I got a hole in mine, let me run into the pro shop and just grab one off the rack.
0:36:44 So that was sort of an interesting thing we had to bridge.
0:36:48 And that’s where we said, well, we got to be where people are searching these things, right?
0:36:52 You can try and create the demand on your social media, your ad platforms.
0:37:02 But we knew that Amazon, Etsy, even TikTok, people were going in there and they were searching for golf or golf products because people were buying things online more and more.
0:37:04 And so we just needed to be on there.
0:37:07 We’ve tried advertising on all those platforms too.
0:37:09 But yeah, it’s really just the natural search.
0:37:11 There’s really no reason not to be on them.
0:37:13 You know, the only good things can really happen.
0:37:15 So that was sort of our initial thought process.
0:37:26 Now, all else being equal, is it more beneficial for you, for somebody to go to the website and buy or for somebody to go to Amazon and like start to send, you know, positive conversion signals?
0:37:29 So maybe you start to rise in the search results if somebody looks for a golf club.
0:37:30 Yeah.
0:37:38 I mean, Amazon as a whole, their fees are very, very high, but they still can tend to be cheaper than like an acquisition from paid social to our website.
0:37:46 The big advantage to having people go through your website is that you get to collect that personal information, like the email and stuff like that.
0:37:50 Whereas on Amazon, Etsy, TikTok, they don’t really let you have that information.
0:37:56 And so you do kind of limit the long-term value of your customer if you don’t get them to go through your website.
0:38:01 That being said, we will definitely take a sale on any of those platforms versus not.
0:38:07 So, you know, the natural search and higher ranking of those products and volume there is certainly important.
0:38:09 I’d say a majority of our sales still come through our website.
0:38:14 Amazon is very seasonal with golf search, as you might expect.
0:38:20 So, you know, it peaks and valleys, but definitely the majority of our sales are coming through our website.
0:38:27 Now, I hadn’t really considered Etsy as a channel for kind of a mass-produced product like this.
0:38:31 What’s the reaction like, or is there a different strategy over there?
0:38:32 Yeah.
0:38:33 So it’s actually very interesting.
0:38:38 I didn’t really think much of Etsy either, and actually when we first tried to set up our Etsy shop,
0:38:43 we said it was a product that we manufacture, and they, like, didn’t let us make an account.
0:38:45 They were like, oh, this is for handmade products only.
0:38:46 So we couldn’t get on there.
0:38:47 And I was like, okay, great.
0:38:51 So I had to create a new account and basically just say, it’s handmade.
0:38:53 And we’ve been on Etsy ever since, and it’s been fine.
0:38:58 Made by somebody’s hands, in addition to sewing machines and robots, sure.
0:38:59 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:38:59 Right.
0:39:03 But no, Etsy is actually a very profitable channel for us.
0:39:11 Not in terms of total volume, but I think because of the nature of our product being very different and sort of artsy in a way, it is very unique.
0:39:14 And Etsy is great for products that stand out amongst the crowd like that.
0:39:18 And Etsy ads, too, have been very efficient for us.
0:39:26 We don’t put a ton of money in there because it’s not super scalable, but it is an efficient channel and pretty consistent revenue stream for us, which I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised by.
0:39:30 Yeah, I can see it as a Mother’s Day gift, a Father’s Day gift.
0:39:37 You know, I think it plays well in that space that people might be looking for golf gifts on a site like Etsy and say, oh, that’s a unique idea.
0:39:38 Yep.
0:39:39 No, exactly right.
0:39:45 And that’s one of the search terms that we have in our products is like golf gifts, Father’s Day, all that sorts of stuff.
0:39:46 And it does pretty well.
0:39:54 Okay, and so you mentioned the biggest slice of the pie chart was your own site, followed by Amazon, followed by Etsy.
0:39:55 What’s the breakdown look like?
0:39:57 Yeah, it’s becoming more and more TikTok.
0:40:01 I think we’re posting content in there and TikTok Shop has been a growing platform.
0:40:04 I’d say TikTok and Amazon are pretty similar.
0:40:08 And then our website, our website’s got to be 60, 70% maybe.
0:40:11 And then TikTok and Amazon probably make up the majority of the rest.
0:40:12 Interesting.
0:40:17 So are you able to drive your own traffic to TikTok Shop or is that paid ads?
0:40:22 Is that, you know, going after golf influencers to try and promote this thing?
0:40:23 What’s that site look like?
0:40:28 So we tried TikTok ads and just didn’t have a ton of success with it.
0:40:32 Again, it goes back to the point of like, I know when I’m on TikTok, I don’t want to watch ads.
0:40:34 I want to watch fun, engaging content.
0:40:37 And so we didn’t have a ton of success with it.
0:40:47 That being said, there are more robust ways to advertise TikTok products on like the TikTok shop and like where it shows up in search, which we should do a little bit more experimentation with.
0:40:49 But most of the sales on TikTok have been organic.
0:40:55 It’s a lot of just trying to post videos and get people, again, virality and just getting people to buy it.
0:41:01 One of the first times we actually did this was we released a glove that had a hot dog design on it.
0:41:06 And I basically just went on TikTok and I was like, and we had not sold like very many gloves on a TikTok video ever before.
0:41:08 And I said, okay, hot dog glove.
0:41:09 I was eating a hot dog.
0:41:13 I said, for every glove that you buy, I will eat a hot dog on a TikTok video.
0:41:20 And we ended up like selling out our hot dog gloves, which I was telling myself, I was like, if that is the end outcome of this, I’ll be fine with it.
0:41:25 But there is a video out there of me trying to eat like 20 hot dogs in one sitting and it did not go very well.
0:41:26 Okay.
0:41:28 But yeah, so the TikTok stuff is all organic.
0:41:31 I think there’s ways that we can do it a little bit better.
0:41:32 Like you said, leveraging influencers.
0:41:34 We want to definitely do more of that.
0:41:38 I’ve listened to quite a few of your podcasts where people mentioned the success of influencers.
0:41:41 And we’ve tried it here and there, haven’t had a ton of success.
0:41:49 But to the point about the sunglasses episode, it sounds like the benefit is in the masses where it’s just like the more you do, you might get one or two that hit.
0:41:51 And those often pay for the ones that don’t.
0:41:54 So I think it’s just something that we have to do a little bit more of.
0:41:58 Yeah, it sounded like probably all marketing, right?
0:42:03 There’s an 80-20 to it where, you know, 20% of the accounts that you reach out to are going to drive 80% of the sales.
0:42:05 But just casting a wide net.
0:42:11 I was shocked when Mike said he had shipped out probably over a thousand pairs of sunglasses.
0:42:11 Yeah.
0:42:13 It was like, oh, this is like a really concerted effort.
0:42:19 I was like, are there a thousand, you know, first responder micro-influencer accounts out there?
0:42:20 He’s like, oh, we’re just scratching the surface.
0:42:23 I’m like, okay, you know, this is an Imagine Golf.
0:42:24 There’s probably even more.
0:42:25 Oh, there’s a lot.
0:42:26 Yeah, there’s a lot.
0:42:29 So yeah, we are definitely, that’s a concerted effort for us in 2025.
0:42:34 So if you see some organic videos with our gloves in it, that’s hopefully a good thing.
0:42:35 Sweet.
0:42:35 All right.
0:42:38 So that’s what’s coming up next.
0:42:45 I did want to touch on the tools and tech side of things where you mentioned this rebuy.
0:42:47 This is like a Shopify plugin.
0:42:52 Anything else you’re using in addition to that, either for email or video?
0:42:55 You know, anything else that is making life easier on the tech side?
0:43:05 So one of the Shopify apps that we use is Shopify Marketplace Connect, I think they call it, but allows for, you know, your inventory and orders to sync from all your other platforms into Shopify, which has been really helpful.
0:43:16 Additionally, we use this website called Built With, where we basically would go to different competitor websites, throw in their URL, and it would basically tell us all the plugins that they have on their Shopify.
0:43:21 So that’s where we learned about like Klaviyo and all these different things, and we have used those as well.
0:43:24 So Klaviyo is probably one of our bigger ones.
0:43:38 Rebuy, as you mentioned, we also use this other, it’s sort of an app, but it’s called Kero, but it actually allows other companies to sell our products on their site, and they get a commission if they get a sale.
0:43:45 So like one of the companies that we work with, they’re sort of like you mentioned at the top of the episode, they are sort of like the middleman between all these other companies.
0:43:47 And they’re sort of just a marketplace for golf products.
0:43:50 And so they don’t have to do any of the sourcing or anything.
0:43:59 We do all the shipping, but they’re sort of driving traffic to their site, and we don’t really care about paying the commission because it’s usually in line with our customer acquisition costs at that point.
0:44:02 So those are just some of the tools that we use.
0:44:04 And we do use Shopify now.
0:44:05 We didn’t always.
0:44:10 We started on Squarespace, and it was a challenge for a lot of reasons.
0:44:15 It seems like a lot of the third-party platforms and stuff just integrate a lot better with Shopify.
0:44:22 And although Shopify is more expensive, it has made a huge difference in our ability to be more flexible on our site.
0:44:23 Okay.
0:44:24 No, these are great.
0:44:25 These are really interesting.
0:44:30 Klaviyo is the email service specifically for e-commerce brands.
0:44:32 Karo is a new one to me.
0:44:44 This is really interesting where it’s almost kind of an affiliate program of sorts where, you know, if somebody else has a, you know, a golf merchandise type of website, hey, would you mind adding our products to your catalog?
0:44:46 Sure, we could do that.
0:44:52 We could do seamless checkout integrated with your stuff, and then you handle the shipping and fulfillment, almost like a dropshipping relationship with these other stores.
0:44:53 Yep.
0:44:54 No, it’s super smooth.
0:45:01 I mean, we basically, there’s, we get requests, too, sometimes on Karo, where people will be like, hey, I saw these products are available on here.
0:45:02 I’d love to put it on my site.
0:45:07 And we do a little bit of diligence to make sure it’s like a site that’s in line with our brand.
0:45:07 Yeah.
0:45:09 But more often than not, we’re like, yeah, sure.
0:45:14 Like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really impact us to have it in more places, more backlinks, more exposure.
0:45:16 And we fulfill all the orders ourselves anyway.
0:45:18 So, yeah, it’s a pretty seamless thing.
0:45:22 And like I said, the commission is at, if not cheaper than our customer acquisition.
0:45:24 So, we’re totally fine paying it.
0:45:25 Okay.
0:45:29 Now, at this point, you’re selling thousands of pairs a year.
0:45:36 So, I imagine, you know, the, you know, the Amazon siren or the bell that goes off when an order comes through, like, in the early days.
0:45:40 Like, okay, we got to turn that off and probably no longer shipping out of the garage.
0:45:46 Like, we’ve, you know, outsourced the fulfillment to, well, I imagine you send some into the Amazon warehouse so it can be Prime eligible.
0:45:51 But like, for those Shopify orders, you know, where does, where does that go?
0:45:53 How does that look like logistics-wise?
0:46:04 For the first couple years of this, we were doing it all out of my garage and very quickly realized, not only from a space perspective, but just from time perspective, you know, as we were scaling, it was an hour and then it was two hours.
0:46:07 And then it was sometimes more of that of every night going in there and packing orders.
0:46:08 We got to find a solution.
0:46:11 So, we recently partnered with a third-party logistics company.
0:46:13 They have all of our inventory.
0:46:14 They process all of our shipments.
0:46:16 So far, that’s been going really well.
0:46:18 It’s taken a huge load off of me.
0:46:22 And my wife is also very happy to have all the products out of the garage.
0:46:24 So, that’s been great.
0:46:32 And it’s allowed us to be more scalable because that was truly a bottleneck in our general process of just having to go and actually pack all these orders.
0:46:41 And then, you know, if I’m out of town for more than a couple days, I got to turn Amazon dark because if you don’t ship in a couple days, then, you know, they get you with fees and complaints.
0:46:43 And so, that was always a little bit of a pain.
0:46:49 We actually don’t do anything Fulfillment by Amazon yet, although it’s definitely something that we want to do.
0:46:56 We actually worked with a consultant for Amazon ads early on just to get an idea, lay the land of it.
0:47:12 And he felt pretty confident based on what he was seeing that some of our products could be, you know, like multi-million dollar SKUs in Amazon if we consolidated the most popular sizes, ordered in bulk, and sent them into Amazon and let them do it eligible for Prime, like you said.
0:47:15 So, that’s definitely something that we want to explore down the line.
0:47:19 Is there a scenario where you start to go brick and mortar?
0:47:21 Like you said, that’s where I bought my last glove.
0:47:23 I was like, well, shoot, this one’s got a hole.
0:47:28 Let me run into the pro shop real quick before tea time and just grab, you know, whatever they have in my size.
0:47:32 Is there a pro shop distribution angle down the road?
0:47:35 So, that was actually the initial thought.
0:47:38 Like, I thought the pro shops would be the larger portion of our sales.
0:47:42 We are in a couple pro shops in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
0:47:43 That’s where I’m based.
0:47:48 I’m really just going in, introducing them to the product, and, you know, they were interested enough to take a flyer on us.
0:47:52 I will say it’s very challenging for them for a couple reasons.
0:47:56 One, for each design, you can have upwards of 20 SKUs.
0:48:02 And so, if they wanted to have multiple designs, multiple SKUs, all of a sudden, from an inventory management perspective, it’s a little bit tough.
0:48:06 Additionally, it’s just not a huge moneymaker for them.
0:48:12 You know, they’re making, you know, five, six, seven, eight bucks a glove after wholesale and all that stuff.
0:48:19 And for them, it’s like, even if they moved a couple hundred a year, it’s just not really making a huge dent in their bottom line.
0:48:27 So, they, you know, while they’re very interested, they want to support, they like it, it is hard from an inventory management and ultimately, like, an effort standpoint.
0:48:34 That being said, I think our gloves have to be in retail, whether that’s in PGA Superstore or Golf Galaxy or whatever it is.
0:48:36 Our products are super visually appealing.
0:48:47 And I think it’s one of those things that people, when they see it, they feel it because there is a part of the design right now that it does look a little gimmicky, could be cheap because that’s how they’ve historically been made.
0:48:54 And so, to demonstrate that ours are actually true premium, you know, grade A, Cabretta leather, a lot of times people might have to feel it.
0:49:02 And that is definitely a potential disconnect right now that we’re trying to, you know, ease over with videos and content and all of that stuff.
0:49:06 But I do think long-term plan would be to eventually get this into retail.
0:49:11 And I think we’re set up from a logistics standpoint and a pricing standpoint to be able to do it eventually.
0:49:16 Do you see where, you know, everything these days is, like, everything is a subscription.
0:49:23 It’s like, do you see, like, golf gloves as a subscription where it’s like, well, every quarter we’ll ship you a new design.
0:49:28 Like, you just punch in your size and, you know, we’ll, almost like a subscription box type of thing.
0:49:31 Yeah, we’ve definitely thought about it and talked about it.
0:49:34 I think we have to have a lot of designs to do it.
0:49:39 And so we’ve been bootstrapping and kind of growing the inventory and the selection slowly.
0:49:47 But, yeah, I do think it’s the kind of thing where you could say, hey, if you buy, you know, five gloves now, we’ll ship one to you every month and you’ll get this amount of savings.
0:49:53 And then, like you said, the recurring revenue model is something that’s always enticed me, not just in a physical goods space, but just in general.
0:49:58 And I do think there is a potential for it, although, you know, wouldn’t want to force it.
0:50:04 I think there are other kind of priorities for us, but it’s definitely an interesting thought that we’ve considered.
0:50:11 Like half of the Shopify stores I get to, that’s like the only option is sign up for this recurring thing.
0:50:12 It’s like, oh, what if I just want to try it?
0:50:15 You know, it just, you know, there didn’t even seem to be an option.
0:50:17 Like, how do I just make a one-time purchase?
0:50:18 And I got to remember how to cancel this thing.
0:50:22 Like, it’s, you know, people have gotten very aggressive with the subscription model.
0:50:25 Maybe that’ll be our new tagline, not a subscription.
0:50:27 Yeah, because it does wear out.
0:50:29 And it’s, you know, kind of a unique thing.
0:50:31 I was just, just spitballing here.
0:50:33 But, Randall, you’re working the day job.
0:50:36 You’re selling thousands of things, thankfully, outsourced fulfillment at this point.
0:50:43 Where does your time go if there is such thing as a day in the life or in a typical week these days?
0:50:45 I’m usually waking up 5.30 or 6.
0:50:52 I usually try and do emails and stuff like that for Chip prior to starting my day job, which I get to work from home.
0:50:54 Luckily, which has made that a lot easier.
0:50:57 I do have more time in the day and can be a little bit more flexible.
0:50:59 And then I’ll work, you know, till 4 or 5.
0:51:02 And then we have two adopted dogs.
0:51:04 And so they require a lot of attention as well.
0:51:04 I’ll take them to the park.
0:51:07 My wife comes home, like to spend time with her.
0:51:11 And then usually maybe an hour or two at night, I’ll go in and do some of the other stuff that we have.
0:51:20 Whether it’s setting up ads or looking at profitability or looking at different reports from our logistics partner or, you know, dealing with customer service or whatever the case is.
0:51:21 So it’s definitely a mix.
0:51:28 But prior to offloading the shipment to our third party logistics company, you know, my whole night was basically pack and order.
0:51:32 So anything outside of that feels like I have a ton of free time now.
0:51:36 But, you know, I love to play golf, like to spend time with my family, my wife and two dogs.
0:51:38 And that usually takes up any free time I’ve got left.
0:51:39 Yeah, love it.
0:51:44 It feels like a burden off of the shoulders to let somebody else handle that stuff.
0:51:46 Well, this is really cool.
0:51:53 I know we’re coming into our fourth golf season with some big goals to try and double or triple revenue from last year.
0:51:54 But what’s next for you?
0:51:56 What’s on the horizon for Chip Golf?
0:51:58 Yeah, it’s continuing to roll out new designs.
0:52:01 We have some really exciting designs that we’re going to be rolling out this year.
0:52:03 So definitely stay tuned.
0:52:07 We’ve got one that’s going to be looking like it’s going to be all green, similar to the master’s jacket.
0:52:09 We’ve got one that’s like all red.
0:52:14 It’s supposed to mimic sort of like a boxing glove, really just trying to be as artistic and different as possible.
0:52:16 And then we’ve got a few other designs.
0:52:19 We’re also thinking about rolling out just like a generic white one.
0:52:23 Granted, it kind of goes against everything that I’ve just talked about, but there is a demand for it.
0:52:29 And so I think you talk about average order value and potentially getting more customers offering something like that is certainly a value.
0:52:32 So from the product standpoint, there’s that.
0:52:34 We also want to continue to improve our scalability.
0:52:42 So that comes with like the 3PL, continuing to perfect our ads and ultimately make this a business that hopefully one day can replace my day job.
0:52:49 I mean, I’ve been very transparent about that where, you know, I would love to be able to run this as a full-time thing.
0:52:50 As soon as I can pay the bills with it, I will.
0:52:54 But it is, you know, still definitely a labor of love right now.
0:52:57 And, you know, we’ll continue to try and strive towards that end goal.
0:53:04 And that’s fairly common in any physical product business where once you do find some product market fit
0:53:10 and you’re making some sales, like, okay, well, now we need more inventory and we need to make a bigger order and a bigger order.
0:53:18 This is kind of that natural progression sometimes for years before you really start to draw a salary from it or take any money off the table.
0:53:20 It always goes back into growth.
0:53:21 I think that’s really common.
0:53:21 Yeah.
0:53:26 And we’ve done, too, another thing that I neglected to mention was we do a lot of custom glove orders.
0:53:28 So different companies will reach out.
0:53:29 Brands will reach out.
0:53:29 Oh, okay.
0:53:31 And we do like collabs.
0:53:40 Yeah, it’s a whole new revenue stream for us that’s actually really nice because it’s sort of bulk up front and it’s only a one-order deal and it usually is great.
0:53:43 So we’ve worked with, you know, private equity companies that take their clients out golfing.
0:53:47 They want to have, like, a fun giveaway that’s completely customized to them.
0:54:03 We’ve worked with other golf apparel brands that, you know, they just want, like, if you were to go to any website for, like, a glove manufacturer and you wanted a custom glove, the only thing they’re really willing to customize are, like, the logos on, like, the Velcro latch and that’s about it.
0:54:09 You know, we will do custom pattern, custom packaging, colored wrist stripes, whatever you want.
0:54:10 We’ll pretty much do it.
0:54:14 And so we’ve had some brands that are wanting to sell their gloves on their site.
0:54:22 And so we’ve been making, you know, gloves for them almost as, like, a manufacturer for them, which has been fun because we do love the creativity of it.
0:54:28 That’s sort of the fun part of this whole thing is getting to see a design come to life and be completely different than anything that’s out there.
0:54:33 And a lot of these brands bring some really cool ideas to the table and it’s fun to execute on those for them.
0:54:34 I think that is really cool.
0:54:37 And that’s to your point about increasing average order value.
0:54:48 Well, how can you figure out how to make this a B2B business where people are going to order 100 of these for, you know, their company team building event or something?
0:54:50 Like, I think that makes a lot of sense.
0:54:51 I think that’s really kind of a cool angle.
0:54:52 I hadn’t thought about that.
0:54:55 ChipGolfCo.com.
0:54:56 Chip with two Ps.
0:54:58 Use promo code HUSTLE for 15% off your order.
0:54:59 Randall, this has been awesome.
0:55:06 I’m inspired by this and, you know, we’ll definitely grab a pair for my next round.
0:55:11 It’s kind of, you know, frozen tundra out there at this point, but we’re going to be thawing out soon.
0:55:12 We’ll be hitting the links.
0:55:16 Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.
0:55:17 Find joy in the struggle.
0:55:20 When you are starting out, there’s going to be a lot of them.
0:55:23 And I think it can be very discouraging to a lot of people.
0:55:33 If you don’t find joy in the long hours and the mistakes and you lean into it as sort of just part of the process, building a brand, a product is going to be stressful.
0:55:41 I read a quote one time that entrepreneurs are the only people crazy enough to work more than 40 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.
0:55:42 And that is very true.
0:55:49 You need to be willing to put in the hours, but, you know, the labor of love and hopefully you’re working in an industry or a product that you’re passionate about.
0:55:52 And that passion will carry you through the hard times.
0:55:54 And it’s very easy to get discouraged.
0:56:00 It’s one of the main reasons why I love having a co-founder where it feels like, you know, every time that I may be like, hey, this isn’t going to work.
0:56:02 He’s like, no, this is definitely going to work.
0:56:03 And then vice versa.
0:56:05 And it sort of keeps the boat afloat.
0:56:09 But, yeah, maintain positivity and find joy in the struggle would be my main piece of advice.
0:56:10 Find joy in the struggle.
0:56:11 That’s great.
0:56:11 Yeah.
0:56:17 The entrepreneur is somebody who, you know, is willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.
0:56:24 The line that came up, this was probably last year on the show, I was like, I don’t make any money while I’m working, so I can make money while I’m not working.
0:56:28 It was like this, you know, chasing this, you know, passive or time leveraged income.
0:56:30 It’s like, oh, there’s something, there’s something to that.
0:56:33 We’ll, you know, figure out a more concise way to say that.
0:56:34 But it’s been awesome.
0:56:35 Again, chipgolfco.com.
0:56:37 We’ll link that up in the show notes.
0:56:40 A couple of takeaways for me before we wrap.
0:56:44 Number one is this idea of finding that white space.
0:56:55 You know, every market on the surface is going to feel saturated, but when you’re in it, you might notice these like little, little areas where you can kind of carve a toehold for yourself.
0:57:00 You kind of wedge yourself in there with something that is unique and differentiated in some way.
0:57:03 I think that these gloves have done a good job of that.
0:57:08 And then what we talked about was, on the one hand, you know, creating demand.
0:57:13 That’s the social content, the viral content, the social media ads, the impulse buy type of stuff where it’s like,
0:57:15 Oh, that’s a unique gift idea.
0:57:16 I’ll go ahead and buy one.
0:57:27 And then also pairing that with the filling demand on these different search platforms, the Amazon, the Etsy’s, the TikTok shops, to a certain extent, where it’s like, okay, I’m in the market for a new golf club.
0:57:28 Anyways, I’m looking for it.
0:57:31 And if I happen upon this, oh, that’s a unique design.
0:57:32 Let me go ahead and buy that.
0:57:36 So trying to balance both of those on the marketing front, I think is really interesting.
0:57:46 Your listener bonus for this episode, if you are excited about e-com, is my list of 25 e-commerce niche ideas to get your creative juices flowing.
0:57:49 You can download that for free at the show notes for this episode.
0:57:52 Just follow the show notes link in the episode description.
0:57:59 And if you like this one and you’re wondering what to listen to next, I might recommend number 649.
0:58:04 That was the sunglasses episode with Mike Ettenberg from Frontline Optics.
0:58:09 Kind of a similar direct-to-consumer sunglasses brand in his case, targeting first responders.
0:58:12 But big thanks to Randall for sharing his insight.
0:58:15 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:58:21 As always, you can hit up SideHustleNation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:58:24 And thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
0:58:25 That’s it for me.
0:58:26 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:58:29 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen.
0:58:31 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.