All right. This is Jeff Crampton from Hokatoke, Alberta, Canada, and I play at the Roco Golf Course in Calgary, but like Fred, I also like to play EPCs on Santi Bay and Baja Mexico. This is golf Smarter number of nine fifty nine.
I know one of Brad's good friends, Jason Logan, the editor of Score Golf. He was a guy who's like, hey, I don't wear a golf glove, just grew up, didn't need it, didn't want one, and he finally tried one. I think he got a free glove in a tournament or something, and he just hadn't worn a glove in like fifteen years, and he was amazed at the difference.
My golf spy did some testing with golfers who wore a glove and didn't wear a glove, and you'll hit the ball further, so you have better control of the club, and there's data on it can actually increase your distance. I think it was fairly nominal, but it will have an impact on your game. I can't imagine playing golf without one. I get fairly sweaty hands and sometimes I'll chip without a glove. Maybe for a little bit of extra feel, but I couldn't hit a full shot, couldn't
imagine it. I think the data is something like ninety five percent of golfers wear golf glove.
Red Rooster golf Gloves continues to raise the bar and turn heads with co founder Kerrie Mark. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Carry Hello, Fred, great to see.
You, Bud, so glad to have you back on the show. And before we go anywhere, I just want to say thank you so much for supporting our Golf Smarter Ambassador program and giving gloves and glove storage compartments to the Golf Smarter Ambassadors who request them. We give them a choice of gifts and yours has been one for a long time and I really appreciate your generosity with this. Thank you.
It's been great. Yeah, they seem to really enjoy getting to choose from our wide range of gloves. And I actually have a really cool update for you on the glove compartment. We're working on the two point zero version that'll be able to share one of the pre production prototypes.
So yeah, well, I you know, you recently sent me the latest glove compartment. It's beautiful. It's like, I don't know if it's leather, but it feels like it. It looks like it.
It is.
Yeah, you're upgrading from that.
So I have an update on that. So we're doing we do have an upgrade on that. We're starting to do working with customs. We're working with some golf courses, we're doing some corporate events, member guests. To be able to while we're talking, I'll show you we can do like embroidery, okay, so we can customize it. And then we're doing this is the latest and greatest. It's sort of like an etched pewter, so you can sort of
So we're starting to be able to customize that. We obviously been selling a lot of them to our own customers. It's the higher end version of the glove compartment. We call it the cockpit, and it's more of a you know, go in the in the shoe locker. You can you know, throw it in your bag, as opposed to the glove compartment, which hangs on your bag and you know, you sort of dry the gloves during the round, so they.
We just call them all cockpit. I think that's so funny.
Yeah, it's a great name. That's a Brad's wife. She comes up with all these amazing names. She's just got a great marketing mind. And most of the names of our products.
She let me ask where red Rooster golf. That name came from.
Well, that's that's actually my nickname.
So you can see my Oh you have red hair, so red rooster.
Yeah, my dad, I mean I have My mom and dad have of dark brown hair, and all my siblings I have. I have four siblings. I'm the only redhead in the family. And my dad used to call me the red Rooster. That was my nickname. And we liked the idea of the tagline, wake up your golf game, and we kind of came up with the name and tried to beat it and and we couldn't come up with anything better.
So it's I'm glad it's not the ginger golf. And how's business. I mean, it's really come a long way since we were first introduced to red Rooster golf. When you were just had this idea of creating a glove subscription service, right, yeah.
I mean we've been chatting since our Kickstarter launch, so you've been with us from the start and that that started as well. And you know, I know you were intrigued by the subscription service and I remember having a really good chat to just kind of talk through that. That's still, you know, you know, our most popular I think it's our best service. It's just it's hard to know when to change a glove, and when gloves arrive, it's that nice reminder and it's you get our best price.
But of course we sell lots of gloves just people can buy them as needed. It's so easy with shop pay and once you create an account, and we're always releasing. You know, I've got eleven new glove styles to kind
of show you here. We're doing lots of fun things with colors and with different celebrating you know, Fourth of July Canada Day, the British open, so there's lots of call them like sort of mini drops, So lots of lots of our customers are just flexible to see what's the latest and greatest kind of like color or style we come out with, and they want to be flexible
to grab them. But it's ever since the Kickstarter and we launched later that fall, it's just been you know, that hockey stick Curve just continues to grow.
Canadians love the hockey stick Curve.
Sure, yeah, and so and so do entrepreneurs.
Exactly.
That's great. It's it's so viral. You know, golf such a social game. So when you find a product and if it delivers and it meets your expectations, you tend to brag about it and recruit and golfers, you know, talk and share. So product's good and we get lots of word of mouth advertising, so we just continue to grow.
Congratulations, the product is very good. Thank you, very good. But when you first kicked did the Kickstarter campaign? What what did you have a five year plan and think about expansion. I'm sure that you did, because you do have a great business mind. But what were you hoping to achieve with Kickstarter? And then how did you see that developing?
That always, yeah, that's a good question. We did. We did do some strategic planning. That's how we came up with We did envision ourselves five years down the line. And one of the things that that exercise really helped us do is we thought about we imagined ourselves being fairly successful, and I would say we're ahead of expectations at this point going into year three, which is which is great. I think we tried to be fairly conservative and I was a big fan of the Kevin Kelly
one thousand true fans. That was kind of we felt like we needed to start there. And the Kickstarter goal was to get eleven get a thousand backers. We thought if we could, if we can convince a thousand people to buy gloves from us, it'll sort of you know, they'll tell a friend of a friend and things will
sort of mushroom and grow. And the Kickstarter we got was eleven hundred eighty seven backers, so it you know, met the expectations, exceeded them, and we felt like we could build a business around that, especially on the subscription model. We have more than two thousand subscribers, but this year alone, we'll have more than fifteen thousand customers. You know, we'll probably sell seventy five thousand gloves this year.
You are kidding, no, So it's amazing.
Yeah, it's been going great.
I mean, where does that put you in the glove industry, Are you like serious competitors.
Now, No, we're still we're still pretty small. You know, the market's huge, you know, there's there's there's no definitive data, but it's between sort of fifty and sixty million gloves are sold every year in the United States alone. Oh so it's a huge market, but most of it is through appropriate the gloves are sold through pro shops and so that's still you know, we're a direct to consumer brand.
And when we did the five year visioning, the first thing we identified was if we're successful, we want to give back. What would that look like. That's how we came up with the Play at Forward program where we donate gloves to youth golf and that's been amazing, just super rewarding to give kids these gloves. And our youth gloves come in eight sizes, you know, four sizes for each hand. We have the smallest glove available in the
market period. Because I have three daughters who I'm you know, desperately trying to convince to play golf, and they're tough nut to crack, but all three of them, even though they're twelve, ten, and seven, they wear our smallest glove and they're tiny girls with small hands, and there were no gloves that fit them that we could find, so that we sort of it was sort of problem solution.
That give back has been great. But I think the other thing is, as we sort of thought about the five year visioning, we never we thought we would be direct to consumer. Maybe maybe forever we didn't. We didn't really think about the sort of retail slash golf shops, but we're really being pulled in that direction. We get a lot of golf clubs reaching out to us because they see a lot of their members or a lot
of their guests wearing red rooster gloves. They know, they hear about the quality, and they they'd like to carry them. So we're planning on attending the PGA Show next year with the intention of I call it sort of tiptoeing into to retail. We will work with, you know, some
select partners where there's a fit. There's obviously no golf shops that aren't already selling gloves, so what we're offering isn't novel, but our our approach is a little bit different, our price points a little bit different, and obviously our give back programs unique. So that's kind of going to be the next phase, which five years ago we couldn't have envisioned, you know, year four moving into retail, but here we are.
What's the advantage of being a direct to consumer company in a space like golf that is so attached to pro shops and retail stores.
I think it's owning the customer experience, So we don't in the direct to consumer space, We're not handing that off. So you know, we take full responsibility for the product and for the relationship. So we love that. So our customer service is a big part of what we do.
We love you know, we're still doing and I remember when we did the Kickstarter we old twenty five hundred gloves to eleven hundred customers, and when we finally got those gloves, you know, three or four months later, we did handwritten notes to everybody we were really appreciative of. We call that group OURRGS, our Red Rooster Original Gangsters.
And yeah, every time I received a glove and I saw a handwritten note, I'm like touching, going, oh my god, they really did. This isn't printed on here, They actually wrote this note with my name on it. I was may.
Yeah, we still do it, We enjoy it. We know all the customers and even though we're growing and we've got you know, lots of them, will be fifteen thousand this year, we we take the time so we we we own that relationship and we enjoy it. And obviously there's a you know, it's it's good business. There's a you know, if you like our gloves and you play a lot of golf, you'll be back you were you'll tell a friend. But we also we offer we call it our best Glove Guarantee, like any issues. You know,
it's free exchanges. We ship all of our gloves for free, and any issues it's and no questions asked, you know, typically exchange. I can't remember ever issuing a refund. You know. They're they're golf gloves. They're made of soft leather. Sometimes they tear, sometimes there's an issue, but we take full responsibility. We've also got a great manufacturing partner, and it's rare,
but we enjoy the interaction. Live chat, lots of email, lots of social messages, so our teams busy, but the overwhelmingly the feedback so positive that it's so fun to interact there versus you know, and we're prepared to go to retail rope, but then you sort of hand off that relationship, you know, you ship the gloves to them and they take over, and they're now you're playing middle you know, playing a bit of telephone. You know, if they have issues, we'll fully support them, but we're not
interacting directly with that customer. We really enjoy that part of the direct to consumer experience.
And would you rather be in pro shops or retail or PGA superstore type of situations? Do you have a preference on where you want to go next when you do go on retail side.
Yeah, we want to start with with golf courses. So we've we've had a number We've.
Been a lot of customization there too.
Yeah, for sure, and that and we're at the point now where we can handle that. So, you know, the first couple of years a we were just trying to figure out the direct to consumer space period and our own manufacturing and fulfillment and everything was new. We're, you know, three years in, we've got that pretty dialed in. Now we're learning, you know, a new channel. So we're going
to move slowly. We have a number of courses that have expressed interest for you, and so we're going to kind of like start with our best friends where there's the right fit, and kind of slowly branch out from there. So we're looking for partners willing to you know, we will. We're pretty honest that this is all new for us
and be all new for us next year. We'll probably have a bit of a learning curve and some pickups along the way, So we want to have, you know, the right partners who really appreciate our product and want it. We're not sort of pushing our way in making a lot of sales calls. We actually just have a bunch of golf courses that have expressed interest and this is the year where we're going to start to work with
them and meet those needs. So we'll kind of start there and kind of branch out slowly learn from it, see how things go. But yeah, we're excited about it.
That's great. That's great. So by going to a retail direction when you get there, does that make it more healing for larger companies to buy you out? Is that a goal for Red Rooster Golf? For you guys, now now that you're seeing your your hockey stick, hockey stick trajectory. It's like, no, no, we're in this one. We're taking it to the to the top on our own.
No, that's not really a consideration. I've never really thought of. You know, I have how a serial entrepreneur I have, you know, I've bought and sold businesses, and this is one I've never been in a business that I'm been this passionate about. So I'm really enjoying it. You know,
we're doing really well, which is great. We're making a really good living, we're having fun doing it, and we'll and I've been through that where I did sell a business and probably had some regret after just that, Like, I was enjoying it. It was making money, we were having fun, and we sold it and we did well. But all of a sudden, I had a couple of years there I was sort of soul searching and I'm I'm, you know, forty six turning forty seven in a few weeks.
I'm not I'm looking to do this for a long time, And so that wasn't really a consideration. I think we actually just we're excited about the retail space because we've got partners who really want us. So it's it's just the right fit. We we kind of had said no, and then we're like, why would we say no? These are, you know, perfectly good partners. It's a good channel. We're not trying to you know, push our way in or
we don't. It's a bit sort of stress free, and we have a great manufacturing partner who can support us. So we're just it feels like the next logical step.
You're an August baby, Yes, me too, August eleventh, August fourth, okay, Leo, Yeah, but I think I've got twenty plus years on you. You said forty seven.
I'll be forty seven on August eleventh. Yeah.
Yeah, sixty nine, okay.
Looking good for it? Looking good for sixty nine.
Well, well, it's because we're both wearing our red shirts today.
That's it.
You guys have won some awards.
Yeah, we've done Yeah, we've done well. My golf Spy has been awfully good to us score golf as well. The you know, the product's really good. It's uh, we we built It's funny because we tried. We wanted to differentiate. So when we came into the market, the idea was build a glove that last. There's this expectation from golfers that when you buy, you know, the more you spend, the longer that glove will last. But usually the more
you spend, the thinner and softer that glove is. And you know, for instance, like the titleist players glove, it's a beautiful glove, but it's built for touring pros. It's good for a round or two realistically, especially in the heat. But you know, most golfers expect to get eight, ten, twelve rounds out of a glove, so we built a glove that will hold up to that. And then I think the only knock was we don't have the thin soft glove. So last summer we came up with the
Sussex that is our call it our tournament glove. And it's funny because we only offer one glove in that style and it's now our number one seller.
Wow.
So we were sort of known for our durability and known for our you know, still super soft glove, but we'll sort of meat expectations and now our thin soft glove is the glove that is outselling everything. But it's nice to have options.
It's interesting because if you think about you want to build a glove to last, I wonder if the consumer impression of a subscription service, oh I can get a new glove every month, I wonder if they're not very good gloves. I mean, you know, you think the mindset could be if they want me to change it out every so often, then how good can the glove be? And yet you're like, no, no, no, these gloves will last you. And the other thing is, you know, I
live on the West Coast. I don't have to deal with humidity, so I don't go through gloves that fast. The times that I've played in human weather, I was like, oh, this thing's changing color and sticking to me, you know, because I like taking off for putting, So I don't know.
We have found with subscribers that if anything, they because our gloves last so long that they move off the subscription because the reminder comes up and they're like, you know this thing, I don't need it replace brand new so far. So, but there's a lot of flexibility with the subscription too, so it's not doesn't have to be monthly, right. We have some who are on buy we you know, or they get multiple gloves when the gloves come in a month, or you can get them every two months,
every three months. Every quarter, you can skip a shipment, you can set you know, you can get a glove in October and set your next one for April. So it's the customers using the subscription are the ones who are pretty active with it because you can change gloves. You can get rain gloves one month, you can get our practice glove, the range rooster, you can get a new style, and you can so it's pretty flexible and I think that are customers that use that flexibility are
the ones that that kind of appreciate it. And if you know, others like to get five six gloves at a time and there's their gloves for the year. So it's it's more just giving people as many options as possible so that they choose which one suits them best.
I have, I think one friend who doesn't wear a glove. Everybody wears gloves. Why do we wear gloves when we're playing golf? And how do I convince this one friend that he really needs to be wearing a glove.
Well, you're right. We actually have a lot of customers who wear two gloves. Oh wear among both hands and sometimes it's for sun protection and for sometimes it's for feel. But the gloves started it. It's for feel, right, especially like in humid conditions, and it's that you know that soft ca bread of leather, it's really tacky, so it
really it's for grip. I know one of Brad's good friends, Jason Logan, he's the editor of Score Golf, and he was a guy who's like, hey, I don't wear a golf glove and just grew up, didn't need it, didn't want one, and he finally tried one. I think he got a free glove in a tournament or something, and he just hadn't worn a glove in like fifteen years, and he was amazed at the difference. And I know
golf my golf spy did. They did some testing with golfers who wore a glove and didn't wear a glove, and you actually you'll hit the ball further, so you have a better you have better control of the club, and there's you know, data on it can actually increase your distance. I think it was, you know, fairly nominal, but it will have an impact on your game. I can't imagine playing golf without one. I get fairly sweaty hands and I can't hold on. Sometimes I'll chip without
a glove. Maybe for a little bit of extra feel, but I couldn't hit a full shot. I couldn't imagine it. I think the data is something like ninety five percent of golfers wear a golf glove.
Incredible. Yeah, it makes total sense. And again I probably when I pull out a wedge and definitely the putter, I'll pull the glove off. So it goes on and off and on and off. And I've never had any problem with any tearing or wear like that. If I have anywhere at all, it's probably in the the left of the palm of my hand, opposite of my thumb.
That's where we see the most wear for sure.
Yeah. Absolutely, but I think figuring out what size glove to wear is probably a huge issue for most consumers.
That's what we see we do. I mentioned we're doing a pro am brad Is a Brad's in Ottawa in late July playing in the PJ Tour America's event, and that program is two hundred people in it. And when we fit up those two hundred people, I would estimate that just about everybody's you know, got a glove. Most of them are like they hide it when because it's usually like pretty old and ratty, even though they've spent
you know, these pro ams. You might they're spending thousands of dollars to play in this event and they've got this you know, rolled up glove.
But they can stand up on its own.
Probably yeah, yeah, pretty crusty.
Give you the finger right with one fingers sticking.
Up or holes in it. So everybody's happy to get a new, fresh glove. But I would estimate that at least half of them will lead or upwards of that will leave with a glove in a size that they're not currently wearing. In a lot of cases, most people just don't know what cadet sizes are. So that's slightly shorter finger in a wider palm, and most people just know it's not a very good name. It sounds like you're in the military, or they say, or it sounds
like a kid's glove. So the industry needs to come up with a better name for cadet.
Late yet can change that now, but maybe could change mind.
And normally it's and I would say one hundred percent of the time when we're changing their size, they're going down at least one size sometimes too, they're never going up. I've never come across someone who's wearing a glove that's too small. They're always wearing one that's too big, right, and you want it. The glove should be really tight. Most people will wear it almost like a regular glove. You can just see most gloves are just a bit loose.
They're pulling the strap way over. The thing gets so you get a more wear and tear in that case, and the glove doesn't last as long and obviously doesn't perform as well. So we love doing events where we do glove fittings because we expose them to you know, our gloves come in thirty four sizes when you include thirty six sizes, when you include our youth gloves, you know talking feet, nail, female, right, left hand, cadet and
regular that it's a really wide range. And when we lay them out on the table and everybody sees how many size options they're, they're often blown away because they think, you know, there's probably like eight to ten sizes and both so we can really fit up, you know, and we go up to you know, double xcel. So often females are wearing like a men's size because the female
sizes are pretty a pretty small range. Some women wear a kid's glove, you know, and some guys need to wear a female glove they've got a smaller hand, and so yeah, we love those events. It's just it's fun to get somebody fit properly. For In a lot of cases, it's the first time they've ever had a glove that you know, fits them really well. Makes a big difference, and you've educated them on something and they, you know,
modify that moving forward. So we try to do as many events as we can fit in the calendar.
And what's the process of getting fitted for a glove.
So often will when they come up they've got a size, we get them to put on their glove. We can tell right away if the glove they're wearing fits or not. It's usually too big. So they usually start with, you know, this is the size I wear. We either, you know, if that glove fits properly, then we'll give them an If they're a medium, then we'll give them a medium. And often but we'll do a fitting. We'll put the medium on. We'll get them, you know, to try that
glove on. We look at the fit and we'll see if if it's a little bit loose, you know, we might go down to a small. If it's a little you know, tight in the palm, we might go to a cadet medium, which gives them a little bit more space through. We call cadet like a construction hand. It's kind of like it's that sort of meaty palm and shorter fit. And there's you're a cadet.
I am yeah, medium, medium large cadet.
There you go medium large cadet and.
Talk about specific size.
And I think also as a direct to consumer brand, we're finding that a probably a higher percentage of our customers were cadet because they have a hard time finding cadet in pro shops. A lot of pro shops just carry regular gloves. Red Rooster carries the widest range of sizes of any brand, including Titleist. Titleist doesn't carry right hand cadet. They just don't do it because it's a relatively small market and they are not worth it for them.
And those customers are our customers because we offer it and they can't find it other places. So I think we tend to skew also with lefties, you know, they have a hard time finding gloves we offer, you know.
And clubs and clubs.
Yeah, so we go kind of like deep on the on the sizes and kind of build those relationships. So I do think we're kind of probably if you look at our customer data, it's probably not industry data. We're just finding maybe those we serve the obscure sizes that are maybe hard to find.
And that's one of the advantages of direct to consumer.
Yeah, I think so one to one.
Communication as opposed to you know, surveys to middlemen whatnot.
Yeah.
What about women who have long nails and they have you know, like they're really concerned about the quality of the life of their nails and the look and stuff. Does that change the size of the glove if they have the longer nails.
Yeah, what they'll often do is we'll see the those are now that the women's gloves do have longer fingers relative to the men's glove simply because like that is, women have kind of longer, thinner fingers, and so those gloves are kind of fitted to that. Anyway, they are slightly longer, not for the purpose of the nails, and certainly like some nails just can't be accommodated. I hear some women they actually cut the top and of the fingers so that the if you have very long nails,
so that they can go through. In other cases, the gloves are sort of allow for that little extra room so that the nails fit in there. We have a lot of a lot of female customers and we've rolled out I think I showed you these rainbow of colors. We've got, you know, a beautiful lavender, you know, sort of purple glove, and this pink glove here a soft pink, and this yellow canary color and this really nice soft
green emerald color. So we've we've also tried to not only offer enough sizes and for women, but also like styles that appeal to them. So these gloves that I showed you, they were offered to female only. We would often make a glove and it's realistically more styled for men offered in women's sizes. And now we're featuring more styles that cater to the female audience, fit their personal you know, style tastes, match outfits. Just trying to be
flexible to meet that market. That's one of the biggest growing markets right now for new golfers is female golfers.
Especially with lots of colors women buy like just the rainbow of colors all at once, just depending on the outfit that they have.
I mean, that's right. We would see like all four of those gloves.
Even if I did that from my various styles of clothes or colors of clothes. Nobody would notice. But the women, they're like, wait a minute, didn't you wear that colored glove last time we played together?
That's right? The details.
Okay, so let's talk about the product line because you know, again when we first started, you had a couple of gloves, and you have really gone way beyond that. Now again, the Red Rooster brand is so strong and it looks so good that you know, you've just found other places to put your logo on it and it's not just gloves and hats.
Yeah, you're right. So the first products who did it was the gloves, and we offered it an accessory, the glove compartment, and we're coming up because.
They're the original one. Yeah.
Yeah. And so this is the second version of this is going to be like a two point zero. We've made this is it's waterproof. We've improved the velcro here, we've improved the zipper. It's a more rugged, easy to open zipper. It has the inside has a closed pocket. Now it used to be open, so now you can put your phone in there, you can put some of
your accessories, ball markers, et cetera. And then we have the dividers so you can put you know, three or four gloves, keep them separate so they don't you know, stick together.
Thick. Does that make that thicker?
It is, it's slight. It is slightly thicker, yeah, so it can carry a little bit more. That's kind of like the upgrade on that product. I'd mentioned the what we call the cockpit, which is the higher end version, the leather version for those that want to keep the gloves kind of safely either in their their locker or
inside their their bag. We've come up with you know that we had launched in the last two months alone, last sixty days, we launched eleven different you know glove styles, everything from our Canada a glove flag gloves to the we called the Liberty for Fourth of July, or our US flag or we got the Scottish glove to celebrate Royal true and the British Open.
So I love that it's a that you have it as a wide glove, but you have the thumb colored, Yeah, to match the velcrow flat. That's pretty cool.
Yeah, that's been really just how we're just kind of trying to have some fun with some of the styles. Some of them are limited edition, and then we're starting to come up with like some of these accessories like.
The way this wait before we go there on the limited edition? Do you number them?
No?
That I mean, if you want to make them collectible, is limited edition? You got a number them and be like, oh I got number twelve.
Yeah, if you can do that for some other accessories, but gloves don't last too long, so and you're not likely to put them in a drawer, want you to use them.
But some of them put them on the wall. You have them on the wall.
Well that's to celebrate our kickstarter Okay, but yeah, we certainly could we could, We could try. We are working on some limited edition headcovers, leather headcovers that we're working with our with our partner, and some of those can can be fun. We are finding that in some cases, like the Scotland glove here called the Saltire, I mean it we only made a hundred of them, so you know, they didn't last the day you know, we sent an
email out and they were all gone. So sometimes we're we're learning that lessons more.
Yeah, absolutely, and what other accessories that let's talk about your hat line. Do we have a bucket hat yet or a big brim hat. I've been bugging you for this, Yes we do.
We've got we have fourteen new hat styles coming, everything from performance hats to visors and bucket hats.
We have good idea.
What's a performance hat just super breatheable so for the heat so and and really like holds the dries quickly and actually really good in the just more of a performance material. We do have some a couple of dad hats as well, so the you know, traditional kind of like cotton hats, we're trying to have a and they're the lower profile. The performance hats are made of the you know, dry wicking material and have some breathe ability,
some holes in them. And then we've got you know, four styles of two different styles and and two different colors of visors, and then two different styles and two different colors of bucket hats. So we really want to have that wide range of of hats. We've got you know a lot of customers who that's great real estate too, I think, you know, marketing wise, if you can get customers who love our gloves that's not near as visible as say a head cover, of course, which we've been
in the head covers for a while. That's probably the best real estate on a bag. If you can get a red rooster head cover on one of your customers, that's highly visible. And of course you can't beat a hat, you know, so uh and then you know, I'm a I'm a guy where you know, sun's sleeves, and obviously, as a redhead, I'm pretty sensitive to have always worn
bucket hats. So we wanted to produce some of our own and I'm really I'm really happy with the with what we've come out with, and as soon as they're ready, I'm going to send you some some pictures of the pre production samples and you can you can choose your bucket hat. Fred. I know you're a proponent.
I'm big proponent of big brim hats too, because I think that I still think that the PGA should make it that baseball caps are just they don't do anything other than protect you, you know, your eyes from the sun, but the side of your head and your back of your neck, you're exposed and it's just not healthy.
You see you always see you see a lot of caddies right now wearing but not players.
Right right, and like too cool? Come on, guys, you're playing that club. It may not be a cool club playing it.
So I think Joel Damon and even his not a wide brim really.
But no, it's bigger than most. I like his hats. I would love to. I've always wanted to, you know, and then Full Swing came out, but I want I've been trying to get in touch with him for a long time to talk to him about why because he's a cancer survivor. But his feelings about getting other players to wear the larger is so.
What guys, Yeah, that would be interesting.
You know. I mean, like, if you're a golfer, you're supposed to drop your ego anyway, So let's do this. Are are you still looping for your partner Brad.
Well, he's he's not playing much these days, and uh, but I I love to caddy for him because I just love to see that kind of game up close, and I love to to see how he I don't want to say picks a part of golf course. He's actually ultra conservative. So it I learn a lot just in seeing.
How conservative play very and you see.
That's what it is. He's very you know, when we would you know, in a practice round, he's choosing lines off the tee. He's he's looking for the biggest landing area. Now maybe that requires flying a you know, a bunker, but often it means, you know, playing conservative, maybe it's a threewood or an iron off the tee. Then he's looking for the middle of the green. And so as we chart stuff, I'm often surprised at sort of how you know, the better rounds come from playing the most conservative.
You kind of let the birdies come to you. You try to you avoid the bogies, and you know, par is always a good score on any hole, and it's funny when you play that way and you sort of lay back the you know, the birdies do tend to come to you, and when you're pushing for them, that's when the bogies show up. So yeah, I love looping for Brad and I'm always trying to get him out to play more tournaments, kind of selfishly so so I can get on the bag and just so I can
get him playing more. He still plays just I love playing golf with him period because it's he's just on another level.
Yeah. Yeah. When I was up at the Lab Golf Factory and got a chance to play with Sam and his tour development director Liam Bedford, these guys have a completely different game. I mean it was it was really fun to watch their swing and to watch the ball
flight and their intention. It was amazing. And I learned a fascinating stat when I was playing with them that there was an experiment done by I don't know if it was a chorus or a group or whatever it was, but they they had golfers play without a flag on the green. Oh, and statistically they hit more greens because everyone was just trying to go for the center of the green sure, instead of flag hunting. So without flags,
there was better results on greens and regulation. I thought that was absolutely exciting and interesting and something to keep in mind. Just go for the center of the green, you know, It's.
Like it's hard to do sometimes, especially when you have like a wedge in your hand or you but.
It flags up front.
Sure, Statistically, you're right, that's how you play your best golf.
Yeah, yeah, well, I want to I want to thank the audience for for hanging tight on this interview because I'm sure it sounded like an infomercial for Red Rooster Golf, and maybe it was, but it's only because I I'm excited about your product, I'm excited about your company, and I'm always fascinated to learn more about the guys who on a Kickstarter campaign come on that can actually turn their company into a success and grow with it and
grow with demand. So it is just an honor to have you guys as part of our our family and watching you grow. Congratulations man, Yeah, thanks Fred.
It's fun. You know, when we started, we had some i think conservative expectations and we've met them, but we've enjoyed it along the way. Brad and I, you know, we grew up playing junior golf together, so it's been a great way to you know, rekindle our friendship and get involved in the game that we love so much, and you know, with our give back programs. So it's it's something that we really enjoy. And I want to share one other thing with your audience where we're working on.
It's a contest that's going to come out later this fall. It's it's our Golden Glove twenty twenty four's it's called our Golden Glove Contest, and it's a way to kind of like a reward some of our customers, but it's also to sort of educate consumers on the breadth of sizes.
So our adult gloves come in twenty eight sizes, and we have one glove, a Golden Glove, in each one of those sizes, and it's like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, those are going to be seeded into orders over a couple of months, and when though that Golden Glove shows up in your order, that customer will automatically win a two hundred dollars shopping spree on redroostergolf dot com and then they're entered in a draw for a trip for two to stream Song. So that trip will be in January,
it looks like probably just before the PGA show. So I wanted to kind of share that with you. It's something that we're having a little bit of fun with. When we saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and their sort of remake, we came up with this idea and it was a way to kind of celebrate our customers and educate them on the different sizing and just kind of have some fun.
Ah, that is brilliant. I love that idea totally. The chocolate factory, the Golden Glove. Yeah, that is great, all right, so look for that for the fall of twenty twenty four. Kerrie. Great to talk to you again, man.
Congratulations, Thanks fredppreciate it.
Well. It's been almost a month since we recorded last week's episode with Sam Han and I've not touched my club since because of summer travel. But I'm headed back out to the course this week and could not be more excited to get out there again, especially to keep improving with my new lab broomstick putter. But also I'm going to start testing out an electric caddy from MGI. Now I'm going to use it for the next month.
You know, I always walk the golf course and I have a three wheel push cart, and it's pretty hilly here in northern California, so sometimes my back gets tested pushing the cart up and down the hills. So testing out an electric caddy is something I've wanted to do for a long time. They've reached out to me. They
sent me one to try out. And I'll use it for the next month, and then we're going to have a conversation with their VP of US Sales about the product, the benefits of walking, and the latest statistics on how so many golfers are walking now more than ever. And if you have any questions about these electric caddies that you'd like me to ask their VP, then please write to me and let me know what you want to
hear and I'll make sure that gets discussed now. This week's Golf Smarter Ambassador Jeff Crampton, who lives and plays in Alberta, Canada. He mentioned that he also plays at TPC Donzonte Bay in Loretto, Mexico, located on the east coast of Baja California. I'll leave a link in today's show notes of a video I created about one of the most beautiful holes I've ever played, and that's number seventeen at TPC Donezonte Bay, which is the only TPC
course in Mexico. And when you come up over the hilltop to get the view of this par three that is looking out to the Sea of Cortes onto a green that is elevated about one hundred fifty feet above the wh It's breathtaking, and I'll make sure so you go to Golfsmarter dot com and click on today's show and you'll see the video. Or I'll just leave a link in the show notes. It's a short video and you can see it. It's again, it's mind blowing. Anyway. I love that golf course and hoping to get there
again before the end of this year. Jeff wanted to see Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental, and he got it for free just by sharing with us where
he plays, where he lives, and which episode number this is. Now, now that we talk to Carrie about the Great Gloves and the multitude of choices they offer a Redrooster Golf, I want to remind you that when you sign up to be a golf Smarter Ambassador, you get a choice of three free gifts, and one of those choices, along with Tony Manzoni's Lost Fundamental video, is a glove and glove storage compartment or cockpit from Red Rooster Golf. I can't think of how I could make it any easier
for you to become one of our ambassadors. All you need to do is introduce a future episode just write to Golf Smarter Podcast at gmail dot com and I'll get back to you because you know, I just can't give the instructions here because I give specific instructions on
which episode it's going to be. So I'll get back to you after you write to me with some simple instructions on how to call in record and I'll even give you a script of exactly what to say if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for upcoming episodes, like the suggestion that I got this week for getting Jeff Mangum of the Putting Zone back on the show. We haven't talked to Jeff since twenty seventeen, and I've already written to him and he has already said, let's
do it. So stay tuned. We'll have Jeff Mangum to talk about putting again, and that's always an adventure with Jeff. Anyway. For any of those things, right to Golf Smarter podcas Cast at gmail dot com or click on the Heyfread button when you're at Golfsmarter dot com