Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode, I am joined by Billy Draddy.
Billy has been.
A big name in the golf fashion industry for a long time. So we recorded an interview at the PGA show in the Draddy den. Obviously, Uh, you know, Summit Golf Brands, great brand, and they've been big supporters of what we do at the Friday Egg. And it was a lot of fun to uh get to turn the mic and ask Billy some questions about you know, how he got started in uh in the in the golf world.
So, without further ado, here's Billy Draddy.
I miss the green for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
And when I find my ball in.
A Frida Egg, Friday Egg, the dreaded Friday Egg, fridagg Frida Egg Bride Egg, Lie.
I'm about ready to run.
Off the golf.
It was from his recent book, Conversations Talking to Strangers. I have that book. Yeah, I'm ten pages. Then yeah, get the audio book. It goes quicker.
I downloaded on the trip from Miami to Orlando, and so I you know, I really got deep into it.
It's it's actually really good.
I think all his books are good, but like this one, I maybe because of getting through it so quick, it's like it's it's staying with me.
You know what I mean.
Yeah, Yeah, I love Malcolm Gladwell's books. You can think about stuff differently.
Yeah.
One of my favorites was if you everyone talks about having a handgun in their house, if you have a pool at your house, it's more dangerous than having a handgun.
That makes sense, Yeah, but you would never think that.
A parent would never think that when making the decision to have a handgun or a pool in their house, which was going to be more dangerous.
Especially for kids. Yeah.
Yeah, Malcolm Gladwells he's great with everything. He hates golf.
Though he hates golf, I don't think he hates what he has said about like La County, you know, and some of the great golf courses, and I mean LACC is like the biggest example of like urban waste to him.
Yeah.
The thing about it though, in so many areas I think about it is like if you look at a picture of a like a nineteen thirty area of any of any like great club there's nothing around.
The golf courting, nothing.
Like they built these places like out Yeah, and then everybody decided they want to live there.
Yeah.
And and half the time when you're going to the greatest golf courses in America, you drive through a terrible neighborhood.
So it's it's he didn't present the other side. I was a little disappointed he did not. He was very guided in his in his in his case against golf. I mean that's the thing though, with anything in life, you can you can always present, Like I think about like statistics all the time. Yeah, if you want a statistic to say something, you can figure out a way for it to say something and flip it the other way and do something.
I do that all the time in sales presentations. This is our best seller versus last year, or you know in that category, or it's up to from last week. Yeah, on a zero base. Well that's what McGinley McGinley. McGinley kind of spoke out events about Malcolm's argument, you know, is that we shouldn't be apologizing about about golf being a aspirational.
Elitist sport.
You know the fact that CEOs play it is is a testament to the game that it actually does. It promotes relationships, you know, it promotes communication, and that it's it's it is sort of a you know, it's it's a reward for being successful.
Yeah, and it doesn't have to be elitist, like if you go if you go to Rancho Park in La County, like the La County golf course.
Yeah, there's nothing elitist about the game there.
No, it's just you know, it's the lens that people like to look at it through. And there's plenty of examples, like the way I grew up playing golf, riding my bike to the local MUNI was there was nothing elitist about me putting my back, my bag on my back and riding a bike to golf course not at all, and spending all day chipping and putting around this chip chipping green, you know.
Or someone coming to the game, you know, through caddying, through their summer job, yeah, you know, and falling in love with the game and wanting to make it a priority in their life.
And that's the thing I was going to say too.
I almost said it last night when we had that discussion, was like caddying, like as a kid, you learn how to talk to all these people. Yeah, I mean there's nothing better, no better job for a young kid than caddying.
No, And I mean I.
Always say that everyone in life should either caddie, waiter or bartend. Everyone has to learn how to kiss ass to make a dollar.
That's true. You know which one did you do as a kid? All three?
I mean, except I didn't really waiter a lot. My dad had three restaurants, so actually I would do both. I mean I would literally I would caddy in the morning, go play a baseball game, you know, four o'clock in the afternoon, and then I would bartend at night.
What kind of restaurants? He had three.
Restaurants, all strategically located around Wingfoot and so one was a seafood restaurant where you got lobster and steamers. One was a tavern that that didn't serve dinner, only served lunch. But they had these incredible hot sandwiches. Like their signature sandwichich was the Balboa, which was rare roast beef on garlic bread with Swiss cheese.
I want one right.
For breakfast with an hagg It actually would be incredible. And the last one was kind of just like a more creative, innovative American restaurant. You know, where they served steaks, but you know there were specials every night and stuff like that.
That's uh so where did you caddy? Did you carry? Have? At Wingfoot?
That's probably one of their greatest policies is that they allow members kids to caddy and so because they want to promote junior golf. You know, they really kind of promote, you know, making a loop and then in the afternoon you get to go out and play and there's real While obviously there's a certain amount of uh it's not like walking into any caddyyard, you know, but it's also the caddy master at the time, it was still a very earn your way system.
You know. There was no favoritism, that's for sure.
There's almost reverse favoritism with great caddy masters.
Yes, yes, he was very happy to tell you.
You know that Ada Billy, you get down the hill and get here at seven thirty in the morning if you want to get out, you know, and you kind of to duck your head and you know, and he we literally talk like that, Adad Billy, go get J. T. Shields and Jim Gallagha and get down to one West quick. I don't want to hear anything about being a bad loop.
I'll tell you there's stuff about caddy masters that have like this like authority. Yeah, like I mean I see a caddy master, I'm still scared of ut Yeah, I'm like, I don't want to cross that.
Plus what other job in today's world do you get? The term master?
I mean it is very it's very sensitive.
Like if you thought if you took the word master outside of it, you know, it's like, that doesn't sound right, you know for a position that is that is really being someone's slave for a day, you know, I mean it's it's it's pretty not a slave is an awful word also, but yeah, it's it's it is, uh, it does it doesn't really it does it. It's not a very you know this millennium word that feels very very comfortable.
Yeah.
It like reminds me of like the Egyptian task masters that with the pyramid builders, like you know, with people bringing rocks and like a caddy master.
But at the same time a caddy master's job.
They're essentially like a bitter for fifty one hundred people.
Yeah, and you can imagine the type of people you get you have to have you have to be able to handle.
People, you know.
I mean it probably takes all types to you know, or being able to handle all types to be in that position successfully.
Seeing like the caddyshack, that's a perfect example, Like there's nothing elitist about being in a caddy shack. No, it's actually like the complete oppiceite I go into. I went back to one of the caddyshacks I grew up in, and I went back there. I'm like, I can't believe that I spent so much time of my life in such a shitty place.
Yeah. Yeah, But the funny thing is is that it's it's.
It's it is one of those life experiences because I counted there. But I also when I was at BC, I cauddied at the country club. It's a different situation. But you know, you walk there, you sit on the bench, and you wait, you know.
We played spades a lot. What was the game? What was the passing time game?
God? There, it wasn't really one there.
I mean it was kind of like it was kind of like an open area where everyone sat you were kind of in view, so there wasn't too much going on. I mean, the best thing to do would be to bring the paper or book and just kind of sit there and wait. You know, but there wasn't It wasn't a way from from per you know, from anyone's view, so you know, getting getting a dice game where a card game going would have been difficult, you know.
Yeah, so you grew up at Wingfoot and uh, that's that was kind of your intradition introduction to golf.
Yeah.
Yeah, and from this perspective now, it was a great one because you've been there. It's really just all about the golf, you know, and kind of preserve what golf was about.
Back then. You couldn't wear shorts, so you.
Know, you put on a pair of khakis every single day, even if you were a caddie. And uh, and you kind of learned golf the right way, you know, and and the kids there were very taught very well to be you know, seen not heard, and you know, the best way to kind of get thrown off the property was not handling yourself right on the golf course, you know, and people are ready to you know, report you if you weren't, so you know, it was it was a great way to learn for me. It was a great
way to learn the game, you know. And there's a lot of people that are in the golf industry now who I grew up within that experience. I mean Mark Loomis who runs the Fox broadcast, he was in that same situation. Mary Lubazinski, who runs you know, merchandising for
the USGA. She she worked in the pro shop, you know, and her brothers were were also they they uh collected at the range and it was it was just it was a great way the way, the way people really learned a lot about about you know, golf, the right way.
You know. How how would you do you feel like there the culture.
Or the the vibe of wing Foots changed it all since.
You were a kid.
In in literal sense it has, you know, but in relative sense to you know, to the rest of the world, it's kind of exactly the same place.
Yeah, you know what I mean, Like it's so much.
Better, you know, Uh, it's so much better for women and kids. But in relative churchs, kids don't feel any more comfortable than I did, and my wife doesn't feel any more accepted there than than my mother did, even though back then there was a men's grill and like I was allowed in it, but my mom wasn't, you know, I mean it was it was it was very gender
you know specific. Now there's none of that, you know, but I think it's still because because of golf, of the amount of people that you know that want to that choose golf as their as their hobby, you know.
That it's more male specific.
Yeah, yeah, it's a I think it's definitely changing, But it's like everything with golf, I feel like it's always like ten years.
Behind, yeah trend.
I mean I I I even though my dad was a member, I I ended up joining Wingfoot as a regular member, not as a legacy or anything like that.
And it really was you got a tough break there. Well yeah, but.
I but I mean having to be someone who kind of apologizes for having grown up there a little bit, you know, it seems a little I don't know, or maybe that's just the way it feels inside to me. Why do you think that, Because it's a great experience for a kid, you know, it is, it's you know, you're it's you're pretty lucky.
You know.
You don't realize it at the time, but I realize it now, you know, that, you know, you play those two golf courses every day. It's pretty it's a pretty good start, you know. Yeah, ah, and it's it's you know. What happened was, you know, by the time I had money to be a member at club, you know, being in the design profession is in my thirties, you know. And what had happened is they had allowed they changed the rules so that that daughters of members could could
become members, which is the right thing to do. But all of a sudden you had twice as many candidates for legacy. So they moved the age restriction for legacies from thirty five to twenty seven to put that the amount of legacies that were available in proper proportion. And I aged out of it. So but like I said, I feel better about having kind of had to go through the process and and you know earn it.
Yeah for sure.
So you just you got into the design profession, yeah, right out of college. Yeah, and when do you know you wanted to be do design work with clothing?
We've got pictures from kindergarten of me drawing striped shirts with alligators on them. So I, uh, subconsciously, I think I always did, you know, if that's when I was doing it, you know, if that's what I drew in in kindergarten, think, I think I always wanted to do it.
You know. I can remember.
As early as any thought thinking about wanting to have a shirt company. Now, my family was in the shirt business, so restaurant and yeah, my dad got.
Into the restaurant business after the family.
Business had been sold and he was kind of free to do what he had always wanted to do. He went to Michigan State and was in their hotel restaurant management school. So in his mind, that's what he always wanted to do. But he was a football player. And when he was done playing football, well, immediately after he was done playing football, he became the JV coach at his high school. And guess who is fullback and linebacker was Butch Harmon.
Yeah, I know, he was a football player.
Yeah, yeah, he had gotten cut from the giants and so he was out looking for a job, you know, something to do, and he had gone to I own a prep and they needed a JV football coach, so he signed up and yeah, Butch Harmon was his full back in linebacker. So I had met Butch you know, fifteen years ago at the show, and he kind of looked at me straight in the eye and he goes,
are you Bill Draddy's son? And I, you know, with a little bit of fear, in trepidation, I said, yes, he goes, No one in my life was harder on me than your dad. And he goes, And I love him for it, he said. My dad always used to say, you need more guys like Bill Draddy in your life.
That's good. Yeah, so that's it. Yeah, that's unbelievable. He was football, you know, no golf background. It's interesting.
No, no, I mean he always loved it. He always loved it. And that was the same thing with his with with his uncles. Really they were you know, he had one uncle who was also an All American football player. At one point, they actually had a national trophy named after It was called the Dragty Trophy, and it was it was the academic heisman you want it.
It's now the Campbell Trophy. They've renamed the trophy.
Because he gave a lot of money and uh, but he was also a great he is a great man. But it was it's a combination of football skill and academics, you know, it's the winner always is from Harvard obviously, but the winner also is rarely, you know, an Ivy League football player. It's usually someone from one of the you know, top twenty Division one schools.
Yeah.
Yeah, excelled both ways. But what was the first thing that you designed for mass production?
This is football related.
So when I had just graduated from UH from Boston College, I moved out to Chicago and I was living in Lincoln Park and UH. I was actually when I when I graduated from college, I'd gotten offered to go work for the Gant Clothing Company, and my dad gave me what, in hindsight, was great advice. He said, you can always go into the clothing business, because he had been in it. He said, try something else for a couple of years, and then if you want to, you can always go
into it. It was actually, you know, great advice. So I was selling paper to paper paper converters in the Chicago Land area and UH for the first time in and in a decade, Boston College was going to play Notre Dame at South Bend, and so I had this idea for a T shirt, you know, and it was good at the time. Tom Coughlin the former coach of
the Giants was the coach of Boston College. Uh the they had they had players on the team with the names Brennan and McManus, and Coughlin was the coach, and there was one other name in there, and so on the T shirt, I put Coughlin, Brennan, McManus and whatever the fourth name was. And I said, the real fighting Irish.
And so we went to South Bend and literally the two hundred T shirts we had printed, the last five we were selling like in a bidding type format where people are going, i'll give you twenty five, I'll give you thirty exactly. It was like, I mean to this day that me and my two other college roommates talk about it because it was like it was an education because we were immediately upbidding the price and it was frenzied, like you know, a frenzied type environment.
So this is fun, first smashing success, the first T shirt, Yes, exactly. So you're selling paper in Chicago, yeah, and then you do this. Is that what kind of jumped you into saying I don't want to sell paper anymore.
Yeah.
I was counting the days literally till I had hit that mark. Two year mark that my dad had set for me, you know, and I had done some kind of scouting as to what I wanted to do when I was in college. I quit drinking halfway through college, literally, and so the second half of college when I had I'd wake up on a Saturday morning and everyone was sleeping,
and I just needed something to do. So I started working for Timberland down on Newberry Street in Boston, which is you know, it's like the Madison Avenue at Boston where all the shops are. And so while I was working for Timberland, I got to meet the designer who was designing the clothing for them. And back then they
just kind of launched clothing. It was kind of pre public enemy like and and all the leather jackets were me in Italy, and it was this really upscale kind of outdoor country uh line the outdoors, the line and uh and so I worked there for two years and and that's where I really got my education about performance.
I mean, I was on the sales floor selling gortex, you know, which now I designed clothing made and gore tex uh and and you know, kind of learning how you sell technical product because everything they did had a story to it that you know, those yellow boots that are their synonymous.
Boot, those were waterproof boots.
Those are boots that you could walk not through a puddle, but into a stream with and they weren't gonna you know, they were gonna stay waterproof and it was guaranteed for life, you know, And that was their whole thing. And so, uh, you know, like that that travel backgmmon board right there, you know, that was their signature leather that they used on all their leather goods. It's a leather called chrome Exel from a tannery in Chicago, uh, called Horween.
And so I just really started my career.
I always say I started my career at that point because I reference as much stuff that I learned while being a salesperson on a sales floor that I use in design now than really any other experience.
That's it's interesting because like.
Design is obviously a very creative focus and if you you know, most design people are almost anti salespeople, like the complete opposite, yes, and but doing the sale probably what is there something that from that experience specifically that like doing the sales work, whether it's paper or the Timberland experience, that you know, like helped you tremendously in your design career.
Well, I think, you know, being a salesperson is, and especially on a retail floor.
You know, I guess I would like it.
It probably to being an actor and being you know, being on a stage versus being in film. You know, being a salesperson on a sales floor, you're very much in the moment right there. The sale doesn't that the opportunity for sale doesn't go past your interaction with them right there. So you know that the triggers that that turns people away from a sale price.
Other details of a.
Clothing, you know, you not being able to explain to them accurately what the what the garment does, or what the or what the value of the garment.
Is, you know, because prices.
Prices is a barrier unless you can assign value to it, unless you can present it as a value. You know, a three hundred dollars jacket is a lot of money to spend on a jacket, but what it's guaranteed to keep you dry for life, it's not that much money. In fact, you could quickly argue that buying one hundred dollars jacket that doesn't keep you dry.
For life is a bad investment. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Well exactly, I mean certain things like I always when I was younger, I'm not the most responsible human being.
You know, I lose stuff all the time.
That is hard to believe, I know, coming from someone who also is not the most responsible on the planet.
Now that I've I've got my stuff together much more. It's like you, I don't lose stuff. I'm like amazed. Like And one of the things I started to set rules, like for myself, I'm not going to buy a nice pair of sunglasses. Yeah until I keep a pair of sunglasses for two plus years, have you ever bought one?
Well?
Yeah, yeah, Now I have nice sunglasses because I proved to myself I could do it.
Wow.
But then because I still haven't. I mean, I have bought them, but I still can't do it.
You know, I'll lose them for like two three week periods and then I'll find them and I'll be like, I knew I put them somewhere like that.
Yeah, but with.
That, like, yeah, nice stuff is nice to have because it lasts longer then you know, if you buy a for the most part, like a forty pair of pants, It's great because you're like, you're thirty dollars pair of pants. You're like, but then you washed it three times and you're like, well, this is why it's thirty dollars pants exactly.
I mean.
My favorite thing while I was doing that job was I had gotten a pair of Timberland boots, probably like you when I was in high school, you know, as soon as my foot stops growing, you know, at at I guess it was probably in tenth grade.
I got a pair of Timberland for the winter time.
And in that job, I would say I've had these boots for five years. Yeah, you know what I mean, and they still work because I would have the boots that I had bought as a consumer and then be able to say, listen, these things are still as good as as when we bought them. My mom bought them for me five years ago or yeah, probably about five or six years ago.
Yeah, that's especially some stuff. So we talked obviously on this podcast a ton about golf course design. Yeah, and I was interested to talk to you about because I think design is an overall umbrella. There's so many crossover similarities between different design design and different industries.
Yeah, and and types of design. Yeah, I don't I don't know a lot about design, but I know that I like links golf, even though I grew up on a park lank course. Like you say, what are your favorite golf courses, They're all links golf courses.
You know.
Yeah, that that draw it to the you know, the ocean and everything like that.
Well, I mean the way Tilling has designed golf courses had a heavy, heavy influence from links golf courses in the UK, you know, like that's kind of what they were. That early iteration of American design was all centered around I'm curious about you know, with the way you look at design, obviously there's there's principles that are like, you know, these are the things and it in the line of
great design and going too far is typically very thin. Yes, what in when you're designing stuff, like what's an example of of something that you designed that might have been just too far given a time, but then you know, five years later was just right.
We did, uh, we did this one jacket called the golf anerak, you know, and uh it kind of had everything, you know, Uh, it had a hood, it had uh that that you could attach it unattached from the garment, you could put put it in your stowaway pocket. It had an asymmetrical zipper because when you when you're kind of active out of the golf courses, it's easier to pull towards you than it is to.
Pull up and down, you know what I mean.
And you know it had another side zipper here because it was a pullover that made you made it easy to get it on and off. It had a draw cord at the waist to sensiin the heat when it was cold out. Had a draw cord at the bottom, you know, to to protect you from the back, you know, from the wind and rain on the lower part of your other the top part of your legs, the lower part of the jacket. Even telling you about it now, I feel like I'm talking too much.
You know.
It just had too much atractical features. Yes, yes, And it just had too much you know. And and you know, you put all of those things into one jackery. If you're gonna do an asometrical zipper, that should be the only story you're telling, you know.
I mean, it's it's it's it's.
That kind of far away from the norm that it needs everything else has to be kind of simple, you know, And and that's the sensibility that you have to kind of hone. But there's a real desire to kind of you know, build the DeLorean, you know, or what you think the DeLorean should be.
You know. It's something I see with like young architects.
Yeah, and golf is like you go and you look and it's like every single green at their golf course is trying to be the greatest green in the world. Yeah, And it's like, you know, sometimes the best green is like the most subtle, Like you see the green and you're like, oh, that's so simple yet so brilliant. Yes, they're you know, they're trying to show you how great everything is. It's instead of just allowing like restraint is sometimes the hardest, yes, aspect of design.
I feel like in golf, do you feel the same way completely.
And and sometimes finding a subtle way to get that that detail in without screaming it, you know what I mean? The funny the way you know, I would imagine for what you know, what Gil Hans does. It's it's not about always having that that huge sandtrap right, you know, just off to the front right of the of the green in order to make the approach more difficult. You know, there's other ways to do it. And that's the way
it is with design, you know. My now, my favorite designs are ones where there's a lot there's a lot of detail in it, but you look at it and it looks like a very simple coat of very simple jacket. And you know, when we do jackets that are that are called like the stealth or something like that. Those are the pieces that, in my mind, I'm kind of the proudest of because there's detail there, but it's it's
not screaming like I'm wearing one of those jacket. It's that you see in the airline brochure when you're you know, you're waiting to take off and you can store all this stuff in it and it keeps you warm, and you know, it's it's not one of the it's doesn't look like one of those jackets.
It's I feel like sometimes with writing, I feel this way too. It's like the things that I write that I like the most are generally the least popular things on my website. And I don't know why, but there's like and it's something maybe that it's like a less told story or like, you know, something that people don't give the benefit of the doubt. But like then when I write something that you know, you kind of know
what's going to be really popular. Yeah, then sometimes my favorite work is the stuff that might be a little and then when somebody sends me an email about like an article that you know your point, yeah, and you know that that always makes me feel But it's like the simple thing that maybe not everybody recognizes.
Well, I think that's exactly right.
That's part of the being a creative is that you know, and it may not be something that is relevant now, you know what I mean. Like your desire to not have have seventy two be the standard for what goes on every scorecard of every course in America, you know has legs to it. I know it does has legs to it, you know, and I think maybe in ten years it probably could be the most important story.
You know, But the same thing happens.
It's all about what is commercial at that moment, right, and so what because you're a creative person, because you're a forward thinker, you're thinking about not what's most commercial now you know what that is? You know, you're thinking about what's going to be commercial or is going to be important not commercial important in the future, you know, And in fashion it's the same way.
Now.
This is my twenty first year at the PGA Show, which it really feels weird saying that. You know, I said to the sales team here when I came here to the PGA Show twenty one years ago, if you tried to sell a self collared shirt like we have in b Dratty and a flat front short, you would have been laughed out of the out of the convention center because no one was selling self collared shirts and flat front shorts at that point. Flat fund anything.
Plates were big, plats were huge. Plats were huge.
So every season I would I would, you know, as time moved, I have a self collar shirt in and it's like your favorite story, you know, those were my favorite pieces and it was it's not relevant now, but it will be relevant because this is the way that the overall feeling is moving in the industry, you know, or the way the general populace will move. You know, it's going to take five years, but they're gonna move there. I can guarantee it.
Yeah.
So you worked for Polo, Yeah for a long time, Yeah, five years at POLO, and then I was at Hickey Rieman for ten years and Bobby Jones was.
The higgy Freeman had the license for the Bobby Jones clothes at that time.
So you talk about kind of those experiences and what led you to make the leap into your own own brand.
You know, each in my head, Polo was always going to be like my finishing school or my business school. You know, it's very hard to argue with the success that they've had, you know, and you just know, like any successful business, that there was a lot right going on, and you know, what was their secret sauce. And so when the opportunity came to go work there, I was
in design at the time. I actually had gotten hired to run their golf business, not in design, and so you can tell how I had had my you know, strategic things I wanted to check off before I and I and I jumped on the opportunity. You know, I always say I was born a salesman and I've learned design, and so hopping into a sales role for them, even though I quickly learned I wasn't a great manager, but hopping in a sales role for them was. It was a great learning experience.
You know, it's funny, I think some I struggle with managing. Yes, I had a sales background and I do a lot of creative stuff. Now, yeah, I don't think those two go well with managing. No kind of take you away from.
We're a separate category of management, you know, and you don't have to be a bad manager, but you have to recognize your your weaknesses. And that was one of the things that that I learned most, that they've held on to most there is they really train their managers well. We would do these management training things, and the focus of the management training was being able to identify your strengths and being be better at that and not and hire people that could do the things that you are
not good at. You know, a lot of people think that because they're getting into management all of a sudden, they have to be great at Excel spreadsheets, and then we don't need the creative guide to now be great at Excel. That's what we need, but we need for you to be a better version of yourself. And I think that's that's a lot of We were talking about
coaching last night. That's what coaches the best coaches, do they they they make a great they make a great possession receiver, better at being a possession receiver, you know. They don't want them to be their their their long route receiver, you know. And identifying the strengths and allowing the person to be better at what they're good at.
Yeah, that's that is a sign of a true good manager.
Let's say there's theories out there, like everybody's like, oh, I need to improve my weaknesses, but there are there are like a lot of resounding success stories of people just ignoring their weaknesses, hiring somebody or putting, you know, people in places of their weaknesses and saying I'm just going to get better at what I'm really good at because that way I could be the best in the world at that or exactly the best people in the world at that exactly.
And that's and I think the truer skill is being.
Able to identify your weaknesses, yeah, you know, being the self reflect and say you aren't not I'm just not really good at that, or or marrying a.
Good woman that can tell you everything that.
You're Oh my wife is great at taking my personal inventory. Great, she could tell you. I mean today we could call it right on the now she would have to think about it. What you know, what I need to you know, work on and you know what I'm bad at?
You know for sure.
So you you're in the golf business where I feel like a lot of times when somebody starts their own so you start to be dratty.
What was the moment or the whole that you.
Saw in golf and that what we talked about earlier where you know, flat front pant like you might not believe that now, but it's five Where what was was there a moment that you know, really said I need to do this?
Yeah? For sure?
I mean I I truthfully from the moment I had gotten in the golf business, there wasn't a shirt that I really liked to wear. I started at Bobby Jones in the golf business and they were famous with fair Way and Green for the double mercery shirt, you know, which was a cotton shirt. And what double mercerization is is it takes the cotton yarn and it singes the yarn, burns it with caustic soda, okay, and it burns all of the hairs off, all the extraneous hairs off of
the yarn. And produces a very silky type yarn, which then in turns a silky type garment.
Okay, like thinking of like the nineties golf shiny shiny cotton golf shirts, right, I.
Like thinking of David Duval for some reason, Like right, I've got this image in my head.
Right, And you know, I personally never felt comfortable in those golf shirts and so and I had grown up for a family that, you know, where a cotton golf shirt was what you wore. So I knew that it was possible to create a comfortable cotton garment that I
didn't feel. And the second thing about the double mercerzation is so with that when your sweat is or water is exposed to that that that yarn, it becomes super saturated immediately because all those extra hairs that burn off are what transfer the moisture across the shirt, so it can dry quickly. So if you get one of those shirts wet, it's like it sticks to your back. And you can think about all those nineties golfers. Their preshot
routine was get the shirt off my back. So they'd pull the shirt off the back because they're sticking it to them. And then they'd raise the shoulder seam above their shoulder, so that they.
All started a part of my pre shot routine because that's when you started playing golf. Yeah, and it was like that became a trigger.
It's so funny you say that, Yes, it was a functional trigger.
It was because of the shirt.
Yes, exactly, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. So I in my head said, even before the technical golf shirt, is there's a golf shirt out there that doesn't do that, that doesn't stick to you when you start sweating, and isn't kind of greasy, shiny, you know golf shirt. You know, it's it's it takes color well and is at least to my eye, it has a more pleasing look of color.
You know.
So then all of a sudden, the technical golf shirt came out, you know, and that to me also for me personally, didn't feel exactly right. And so that even perpetuated the idea that of doing a cotton golf shirt is really what I think is the next step. And I had done iterations of that at both of those successive jobs. So, you know, a couple of years into
being had a up the golf division of Polo. The designer left and so Ralph and Jerry Lauren asked me to because they knew I had a design background to design the Polo golf and at that point we launched a unmercerized kind of cotton golf shirt. And also prior to leaving Bobby Jones, I had launched an unmercerized cotton golf shirt. We called it Royal Egyptian cotton, which was unmurserized.
It was a strain of Egyptian cotton that was known for its softness, okay, and so it was called Giza eighty six, and so we did an unmursrized version of that shirt. You know, I still own these shirts today, and that was kind of the stepping off point for
what b Draddy became. And what really changed when we got to b Draty was adding some stretch to it, and that kind of linked what people were wearing today, you know, with the performance garments, where part of the story of the performance garment was that it moved with you when you played golf. It didn't fight your swing, you know, it moved with you. And that's what the
Dratty shirt did. It incorporated the comfort of cotton with the performance one of the performance features of today's technical golf shirts.
So you start, you start b dratty, yeah, and you're pushing a shirt that at the time was very different than the shirt that was popularized, which is the tech I mean tech fabric. Yes, is you know, it's still very popular, but it was at that point all the rage.
Yeah, it was all that was in golf shops, truly. You know.
I would go into shops and say, where are your cotton golf shirts? And I would get this look from assisting pros like you can't get there from here, you know, like I don't even know what you're asking me, you know, because they didn't identify the shirts by what fabric they were got to them. It was a younger, younger assistant golf shirts were always made of a performance fabric, you know.
So talk about like the early years.
Yeah, and I imagine at some points there was like some doubt that came in about like am I crazy?
Yeah? Am I am? I?
You know, because you're you're you're walking in and like any sort of innovation, like generally a company that comes is doing something differently disrupting. Yeah, So like talk a little bit about those early days and like some of the meetings, you know, naming names, but yeah, like some of the things people said to you when you're presenting this this extraordinarily different idea.
Yeah, well, you know, thankfully we work in a very respectful industry, you know, and you know, people sit there and listen to you and not and you know, and and the truth comes when you get the order. It was it to me, it was you always whenever you're in a sales process, you always kind of invite, you're kind of like you're kind of eating people into a discussion, you know, about why this is relevant today, you know.
And I always hope that people would push back a little bit, like you know, you know how hot it is, you know, in in Little Rock, Arkansas in August. You know, and you want to say yes, I do, I do know.
Yes you want them to say that, you know. And what I would always say is, listen, if you had a fruit stand, right, and you show up at the fruit stand and all you sell is oranges, right, wouldn't be a great business plan, right when you had the opportunity to also sell apples, right, You're not going to sell as many apples as oranges. But will you sell
apples include it and oranges? For sure you will. Will the fact that you carry apples cut down the amount of oranges you sell, not at all, right, and taking ourselves out of our own little world and making it very much of a sesame Street type presentation, you know, where you take it down to the core of being in business. And just because you don't sell as much cotton golf shirts as technical golf shirts, doesn't mean you shouldn't carry a cotton golf shirt, you know, because it
creates incremental sales, you know. And that really was a discussion. It wasn't about fighting tech. It was about it was about adding on to their presentation and giving them the opportunity to create a different business within their shop, you know.
Well, And it's an important like lesson, like don't do what everybody else is doing, because it's going to be a lot harder to be a small company in that space.
For sure, for sure.
And that has been my I always said, I don't want to fight it out with the other seven resources you have, you know, some of those are the biggest names in apparel and footwear on the planet. I have no chance, you know, you have to be a niche player.
And that has always kind of been my design perspective for golf is let's bring something that's not in the market that creates incremental value, you know, and uh and and that those have always been the true success is because you don't want to be in the commodity business.
You want to be in the iPhone business, you know, the special new feature business, you know, and and in the innovation business you know, because then you you know, that's the best way to separate truly, you know, from the competition.
I think I think about that a lot is where when you push things in certain directions and and then so cotton has come back, yes, now, yes, you know, five years later Cotten, a lot of you know, a lot of the big players are.
Back in Cotton, back in cotton. Yeah. And now it's a bold strategy, Cotton. It's a crowded island that you live on now.
So so talk about you know, continue to innovate and push in different directions.
What's like an example of that, Well, you know.
As we as we move forward, you know, into giving that our customer the opportunity to buy different products, you know, they have to have that same kind of specialness to them. And one of the great things about being probably one of the designers here who's been in the industry here for twenty one years, is that with the influx attech, there has been a complete eradication of all things natural that people in the golf world always just had, you know.
And you know, so the things that we've added to you and me maybe just to me, are you know, are not completely unique, but there are things that have been here before that we're just reintroducing to the customer. So like Scottish cashmir, you know, I mean, there's a reason why Scottish cashmir is the best cashmere on the planet. It's because they don't fall into the trap of overwashing it. So you know, the problem with Kashmir is that it has a very easy propensity to pill the little balls
that end up in the friction points. And so what happened when Kashmir got commercialized, meaning you could buy it at costco, is that people would wash it so that it was as soft as it could ever possibly be on the sales floor. So when you felt it, you immediately knew as kashmere, and you saw that it was only two hundred dollars and you bought it.
You know.
The truth is is that kashmir is like a paradenim jeans, that it gets better the older it is and the more that you live in it and the more that you launder it yourself.
Okay.
So it used to be that you'd get a cashmere sweater and it felt slightly better than a wolf sweater. But as you had it, over time, it got softer and nicer and it became a best friend because of how it had evolved as a garment, you know, like a pair of jeans. Yeah, and but we had gotten away from that, so that was one of the you know things that we you know, the first sweater we did was a Scottish cashier sweater. This season we're launching
uh an alpaca sweater. So all those great pictures of Arnold Palmer in the sixties wearing cardigans, he was wearing an alpaca cardigan, Okay, And there was a reason for it is because alpaca is truly God's first performance fiber. So the the alpaca lama. Okay, we'll have al pacas as pats.
Now. You do know people oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure, they look I want an alpaca they're beautiful.
They're beautiful, they're they they're they're slightly less you know, salty than a donkey, you know, somewhere between a donkey and a pony in terms of their disposition. Uh yeah, I mean it's not that they won't bite you, but they're just.
Not gonna they're not gonna kill you.
You know those on Instagram I really recommended looking up alpaca.
They look like just wonderful pats. Yes, yeah, they're beautiful. They're beautiful. So because in Peru, because of the natural migration of the of the apaca or as they say, alpaca. Uh, you know, Peru is a very narrow country, and all in one country, you have the ocean, you have the desert, and you have the mountains, and so you have three microclimates that the upaca passes through. So it's it's its hair is very temperature regulating.
That makes a lot of sense.
It's it's truly it's not called natural selection, Okay. It evolves as time goes by based on this environment. And so the yarn itself is temperature regulating. You come in from outside, it's thermal. Wild's outside. You come inside, you remain comfortable Okay, I've got alpaca socks on. I wear them every single day now because I go in my life, I go from a warm house to a hockey rink, so like literally, you know, from from seventy five degrees
to you know, anting on an ice cube. Yeah, and it completely temperature regulates and it is the most thermal in my mind of all the yarns.
Well that the wolf sock is so because people you say, oh, you know, these socks are wool, and they're like if they're runners, They're like, no, no wolf socks.
But yes, they're actually the best socks. Yeah, you sweat less. Yeah.
The key, well, the key to all comfort as a performance story is staying dry. Water is a conductor of temperature. Anyone who's ever jumped at a pool in September knows exactly what I'm talking about. You get out of the pool, the cool breeze hits you, and you're instantly colder, you know, And that's exactly what moisture does up against your skin.
In both ways.
If you've got moisture gets your skin, it's hot, you feel hotter, humid, overheating, you know, and the same thing with being cold. So the idea is to keep your your your whatever, your skin dry and then you and then you add insulation to it. Well that's what Alpaka does. So we're launching an i'll Paca sweater this season and golfers have always worn outpaka up until this, you know,
the dawn of tech. And because it does temperature regulate as you're out on the golf course, you start in the morning, it's a little bit cooler, it keeps you warm. Then as you get through the day, it continues to breathe and it regulates so you don't feel like you have to peel it off as soon as you get to the seventh hole and the sun gets above the trees. So that's another thing that this season we're bringing back.
You know, we showed it to Paul McGinley yesterday and you know, all the guys who are forty plus who have played golf remember the beginning of their golf career where you know, everyone wore these outpacka cardigans, you know, And so he tried it on and oh, Bill, I think you've got something here, you know, as only as he can say in his Irish accent. But it is fun to kind of bring you know, the natural side of performance, you know, back into golf.
It's just interesting how the trend, how it swings, you know, thirty years back. But there's there's so much that you can take from the previous trend and learn from right.
Oh completely completely.
Where you can almost take cherry pick your best the best features of something that happened ten years ago and and injected them into something.
Well that's that's exactly right.
And that's why I keep referencing that, you know, when I when I uh my time working on the sales floor at Timberland, you know, learning about gortex, you know, is exactly the reason why we made the you know, the the jackets that Tiger and the rest of the President's Team cup war at the at the President's Cup last month.
It's because I have lived.
With this fabric for close to thirty years now and what it does and it's features of benefits. And even though I wasn't a hiker, biker, rafter or climber, you know, I understand gortex because I talked to guys that walked up mountains and and did this led dog race, the Iditarod, you know, you know, and understand what the benefits of gortex and that type product is and now can then apply it to design for golfers.
That's its spark almost like I look outside a lot of times for ideas outside of golf, Like you know, I'm not going to pay attention to what another golf media site's doing, Like let me look at what you know tech website's doing, like that's right, it's about tech, and say, oh that I could use that idea for golf.
Exactly yeah I I People ask me, have you seen this or have you said? I said, I tried not to look, especially within our industry, at what other people are doing, because the last thing I want to do is spend a lot of time on something and someone else has got exactly the same thing, you know, and you build it up at the sales meeting and they're like, oh yeah, they also have that.
You know they also.
Have you ever had something where like you totally screwed up, but the but the mistake yielded something better than you ever intended on.
This is like your question last night about the worst golf course, worst golf shot you ever had.
I try and forget about those things, but where it actually like the mistake was good.
For sure, for sure, it happens all the time. Happens all the time because from sketch to you know, from sketch to final, I'm not the one sewing the garment or I'm not the one that made that trim not available, or you know, sometimes you sketch something in a prototype and it comes in a different way, but you're like, I love this it actually this is actually better. It
actually happens every single season. You know, I can't think of one where it actually ended up being like incredible, but but it's part of every design season for sure, where it comes in a certain way it wasn't what you intended, but you actually like it better. So I mean it was truly a mistake, a mistake by the factory, or a mistake in the way I tried to communicate what I wanted through a s you know.
That's how you hear all the architects talk about like, oh, we sketch out the idea, but what the end product is very rarely looks is exactly what the sketches because stuff happens out in the field.
Right, And that's that's truly what design is is problem solving. It's it's about getting a task and not giving up on it and making the.
Problem of that of your design.
Okay, the person that can take that problem and circle it around their head a million times to come up with the right solution or a solution, or an innovative solution, those are the best designers. It's not the person who can design the most innovative thing on a piece of paper.
It's it's too creation that makes the great designer. Yeah, you know, and being able to I mean everyone who's in my life will will stand up and yell about how annoying I am when I get on a problem, because all time ceases to exist because I'm working it over my head so much. You know that I could forget that I got to pick up my kid at the hockey rink because I'm working over how do we make this thing into a role, you know or whatever?
You know? How do we how do we make that hood roll up properly? You know?
And I it circulates in my head consistently until what I feel like I have a solution and.
Talk about problem solving, like what how do you go about that?
Like?
Ignore everything else in my life to a fault and work on it until it's until it's work on it, on the solution until it's until you have something. It's it's it's a for me, it's a very physical experience, you know, it's a very it's it's it's the ability to tune out the rest of the world, which is
again it is my greatest asset. Is is also my greatest fault, you know, where uh, you know, I can become the most ignoying person on the planet because I'll stay up till two o'clock in the morning working on something. Once like, once I you've got a beat on it, you know, like I said, all of life ceases to exist.
Yeah, I get in the My wife says, I'm like I turn into like a manic person. Yeah, where like she can't even be in the same space as me. Yeah, I'll be up at two and then I'll be up at six, like jump out of beat it. Right.
That's why having a house is great, because you can go into a basement and you can gotta be your your ogre self and and and work through this kind of stuff. But it's but it's also the most gratifying you know, when you kind of when you're able to kind of need through the dough of the problem and smooth it out, and and what comes out, you know, in your mind and and perhaps of other people, is actually truly better.
Is it's it's it's really quite satisfying.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, I mean those are generally the things that the things you have to work at the most are generally the things that turn out best.
Yeah, exactly. And it if you you know, I don't read a lot of books because of my little attention. You know, I have the same problem. Yeah, but some of the books.
One of the books that always struck me most was with the Keith Keith Richards book when he talks about writing music. You know, it's like it's it is not a time based process. You know, it's not like it just comes to you and you do it. You know, it is there's a there's a process that leads there's a creative process that leads up to it.
And I think you find that, you know what I what I found is other.
Creative pursuits are as as important about being a creative professional as that true discipline. So for me, illustrating or creating you know, backgammon sets or whatever are as important as creating golf shirts because it hones that that problem solving, you know, and that idea creation process, you know, so that so that you can get quicker into the moment where you have to perform your job, you know, and
and churn out five new jackets in a season. You know, you can get into that creative You don't leave that creative mode actually, is what it comes down to. You know, you don't design a season, take four months off from designing, and then start again. You're doing other things that hone that creative process.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm like the king of the half written article. If you looked at my computer right now, you see like thirty different single pages of half written articles. But then like one day I think about something and that half written article then writes the rest of itself exact because I sit down and it's like oh and it just but like you can't force you can't say I'm going to write this is just the way I feel.
I can't just sit down and write something. The hardest thing for me to write are things when somebody says, can you write this for me? Yes, and it's like, well that's but like that those are that's a different creative that could just say it, like you said, design five new jackets, Like yeah, yeah, it's kind of a very difficult task.
Yeah, but when you're every day you wake up and you do something that starts that the problem solving mechanism in your.
Brain, it becomes a lot easier. You know, you're in that, you're in that headspace.
You're not you're not trying to figure out how you're gonna You're you're checking account is going to last. It's a bad example, but you're not doing something that's not similar to what you do in your job.
You're doing something that's similar. It's not exactly it, it's adjacent. It's adjacent.
And and maybe something that you do in that helps move forward your idea that you having that article, it's sitting in your what do you.
Do if you're say, you're at dinner with your wife and something like you just solve something in your head because I assume.
That, Yeah, she has it. It's called billy world.
And and you know, I think I'm I'm in it way too much for her comfort level. And I'm not blaming her.
It is me. I know, my my whole family can speak to it. From the moment I was I was born he's in.
They would call it a call the same thing Billy world, you know, and probably all these pictures are some you know.
Version of where billy World is.
But it's like, uh, it's just like I said, all world ceases to exist.
And I think it's frustrating to be around me.
You know.
I think it's.
Funny and funny, entertaining, I think, I am. I think it's really frustrating to be around me.
So I don't I don't want to keep you from uh from you got you got slang.
The CEO just.
Showed up like he's gotta start, he's got to start hurting his job.
Enough fun, enough fun here in the den. So thanks for coming.
And I think people enjoy this inside look into kind of the creative process. Okay, so thanks, it's been been fun talking to you.