Today we’d like to introduce you to Ross Payne and Nick Nielson.
Hi Ross and Nick, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Nick and I started the company because we felt there was a gap in the lifestyle headwear (and apparel) sector of golf. Gone are the days where slacks, collars and sweaters are the appropriate attire for golf. The game is transitioning much more into casual lifestyle trends like blade collars, joggers, trucker style hats, rope hats, etc. Golf clothes have changed over the years, but hats really haven’t. People wear what they wear golfing to the office… or to their home office nowadays (whether that is headwear or apparel).
We want Stripe Golf Co. to be the sweet spot between lifestyle and full-on golf gear… wear your hat on the course and then after the round, flip it around backward and go out to the bar or out on the lake. As we start to release apparel, our central focus will be trying to appeal to the growing crowd of golfers who don’t want to feel like they’re wearing their dad’s outfit and a Tour Issue Taylormade or Callaway “Big Bertha” hat. We are still very much in the infant stages as a company, but we envision the trajectory of our brand image to be somewhere between the more well-known brands of Travis Mathew and Peter Millar. We’ve taken inspiration from a number of smaller golf apparel companies in the midwest and on the coasts. Golf is a not only a game; it is a lifestyle. And we know that to be true.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Smoother than we expected, yes. There have been some obvious challenges with scaling our inventory, supply chain and manufacturing snafus due to the pandemic and global supply chain issues that we could not have predicted. We’ve jumped around from supplier to supplier, embroiderer to embroiderer, bought ten hats here and 100 there. As we grow our product base from just hats, we’re also encountering the big bad world of getting things cheaper and cheaper (scale, buying overseas, etc.) that we did not know existed before. We are trying to crawl before we walk and walk before we run… All that said, the pandemic has proved to be a fantastic thing for golf and we are trying to capitalize on that fact.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Although we would like for Stripe Golf Co. to be our full-time jobs, Nick Nielson and I (Ross Payne) have still kept our day jobs in Kansas City. Nick works in insurance and I work in residential real estate. We both have a healthy amount of flexibility and freedom within our day jobs, which allows us some extra time to devote to Stripe Golf Co.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
One of my favorite sayings is, the harder you work the luckier you get. That is not to say that we luckily stumbled into Stripe Golf Co., but there have been situations since we started in August 2020 where the ball bounced in our favor. We have been pleasantly surprised at the response locally and nationally to our products and have had plenty of opportunities to get our hats in the hands of influential people within golf or in front of them. The harder we work to put out gear that people like and want to add to their repertoire, the luckier we’ll get… or the more opportunities we will get.
Pricing:
- Hats $25-30 depending on style
- Beanies – $15
- T-shirts – $20
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.stripegolfco.com
- Instagram: @stripegolfco
Image Credits
Ross Payne, Nick Nielson, and KendallShortPhoto
