Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode, I am joined by Billy Draddy.
Speaker 2: Billy has been.
Speaker 1: A big name in the golf fashion industry for a
Speaker 1: long time. So we recorded an interview at the PGA
Speaker 1: show in the Draddy den. Obviously, Uh, you know, Summit
Speaker 1: Golf Brands, great brand, and they've been big supporters of
Speaker 1: what we do at the Friday Egg. And it was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to uh get to turn the
Speaker 1: mic and ask Billy some questions about you know, how
Speaker 1: he got started in uh in the in the golf world.
Speaker 2: So, without further ado, here's Billy Draddy.
Speaker 1: I miss the green for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in.
Speaker 3: A Frida Egg, Friday Egg, the dreaded Friday Egg, fridagg
Speaker 3: Frida Egg Bride Egg, Lie.
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run.
Speaker 2: Off the golf.
Speaker 1: It was from his recent book, Conversations Talking to Strangers.
Speaker 1: I have that book. Yeah, I'm ten pages. Then yeah,
Speaker 1: get the audio book. It goes quicker.
Speaker 3: I downloaded on the trip from Miami to Orlando, and
Speaker 3: so I you know, I really got deep into it.
Speaker 2: It's it's actually really good.
Speaker 3: I think all his books are good, but like this one,
Speaker 3: I maybe because of getting through it so quick, it's
Speaker 3: like it's it's staying with me.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I love Malcolm Gladwell's books. You can think
Speaker 1: about stuff differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of my favorites was if you everyone talks about
Speaker 3: having a handgun in their house, if you have a
Speaker 3: pool at your house, it's more dangerous than having a handgun.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, Yeah, but you would never think that.
Speaker 3: A parent would never think that when making the decision
Speaker 3: to have a handgun or a pool in their house,
Speaker 3: which was going to be more dangerous.
Speaker 2: Especially for kids. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Malcolm Gladwells he's great with everything. He hates golf.
Speaker 3: Though he hates golf, I don't think he hates what
Speaker 3: he has said about like La County, you know, and
Speaker 3: some of the great golf courses, and I mean LACC
Speaker 3: is like the biggest example of like urban waste to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing about it though, in so many areas I
Speaker 1: think about it is like if you look at a
Speaker 1: picture of a like a nineteen thirty area of any
Speaker 1: of any like great club there's nothing around.
Speaker 2: The golf courting, nothing.
Speaker 1: Like they built these places like out Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: everybody decided they want to live there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And and half the time when you're going to the
Speaker 3: greatest golf courses in America, you drive through a terrible neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So it's it's he didn't present the other side. I
Speaker 1: was a little disappointed he did not. He was very
Speaker 1: guided in his in his in his case against golf.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the thing though, with anything in life,
Speaker 1: you can you can always present, Like I think about
Speaker 1: like statistics all the time. Yeah, if you want a
Speaker 1: statistic to say something, you can figure out a way
Speaker 1: for it to say something and flip it the other
Speaker 1: way and do something.
Speaker 3: I do that all the time in sales presentations. This
Speaker 3: is our best seller versus last year, or you know
Speaker 3: in that category, or it's up to from last week. Yeah,
Speaker 3: on a zero base. Well that's what McGinley McGinley. McGinley
Speaker 3: kind of spoke out events about Malcolm's argument, you know,
Speaker 3: is that we shouldn't be apologizing about about golf being
Speaker 3: a aspirational.
Speaker 2: Elitist sport.
Speaker 3: You know the fact that CEOs play it is is
Speaker 3: a testament to the game that it actually does. It
Speaker 3: promotes relationships, you know, it promotes communication, and that it's
Speaker 3: it's it is sort of a you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: a reward for being successful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it doesn't have to be elitist, like if
Speaker 1: you go if you go to Rancho Park in La County,
Speaker 1: like the La County golf course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing elitist about the game there.
Speaker 1: No, it's just you know, it's the lens that people
Speaker 1: like to look at it through. And there's plenty of examples,
Speaker 1: like the way I grew up playing golf, riding my
Speaker 1: bike to the local MUNI was there was nothing elitist
Speaker 1: about me putting my back, my bag on my back
Speaker 1: and riding a bike to golf course not at all,
Speaker 1: and spending all day chipping and putting around this chip
Speaker 1: chipping green, you know.
Speaker 3: Or someone coming to the game, you know, through caddying,
Speaker 3: through their summer job, yeah, you know, and falling in
Speaker 3: love with the game and wanting to make it a
Speaker 3: priority in their life.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing I was going to say too.
Speaker 1: I almost said it last night when we had that discussion,
Speaker 1: was like caddying, like as a kid, you learn how
Speaker 1: to talk to all these people. Yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: nothing better, no better job for a young kid than caddying.
Speaker 2: No, And I mean I.
Speaker 3: Always say that everyone in life should either caddie, waiter
Speaker 3: or bartend. Everyone has to learn how to kiss ass
Speaker 3: to make a dollar.
Speaker 2: That's true. You know which one did you do as
Speaker 2: a kid? All three?
Speaker 3: I mean, except I didn't really waiter a lot. My
Speaker 3: dad had three restaurants, so actually I would do both.
Speaker 3: I mean I would literally I would caddy in the morning,
Speaker 3: go play a baseball game, you know, four o'clock in
Speaker 3: the afternoon, and then I would bartend at night.
Speaker 2: What kind of restaurants? He had three.
Speaker 3: Restaurants, all strategically located around Wingfoot and so one was
Speaker 3: a seafood restaurant where you got lobster and steamers. One
Speaker 3: was a tavern that that didn't serve dinner, only served lunch.
Speaker 3: But they had these incredible hot sandwiches. Like their signature
Speaker 3: sandwichich was the Balboa, which was rare roast beef on
Speaker 3: garlic bread with Swiss cheese.
Speaker 2: I want one right.
Speaker 3: For breakfast with an hagg It actually would be incredible.
Speaker 3: And the last one was kind of just like a
Speaker 3: more creative, innovative American restaurant. You know, where they served steaks,
Speaker 3: but you know there were specials every night and stuff
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: That's uh so where did you caddy? Did you carry? Have?
Speaker 2: At Wingfoot?
Speaker 3: That's probably one of their greatest policies is that they
Speaker 3: allow members kids to caddy and so because they want
Speaker 3: to promote junior golf. You know, they really kind of promote,
Speaker 3: you know, making a loop and then in the afternoon
Speaker 3: you get to go out and play and there's real
Speaker 3: While obviously there's a certain amount of uh it's not
Speaker 3: like walking into any caddyyard, you know, but it's also
Speaker 3: the caddy master at the time, it was still a
Speaker 3: very earn your way system.
Speaker 2: You know. There was no favoritism, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: There's almost reverse favoritism with great caddy masters.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he was very happy to tell you.
Speaker 3: You know that Ada Billy, you get down the hill
Speaker 3: and get here at seven thirty in the morning if
Speaker 3: you want to get out, you know, and you kind
Speaker 3: of to duck your head and you know, and he
Speaker 3: we literally talk like that, Adad Billy, go get J. T.
Speaker 3: Shields and Jim Gallagha and get down to one West quick.
Speaker 3: I don't want to hear anything about being a bad loop.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you there's stuff about caddy masters that have
Speaker 1: like this like authority. Yeah, like I mean I see
Speaker 1: a caddy master, I'm still scared of ut Yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to cross that.
Speaker 3: Plus what other job in today's world do you get?
Speaker 3: The term master?
Speaker 2: I mean it is very it's very sensitive.
Speaker 3: Like if you thought if you took the word master
Speaker 3: outside of it, you know, it's like, that doesn't sound right,
Speaker 3: you know for a position that is that is really
Speaker 3: being someone's slave for a day, you know, I mean
Speaker 3: it's it's it's pretty not a slave is an awful
Speaker 3: word also, but yeah, it's it's it is, uh, it
Speaker 3: does it doesn't really it does it. It's not a
Speaker 3: very you know this millennium word that feels very very comfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It like reminds me of like the Egyptian task masters
Speaker 1: that with the pyramid builders, like you know, with people
Speaker 1: bringing rocks and like a caddy master.
Speaker 2: But at the same time a caddy master's job.
Speaker 1: They're essentially like a bitter for fifty one hundred people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can imagine the type of people you
Speaker 3: get you have to have you have to be able
Speaker 3: to handle.
Speaker 2: People, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it probably takes all types to you know,
Speaker 3: or being able to handle all types to be in
Speaker 3: that position successfully.
Speaker 1: Seeing like the caddyshack, that's a perfect example, Like there's
Speaker 1: nothing elitist about being in a caddy shack. No, it's
Speaker 1: actually like the complete oppiceite I go into. I went
Speaker 1: back to one of the caddyshacks I grew up in,
Speaker 1: and I went back there. I'm like, I can't believe
Speaker 1: that I spent so much time of my life in
Speaker 1: such a shitty place.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But the funny thing is is that it's it's.
Speaker 3: It's it is one of those life experiences because I
Speaker 3: counted there. But I also when I was at BC,
Speaker 3: I cauddied at the country club. It's a different situation.
Speaker 3: But you know, you walk there, you sit on the bench,
Speaker 3: and you wait, you know.
Speaker 1: We played spades a lot. What was the game? What
Speaker 1: was the passing time game?
Speaker 2: God? There, it wasn't really one there.
Speaker 3: I mean it was kind of like it was kind
Speaker 3: of like an open area where everyone sat you were
Speaker 3: kind of in view, so there wasn't too much going on.
Speaker 3: I mean, the best thing to do would be to
Speaker 3: bring the paper or book and just kind of sit
Speaker 3: there and wait. You know, but there wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 3: a way from from per you know, from anyone's view,
Speaker 3: so you know, getting getting a dice game where a
Speaker 3: card game going would have been difficult, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you grew up at Wingfoot and uh, that's
Speaker 1: that was kind of your intradition introduction to golf.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and from this perspective now, it was a great
Speaker 3: one because you've been there. It's really just all about
Speaker 3: the golf, you know, and kind of preserve what golf
Speaker 3: was about.
Speaker 2: Back then. You couldn't wear shorts, so you.
Speaker 3: Know, you put on a pair of khakis every single day,
Speaker 3: even if you were a caddie. And uh, and you
Speaker 3: kind of learned golf the right way, you know, and
Speaker 3: and the kids there were very taught very well to
Speaker 3: be you know, seen not heard, and you know, the
Speaker 3: best way to kind of get thrown off the property
Speaker 3: was not handling yourself right on the golf course, you know,
Speaker 3: and people are ready to you know, report you if
Speaker 3: you weren't, so you know, it was it was a
Speaker 3: great way to learn for me. It was a great
Speaker 3: way to learn the game, you know. And there's a
Speaker 3: lot of people that are in the golf industry now
Speaker 3: who I grew up within that experience. I mean Mark
Speaker 3: Loomis who runs the Fox broadcast, he was in that
Speaker 3: same situation. Mary Lubazinski, who runs you know, merchandising for
Speaker 3: the USGA. She she worked in the pro shop, you know,
Speaker 3: and her brothers were were also they they uh collected
Speaker 3: at the range and it was it was just it
Speaker 3: was a great way the way, the way people really
Speaker 3: learned a lot about about you know, golf, the right way.
Speaker 2: You know. How how would you do you feel like
Speaker 2: there the culture.
Speaker 1: Or the the vibe of wing Foots changed it all since.
Speaker 2: You were a kid.
Speaker 3: In in literal sense it has, you know, but in
Speaker 3: relative sense to you know, to the rest of the world,
Speaker 3: it's kind of exactly the same place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I mean, Like it's so much.
Speaker 3: Better, you know, Uh, it's so much better for women
Speaker 3: and kids. But in relative churchs, kids don't feel any
Speaker 3: more comfortable than I did, and my wife doesn't feel
Speaker 3: any more accepted there than than my mother did, even
Speaker 3: though back then there was a men's grill and like
Speaker 3: I was allowed in it, but my mom wasn't, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean it was it was it was very gender
Speaker 3: you know specific. Now there's none of that, you know,
Speaker 3: but I think it's still because because of golf, of
Speaker 3: the amount of people that you know that want to
Speaker 3: that choose golf as their as their hobby, you know.
Speaker 2: That it's more male specific.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a I think it's definitely changing, But
Speaker 1: it's like everything with golf, I feel like it's always
Speaker 1: like ten years.
Speaker 2: Behind, yeah trend.
Speaker 3: I mean I I I even though my dad was
Speaker 3: a member, I I ended up joining Wingfoot as a
Speaker 3: regular member, not as a legacy or anything like that.
Speaker 2: And it really was you got a tough break there.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but.
Speaker 3: I but I mean having to be someone who kind
Speaker 3: of apologizes for having grown up there a little bit,
Speaker 3: you know, it seems a little I don't know, or
Speaker 3: maybe that's just the way it feels inside to me.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that, Because it's a great experience
Speaker 3: for a kid, you know, it is, it's you know,
Speaker 3: you're it's you're pretty lucky.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: You don't realize it at the time, but I realize
Speaker 3: it now, you know, that, you know, you play those
Speaker 3: two golf courses every day. It's pretty it's a pretty
Speaker 3: good start, you know. Yeah, ah, and it's it's you know.
Speaker 3: What happened was, you know, by the time I had
Speaker 3: money to be a member at club, you know, being
Speaker 3: in the design profession is in my thirties, you know.
Speaker 3: And what had happened is they had allowed they changed
Speaker 3: the rules so that that daughters of members could could
Speaker 3: become members, which is the right thing to do. But
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you had twice as many candidates
Speaker 3: for legacy. So they moved the age restriction for legacies
Speaker 3: from thirty five to twenty seven to put that the
Speaker 3: amount of legacies that were available in proper proportion. And
Speaker 3: I aged out of it. So but like I said,
Speaker 3: I feel better about having kind of had to go
Speaker 3: through the process and and you know earn it.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So you just you got into the design profession, yeah,
Speaker 1: right out of college. Yeah, and when do you know
Speaker 1: you wanted to be do design work with clothing?
Speaker 3: We've got pictures from kindergarten of me drawing striped shirts
Speaker 3: with alligators on them. So I, uh, subconsciously, I think
Speaker 3: I always did, you know, if that's when I was
Speaker 3: doing it, you know, if that's what I drew in
Speaker 3: in kindergarten, think, I think I always wanted to do it.
Speaker 2: You know. I can remember.
Speaker 3: As early as any thought thinking about wanting to have
Speaker 3: a shirt company. Now, my family was in the shirt business,
Speaker 3: so restaurant and yeah, my dad got.
Speaker 2: Into the restaurant business after the family.
Speaker 3: Business had been sold and he was kind of free
Speaker 3: to do what he had always wanted to do. He
Speaker 3: went to Michigan State and was in their hotel restaurant
Speaker 3: management school. So in his mind, that's what he always
Speaker 3: wanted to do. But he was a football player. And
Speaker 3: when he was done playing football, well, immediately after he
Speaker 3: was done playing football, he became the JV coach at
Speaker 3: his high school. And guess who is fullback and linebacker
Speaker 3: was Butch Harmon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, he was a football player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he had gotten cut from the giants and
Speaker 3: so he was out looking for a job, you know,
Speaker 3: something to do, and he had gone to I own
Speaker 3: a prep and they needed a JV football coach, so
Speaker 3: he signed up and yeah, Butch Harmon was his full
Speaker 3: back in linebacker. So I had met Butch you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen years ago at the show, and he kind of
Speaker 3: looked at me straight in the eye and he goes,
Speaker 3: are you Bill Draddy's son? And I, you know, with
Speaker 3: a little bit of fear, in trepidation, I said, yes,
Speaker 3: he goes, No one in my life was harder on
Speaker 3: me than your dad. And he goes, And I love
Speaker 3: him for it, he said. My dad always used to say,
Speaker 3: you need more guys like Bill Draddy in your life.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, so that's it. Yeah, that's unbelievable. He
Speaker 1: was football, you know, no golf background. It's interesting.
Speaker 3: No, no, I mean he always loved it. He always
Speaker 3: loved it. And that was the same thing with his
Speaker 3: with with his uncles. Really they were you know, he
Speaker 3: had one uncle who was also an All American football player.
Speaker 3: At one point, they actually had a national trophy named
Speaker 3: after It was called the Dragty Trophy, and it was
Speaker 3: it was the academic heisman you want it.
Speaker 2: It's now the Campbell Trophy. They've renamed the trophy.
Speaker 3: Because he gave a lot of money and uh, but
Speaker 3: he was also a great he is a great man.
Speaker 3: But it was it's a combination of football skill and academics,
Speaker 3: you know, it's the winner always is from Harvard obviously,
Speaker 3: but the winner also is rarely, you know, an Ivy
Speaker 3: League football player. It's usually someone from one of the
Speaker 3: you know, top twenty Division one schools.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excelled both ways. But what was the first thing
Speaker 1: that you designed for mass production?
Speaker 2: This is football related.
Speaker 3: So when I had just graduated from UH from Boston College,
Speaker 3: I moved out to Chicago and I was living in
Speaker 3: Lincoln Park and UH. I was actually when I when
Speaker 3: I graduated from college, I'd gotten offered to go work
Speaker 3: for the Gant Clothing Company, and my dad gave me what,
Speaker 3: in hindsight, was great advice. He said, you can always
Speaker 3: go into the clothing business, because he had been in it.
Speaker 3: He said, try something else for a couple of years,
Speaker 3: and then if you want to, you can always go
Speaker 3: into it. It was actually, you know, great advice. So
Speaker 3: I was selling paper to paper paper converters in the
Speaker 3: Chicago Land area and UH for the first time in
Speaker 3: and in a decade, Boston College was going to play
Speaker 3: Notre Dame at South Bend, and so I had this
Speaker 3: idea for a T shirt, you know, and it was
Speaker 3: good at the time. Tom Coughlin the former coach of
Speaker 3: the Giants was the coach of Boston College. Uh the
Speaker 3: they had they had players on the team with the
Speaker 3: names Brennan and McManus, and Coughlin was the coach, and
Speaker 3: there was one other name in there, and so on
Speaker 3: the T shirt, I put Coughlin, Brennan, McManus and whatever
Speaker 3: the fourth name was. And I said, the real fighting Irish.
Speaker 3: And so we went to South Bend and literally the
Speaker 3: two hundred T shirts we had printed, the last five
Speaker 3: we were selling like in a bidding type format where
Speaker 3: people are going, i'll give you twenty five, I'll give
Speaker 3: you thirty exactly. It was like, I mean to this
Speaker 3: day that me and my two other college roommates talk
Speaker 3: about it because it was like it was an education
Speaker 3: because we were immediately upbidding the price and it was frenzied,
Speaker 3: like you know, a frenzied type environment.
Speaker 1: So this is fun, first smashing success, the first T shirt, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you're selling paper in Chicago, yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: do this. Is that what kind of jumped you into
Speaker 1: saying I don't want to sell paper anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was counting the days literally till I had hit
Speaker 3: that mark. Two year mark that my dad had set
Speaker 3: for me, you know, and I had done some kind
Speaker 3: of scouting as to what I wanted to do when
Speaker 3: I was in college. I quit drinking halfway through college, literally,
Speaker 3: and so the second half of college when I had
Speaker 3: I'd wake up on a Saturday morning and everyone was sleeping,
Speaker 3: and I just needed something to do. So I started
Speaker 3: working for Timberland down on Newberry Street in Boston, which
Speaker 3: is you know, it's like the Madison Avenue at Boston
Speaker 3: where all the shops are. And so while I was
Speaker 3: working for Timberland, I got to meet the designer who
Speaker 3: was designing the clothing for them. And back then they
Speaker 3: just kind of launched clothing. It was kind of pre
Speaker 3: public enemy like and and all the leather jackets were
Speaker 3: me in Italy, and it was this really upscale kind
Speaker 3: of outdoor country uh line the outdoors, the line and
Speaker 3: uh and so I worked there for two years and
Speaker 3: and that's where I really got my education about performance.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was on the sales floor selling gortex,
Speaker 3: you know, which now I designed clothing made and gore
Speaker 3: tex uh and and you know, kind of learning how
Speaker 3: you sell technical product because everything they did had a
Speaker 3: story to it that you know, those yellow boots that
Speaker 3: are their synonymous.
Speaker 2: Boot, those were waterproof boots.
Speaker 3: Those are boots that you could walk not through a puddle,
Speaker 3: but into a stream with and they weren't gonna you know,
Speaker 3: they were gonna stay waterproof and it was guaranteed for life,
Speaker 3: you know, And that was their whole thing. And so, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, like that that travel backgmmon board right there,
Speaker 3: you know, that was their signature leather that they used
Speaker 3: on all their leather goods. It's a leather called chrome
Speaker 3: Exel from a tannery in Chicago, uh, called Horween.
Speaker 2: And so I just really started my career.
Speaker 3: I always say I started my career at that point
Speaker 3: because I reference as much stuff that I learned while
Speaker 3: being a salesperson on a sales floor that I use
Speaker 3: in design now than really any other experience.
Speaker 2: That's it's interesting because like.
Speaker 1: Design is obviously a very creative focus and if you
Speaker 1: you know, most design people are almost anti salespeople, like
Speaker 1: the complete opposite, yes, and but doing the sale probably
Speaker 1: what is there something that from that experience specifically that
Speaker 1: like doing the sales work, whether it's paper or the
Speaker 1: Timberland experience, that you know, like helped you tremendously in
Speaker 1: your design career.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, being a salesperson is, and
Speaker 3: especially on a retail floor.
Speaker 2: You know, I guess I would like it.
Speaker 3: It probably to being an actor and being you know,
Speaker 3: being on a stage versus being in film. You know,
Speaker 3: being a salesperson on a sales floor, you're very much
Speaker 3: in the moment right there. The sale doesn't that the
Speaker 3: opportunity for sale doesn't go past your interaction with them
Speaker 3: right there. So you know that the triggers that that
Speaker 3: turns people away from a sale price.
Speaker 2: Other details of a.
Speaker 3: Clothing, you know, you not being able to explain to
Speaker 3: them accurately what the what the garment does, or what
Speaker 3: the or what the value of the garment.
Speaker 2: Is, you know, because prices.
Speaker 3: Prices is a barrier unless you can assign value to it,
Speaker 3: unless you can present it as a value. You know,
Speaker 3: a three hundred dollars jacket is a lot of money
Speaker 3: to spend on a jacket, but what it's guaranteed to
Speaker 3: keep you dry for life, it's not that much money.
Speaker 3: In fact, you could quickly argue that buying one hundred
Speaker 3: dollars jacket that doesn't keep you dry.
Speaker 2: For life is a bad investment. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Well exactly, I mean certain things like I always when
Speaker 1: I was younger, I'm not the most responsible human being.
Speaker 2: You know, I lose stuff all the time.
Speaker 3: That is hard to believe, I know, coming from someone
Speaker 3: who also is not the most responsible on the planet.
Speaker 1: Now that I've I've got my stuff together much more.
Speaker 1: It's like you, I don't lose stuff. I'm like amazed.
Speaker 1: Like And one of the things I started to set rules,
Speaker 1: like for myself, I'm not going to buy a nice
Speaker 1: pair of sunglasses. Yeah until I keep a pair of
Speaker 1: sunglasses for two plus years, have you ever bought one?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now I have nice sunglasses because I proved
Speaker 1: to myself I could do it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: But then because I still haven't. I mean, I have
Speaker 3: bought them, but I still can't do it.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll lose them for like two three week
Speaker 1: periods and then I'll find them and I'll be like,
Speaker 1: I knew I put them somewhere like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but with.
Speaker 1: That, like, yeah, nice stuff is nice to have because
Speaker 1: it lasts longer then you know, if you buy a
Speaker 1: for the most part, like a forty pair of pants,
Speaker 1: It's great because you're like, you're thirty dollars pair of pants.
Speaker 1: You're like, but then you washed it three times and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, this is why it's thirty dollars pants exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: My favorite thing while I was doing that job was
Speaker 3: I had gotten a pair of Timberland boots, probably like
Speaker 3: you when I was in high school, you know, as
Speaker 3: soon as my foot stops growing, you know, at at
Speaker 3: I guess it was probably in tenth grade.
Speaker 2: I got a pair of Timberland for the winter time.
Speaker 3: And in that job, I would say I've had these
Speaker 3: boots for five years. Yeah, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: and they still work because I would have the boots
Speaker 3: that I had bought as a consumer and then be
Speaker 3: able to say, listen, these things are still as good
Speaker 3: as as when we bought them. My mom bought them
Speaker 3: for me five years ago or yeah, probably about five
Speaker 3: or six years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's especially some stuff. So we talked obviously on
Speaker 1: this podcast a ton about golf course design. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I was interested to talk to you about because I
Speaker 1: think design is an overall umbrella. There's so many crossover
Speaker 1: similarities between different design design and different industries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and types of design. Yeah, I don't I
Speaker 3: don't know a lot about design, but I know that
Speaker 3: I like links golf, even though I grew up on
Speaker 3: a park lank course. Like you say, what are your
Speaker 3: favorite golf courses, They're all links golf courses.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that that draw it to the you know, the
Speaker 3: ocean and everything like that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the way Tilling has designed golf courses
Speaker 1: had a heavy, heavy influence from links golf courses in
Speaker 1: the UK, you know, like that's kind of what they were.
Speaker 1: That early iteration of American design was all centered around
Speaker 1: I'm curious about you know, with the way you look
Speaker 1: at design, obviously there's there's principles that are like, you know,
Speaker 1: these are the things and it in the line of
Speaker 1: great design and going too far is typically very thin. Yes,
Speaker 1: what in when you're designing stuff, like what's an example
Speaker 1: of of something that you designed that might have been
Speaker 1: just too far given a time, but then you know,
Speaker 1: five years later was just right.
Speaker 3: We did, uh, we did this one jacket called the
Speaker 3: golf anerak, you know, and uh it kind of had everything,
Speaker 3: you know, Uh, it had a hood, it had uh
Speaker 3: that that you could attach it unattached from the garment,
Speaker 3: you could put put it in your stowaway pocket. It
Speaker 3: had an asymmetrical zipper because when you when you're kind
Speaker 3: of active out of the golf courses, it's easier to
Speaker 3: pull towards you than it is to.
Speaker 2: Pull up and down, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And you know it had another side zipper here because
Speaker 3: it was a pullover that made you made it easy
Speaker 3: to get it on and off. It had a draw
Speaker 3: cord at the waist to sensiin the heat when it
Speaker 3: was cold out. Had a draw cord at the bottom,
Speaker 3: you know, to to protect you from the back, you know,
Speaker 3: from the wind and rain on the lower part of
Speaker 3: your other the top part of your legs, the lower
Speaker 3: part of the jacket. Even telling you about it now,
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm talking too much.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It just had too much atractical features. Yes, yes, And
Speaker 1: it just had too much you know. And and you know,
Speaker 1: you put all of those things into one jackery. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna do an asometrical zipper, that should be the
Speaker 1: only story you're telling, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's it's.
Speaker 3: That kind of far away from the norm that it
Speaker 3: needs everything else has to be kind of simple, you know,
Speaker 3: And and that's the sensibility that you have to kind
Speaker 3: of hone. But there's a real desire to kind of
Speaker 3: you know, build the DeLorean, you know, or what you
Speaker 3: think the DeLorean should be.
Speaker 2: You know. It's something I see with like young architects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and golf is like you go and you look
Speaker 1: and it's like every single green at their golf course
Speaker 1: is trying to be the greatest green in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know, sometimes the best green is
Speaker 1: like the most subtle, Like you see the green and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, that's so simple yet so brilliant. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're trying to show you how great
Speaker 1: everything is. It's instead of just allowing like restraint is
Speaker 1: sometimes the hardest, yes, aspect of design.
Speaker 2: I feel like in golf, do you feel the same
Speaker 2: way completely.
Speaker 3: And and sometimes finding a subtle way to get that
Speaker 3: that detail in without screaming it, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: The funny the way you know, I would imagine for
Speaker 3: what you know, what Gil Hans does. It's it's not
Speaker 3: about always having that that huge sandtrap right, you know,
Speaker 3: just off to the front right of the of the
Speaker 3: green in order to make the approach more difficult. You know,
Speaker 3: there's other ways to do it. And that's the way
Speaker 3: it is with design, you know. My now, my favorite
Speaker 3: designs are ones where there's a lot there's a lot
Speaker 3: of detail in it, but you look at it and
Speaker 3: it looks like a very simple coat of very simple jacket.
Speaker 3: And you know, when we do jackets that are that
Speaker 3: are called like the stealth or something like that. Those
Speaker 3: are the pieces that, in my mind, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: the proudest of because there's detail there, but it's it's
Speaker 3: not screaming like I'm wearing one of those jacket. It's
Speaker 3: that you see in the airline brochure when you're you know,
Speaker 3: you're waiting to take off and you can store all
Speaker 3: this stuff in it and it keeps you warm, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's not one of the it's doesn't
Speaker 3: look like one of those jackets.
Speaker 1: It's I feel like sometimes with writing, I feel this
Speaker 1: way too. It's like the things that I write that
Speaker 1: I like the most are generally the least popular things
Speaker 1: on my website. And I don't know why, but there's
Speaker 1: like and it's something maybe that it's like a less
Speaker 1: told story or like, you know, something that people don't
Speaker 1: give the benefit of the doubt. But like then when
Speaker 1: I write something that you know, you kind of know
Speaker 1: what's going to be really popular. Yeah, then sometimes my
Speaker 1: favorite work is the stuff that might be a little
Speaker 1: and then when somebody sends me an email about like
Speaker 1: an article that you know your point, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know that that always makes me feel But it's like
Speaker 1: the simple thing that maybe not everybody recognizes.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: That's part of the being a creative is that you know,
Speaker 3: and it may not be something that is relevant now,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Like your desire to not
Speaker 3: have have seventy two be the standard for what goes
Speaker 3: on every scorecard of every course in America, you know
Speaker 3: has legs to it. I know it does has legs
Speaker 3: to it, you know, and I think maybe in ten
Speaker 3: years it probably could be the most important story.
Speaker 2: You know, But the same thing happens.
Speaker 3: It's all about what is commercial at that moment, right,
Speaker 3: and so what because you're a creative person, because you're
Speaker 3: a forward thinker, you're thinking about not what's most commercial
Speaker 3: now you know what that is? You know, you're thinking
Speaker 3: about what's going to be commercial or is going to
Speaker 3: be important not commercial important in the future, you know,
Speaker 3: And in fashion it's the same way.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: This is my twenty first year at the PGA Show,
Speaker 3: which it really feels weird saying that. You know, I
Speaker 3: said to the sales team here when I came here
Speaker 3: to the PGA Show twenty one years ago, if you
Speaker 3: tried to sell a self collared shirt like we have
Speaker 3: in b Dratty and a flat front short, you would
Speaker 3: have been laughed out of the out of the convention
Speaker 3: center because no one was selling self collared shirts and
Speaker 3: flat front shorts at that point. Flat fund anything.
Speaker 2: Plates were big, plats were huge. Plats were huge.
Speaker 3: So every season I would I would, you know, as
Speaker 3: time moved, I have a self collar shirt in and
Speaker 3: it's like your favorite story, you know, those were my
Speaker 3: favorite pieces and it was it's not relevant now, but
Speaker 3: it will be relevant because this is the way that
Speaker 3: the overall feeling is moving in the industry, you know,
Speaker 3: or the way the general populace will move. You know,
Speaker 3: it's going to take five years, but they're gonna move there.
Speaker 3: I can guarantee it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you worked for Polo, Yeah for a long time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: five years at POLO, and then I was at Hickey
Speaker 1: Rieman for ten years and Bobby Jones was.
Speaker 3: The higgy Freeman had the license for the Bobby Jones
Speaker 3: clothes at that time.
Speaker 1: So you talk about kind of those experiences and what
Speaker 1: led you to make the leap into your own own brand.
Speaker 3: You know, each in my head, Polo was always going
Speaker 3: to be like my finishing school or my business school.
Speaker 3: You know, it's very hard to argue with the success
Speaker 3: that they've had, you know, and you just know, like
Speaker 3: any successful business, that there was a lot right going on,
Speaker 3: and you know, what was their secret sauce. And so
Speaker 3: when the opportunity came to go work there, I was
Speaker 3: in design at the time. I actually had gotten hired
Speaker 3: to run their golf business, not in design, and so
Speaker 3: you can tell how I had had my you know,
Speaker 3: strategic things I wanted to check off before I and
Speaker 3: I and I jumped on the opportunity. You know, I
Speaker 3: always say I was born a salesman and I've learned design,
Speaker 3: and so hopping into a sales role for them, even
Speaker 3: though I quickly learned I wasn't a great manager, but
Speaker 3: hopping in a sales role for them was. It was
Speaker 3: a great learning experience.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny, I think some I struggle with managing. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had a sales background and I do a lot
Speaker 1: of creative stuff. Now, yeah, I don't think those two
Speaker 1: go well with managing. No kind of take you away from.
Speaker 3: We're a separate category of management, you know, and you
Speaker 3: don't have to be a bad manager, but you have
Speaker 3: to recognize your your weaknesses. And that was one of
Speaker 3: the things that that I learned most, that they've held
Speaker 3: on to most there is they really train their managers well.
Speaker 3: We would do these management training things, and the focus
Speaker 3: of the management training was being able to identify your
Speaker 3: strengths and being be better at that and not and
Speaker 3: hire people that could do the things that you are
Speaker 3: not good at. You know, a lot of people think
Speaker 3: that because they're getting into management all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: they have to be great at Excel spreadsheets, and then
Speaker 3: we don't need the creative guide to now be great
Speaker 3: at Excel. That's what we need, but we need for
Speaker 3: you to be a better version of yourself. And I
Speaker 3: think that's that's a lot of We were talking about
Speaker 3: coaching last night. That's what coaches the best coaches, do
Speaker 3: they they they make a great they make a great
Speaker 3: possession receiver, better at being a possession receiver, you know.
Speaker 3: They don't want them to be their their their long
Speaker 3: route receiver, you know. And identifying the strengths and allowing
Speaker 3: the person to be better at what they're good at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that is a sign of a true good manager.
Speaker 1: Let's say there's theories out there, like everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to improve my weaknesses, but there are there
Speaker 1: are like a lot of resounding success stories of people
Speaker 1: just ignoring their weaknesses, hiring somebody or putting, you know,
Speaker 1: people in places of their weaknesses and saying I'm just
Speaker 1: going to get better at what I'm really good at
Speaker 1: because that way I could be the best in the
Speaker 1: world at that or exactly the best people in the
Speaker 1: world at that exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's and I think the truer skill is being.
Speaker 3: Able to identify your weaknesses, yeah, you know, being the
Speaker 3: self reflect and say you aren't not I'm just not
Speaker 3: really good at that, or or marrying a.
Speaker 2: Good woman that can tell you everything that.
Speaker 3: You're Oh my wife is great at taking my personal inventory. Great,
Speaker 3: she could tell you. I mean today we could call
Speaker 3: it right on the now she would have to think
Speaker 3: about it. What you know, what I need to you know,
Speaker 3: work on and you know what I'm bad at?
Speaker 2: You know for sure.
Speaker 1: So you you're in the golf business where I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of times when somebody starts their own
Speaker 1: so you start to be dratty.
Speaker 2: What was the moment or the whole that you.
Speaker 1: Saw in golf and that what we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: where you know, flat front pant like you might not
Speaker 1: believe that now, but it's five Where what was was
Speaker 1: there a moment that you know, really said I need
Speaker 1: to do this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? For sure?
Speaker 3: I mean I I truthfully from the moment I had
Speaker 3: gotten in the golf business, there wasn't a shirt that
Speaker 3: I really liked to wear. I started at Bobby Jones
Speaker 3: in the golf business and they were famous with fair
Speaker 3: Way and Green for the double mercery shirt, you know,
Speaker 3: which was a cotton shirt. And what double mercerization is
Speaker 3: is it takes the cotton yarn and it singes the yarn,
Speaker 3: burns it with caustic soda, okay, and it burns all
Speaker 3: of the hairs off, all the extraneous hairs off of
Speaker 3: the yarn. And produces a very silky type yarn, which
Speaker 3: then in turns a silky type garment.
Speaker 2: Okay, like thinking of like the nineties golf shiny shiny
Speaker 2: cotton golf shirts, right, I.
Speaker 1: Like thinking of David Duval for some reason, Like right,
Speaker 1: I've got this image in my head.
Speaker 3: Right, And you know, I personally never felt comfortable in
Speaker 3: those golf shirts and so and I had grown up
Speaker 3: for a family that, you know, where a cotton golf
Speaker 3: shirt was what you wore. So I knew that it
Speaker 3: was possible to create a comfortable cotton garment that I
Speaker 3: didn't feel. And the second thing about the double mercerzation
Speaker 3: is so with that when your sweat is or water
Speaker 3: is exposed to that that that yarn, it becomes super
Speaker 3: saturated immediately because all those extra hairs that burn off
Speaker 3: are what transfer the moisture across the shirt, so it
Speaker 3: can dry quickly. So if you get one of those
Speaker 3: shirts wet, it's like it sticks to your back. And
Speaker 3: you can think about all those nineties golfers. Their preshot
Speaker 3: routine was get the shirt off my back. So they'd
Speaker 3: pull the shirt off the back because they're sticking it
Speaker 3: to them. And then they'd raise the shoulder seam above
Speaker 3: their shoulder, so that they.
Speaker 2: All started a part of my pre shot routine because
Speaker 2: that's when you started playing golf. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 2: like that became a trigger.
Speaker 3: It's so funny you say that, Yes, it was a
Speaker 3: functional trigger.
Speaker 2: It was because of the shirt.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. So I
Speaker 3: in my head said, even before the technical golf shirt,
Speaker 3: is there's a golf shirt out there that doesn't do that,
Speaker 3: that doesn't stick to you when you start sweating, and
Speaker 3: isn't kind of greasy, shiny, you know golf shirt. You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it takes color well and is at least
Speaker 3: to my eye, it has a more pleasing look of color.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So then all of a sudden, the technical golf shirt
Speaker 3: came out, you know, and that to me also for
Speaker 3: me personally, didn't feel exactly right. And so that even
Speaker 3: perpetuated the idea that of doing a cotton golf shirt
Speaker 3: is really what I think is the next step. And
Speaker 3: I had done iterations of that at both of those
Speaker 3: successive jobs. So, you know, a couple of years into
Speaker 3: being had a up the golf division of Polo. The
Speaker 3: designer left and so Ralph and Jerry Lauren asked me
Speaker 3: to because they knew I had a design background to
Speaker 3: design the Polo golf and at that point we launched
Speaker 3: a unmercerized kind of cotton golf shirt. And also prior
Speaker 3: to leaving Bobby Jones, I had launched an unmercerized cotton
Speaker 3: golf shirt. We called it Royal Egyptian cotton, which was unmurserized.
Speaker 3: It was a strain of Egyptian cotton that was known
Speaker 3: for its softness, okay, and so it was called Giza
Speaker 3: eighty six, and so we did an unmursrized version of
Speaker 3: that shirt. You know, I still own these shirts today,
Speaker 3: and that was kind of the stepping off point for
Speaker 3: what b Draddy became. And what really changed when we
Speaker 3: got to b Draty was adding some stretch to it,
Speaker 3: and that kind of linked what people were wearing today,
Speaker 3: you know, with the performance garments, where part of the
Speaker 3: story of the performance garment was that it moved with
Speaker 3: you when you played golf. It didn't fight your swing,
Speaker 3: you know, it moved with you. And that's what the
Speaker 3: Dratty shirt did. It incorporated the comfort of cotton with
Speaker 3: the performance one of the performance features of today's technical
Speaker 3: golf shirts.
Speaker 1: So you start, you start b dratty, yeah, and you're
Speaker 1: pushing a shirt that at the time was very different
Speaker 1: than the shirt that was popularized, which is the tech
Speaker 1: I mean tech fabric. Yes, is you know, it's still
Speaker 1: very popular, but it was at that point all the rage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was all that was in golf shops, truly.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I would go into shops and say, where are your
Speaker 3: cotton golf shirts? And I would get this look from
Speaker 3: assisting pros like you can't get there from here, you know,
Speaker 3: like I don't even know what you're asking me, you know,
Speaker 3: because they didn't identify the shirts by what fabric they
Speaker 3: were got to them. It was a younger, younger assistant
Speaker 3: golf shirts were always made of a performance fabric, you know.
Speaker 2: So talk about like the early years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I imagine at some points there was like
Speaker 1: some doubt that came in about like am I crazy?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Am I am? I?
Speaker 1: You know, because you're you're you're walking in and like
Speaker 1: any sort of innovation, like generally a company that comes
Speaker 1: is doing something differently disrupting. Yeah, So like talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about those early days and like some of
Speaker 1: the meetings, you know, naming names, but yeah, like some
Speaker 1: of the things people said to you when you're presenting
Speaker 1: this this extraordinarily different idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, thankfully we work in a very
Speaker 3: respectful industry, you know, and you know, people sit there
Speaker 3: and listen to you and not and you know, and
Speaker 3: and the truth comes when you get the order. It
Speaker 3: was it to me, it was you always whenever you're
Speaker 3: in a sales process, you always kind of invite, you're
Speaker 3: kind of like you're kind of eating people into a discussion,
Speaker 3: you know, about why this is relevant today, you know.
Speaker 3: And I always hope that people would push back a
Speaker 3: little bit, like you know, you know how hot it is,
Speaker 3: you know, in in Little Rock, Arkansas in August. You know,
Speaker 3: and you want to say yes, I do, I do know.
Speaker 3: Yes you want them to say that, you know. And
Speaker 3: what I would always say is, listen, if you had
Speaker 3: a fruit stand, right, and you show up at the
Speaker 3: fruit stand and all you sell is oranges, right, wouldn't
Speaker 3: be a great business plan, right when you had the
Speaker 3: opportunity to also sell apples, right, You're not going to
Speaker 3: sell as many apples as oranges. But will you sell
Speaker 3: apples include it and oranges? For sure you will. Will
Speaker 3: the fact that you carry apples cut down the amount
Speaker 3: of oranges you sell, not at all, right, and taking
Speaker 3: ourselves out of our own little world and making it
Speaker 3: very much of a sesame Street type presentation, you know,
Speaker 3: where you take it down to the core of being
Speaker 3: in business. And just because you don't sell as much
Speaker 3: cotton golf shirts as technical golf shirts, doesn't mean you
Speaker 3: shouldn't carry a cotton golf shirt, you know, because it
Speaker 3: creates incremental sales, you know. And that really was a discussion.
Speaker 3: It wasn't about fighting tech. It was about it was
Speaker 3: about adding on to their presentation and giving them the
Speaker 3: opportunity to create a different business within their shop, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, And it's an important like lesson, like don't do
Speaker 1: what everybody else is doing, because it's going to be
Speaker 1: a lot harder to be a small company in that space.
Speaker 2: For sure, for sure.
Speaker 3: And that has been my I always said, I don't
Speaker 3: want to fight it out with the other seven resources
Speaker 3: you have, you know, some of those are the biggest
Speaker 3: names in apparel and footwear on the planet. I have
Speaker 3: no chance, you know, you have to be a niche player.
Speaker 3: And that has always kind of been my design perspective
Speaker 3: for golf is let's bring something that's not in the
Speaker 3: market that creates incremental value, you know, and uh and
Speaker 3: and that those have always been the true success is
Speaker 3: because you don't want to be in the commodity business.
Speaker 3: You want to be in the iPhone business, you know,
Speaker 3: the special new feature business, you know, and and in
Speaker 3: the innovation business you know, because then you you know,
Speaker 3: that's the best way to separate truly, you know, from
Speaker 3: the competition.
Speaker 1: I think I think about that a lot is where
Speaker 1: when you push things in certain directions and and then
Speaker 1: so cotton has come back, yes, now, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: five years later Cotten, a lot of you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the big players are.
Speaker 2: Back in Cotton, back in cotton. Yeah. And now it's
Speaker 2: a bold strategy, Cotton. It's a crowded island that you
Speaker 2: live on now.
Speaker 1: So so talk about you know, continue to innovate and
Speaker 1: push in different directions.
Speaker 2: What's like an example of that, Well, you know.
Speaker 3: As we as we move forward, you know, into giving
Speaker 3: that our customer the opportunity to buy different products, you know,
Speaker 3: they have to have that same kind of specialness to them.
Speaker 3: And one of the great things about being probably one
Speaker 3: of the designers here who's been in the industry here
Speaker 3: for twenty one years, is that with the influx attech,
Speaker 3: there has been a complete eradication of all things natural
Speaker 3: that people in the golf world always just had, you know.
Speaker 3: And you know, so the things that we've added to
Speaker 3: you and me maybe just to me, are you know,
Speaker 3: are not completely unique, but there are things that have
Speaker 3: been here before that we're just reintroducing to the customer.
Speaker 3: So like Scottish cashmir, you know, I mean, there's a
Speaker 3: reason why Scottish cashmir is the best cashmere on the planet.
Speaker 3: It's because they don't fall into the trap of overwashing it.
Speaker 3: So you know, the problem with Kashmir is that it
Speaker 3: has a very easy propensity to pill the little balls
Speaker 3: that end up in the friction points. And so what
Speaker 3: happened when Kashmir got commercialized, meaning you could buy it
Speaker 3: at costco, is that people would wash it so that
Speaker 3: it was as soft as it could ever possibly be
Speaker 3: on the sales floor. So when you felt it, you
Speaker 3: immediately knew as kashmere, and you saw that it was
Speaker 3: only two hundred dollars and you bought it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The truth is is that kashmir is like a paradenim jeans,
Speaker 3: that it gets better the older it is and the
Speaker 3: more that you live in it and the more that
Speaker 3: you launder it yourself.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So it used to be that you'd get a cashmere
Speaker 3: sweater and it felt slightly better than a wolf sweater.
Speaker 3: But as you had it, over time, it got softer
Speaker 3: and nicer and it became a best friend because of
Speaker 3: how it had evolved as a garment, you know, like
Speaker 3: a pair of jeans. Yeah, and but we had gotten
Speaker 3: away from that, so that was one of the you
Speaker 3: know things that we you know, the first sweater we
Speaker 3: did was a Scottish cashier sweater. This season we're launching
Speaker 3: uh an alpaca sweater. So all those great pictures of
Speaker 3: Arnold Palmer in the sixties wearing cardigans, he was wearing
Speaker 3: an alpaca cardigan, Okay, And there was a reason for
Speaker 3: it is because alpaca is truly God's first performance fiber.
Speaker 3: So the the alpaca lama. Okay, we'll have al pacas
Speaker 3: as pats.
Speaker 2: Now. You do know people oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure,
Speaker 2: they look I want an alpaca they're beautiful.
Speaker 3: They're beautiful, they're they they're they're slightly less you know,
Speaker 3: salty than a donkey, you know, somewhere between a donkey
Speaker 3: and a pony in terms of their disposition. Uh yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it's not that they won't bite you, but
Speaker 3: they're just.
Speaker 2: Not gonna they're not gonna kill you.
Speaker 1: You know those on Instagram I really recommended looking up alpaca.
Speaker 3: They look like just wonderful pats. Yes, yeah, they're beautiful.
Speaker 3: They're beautiful. So because in Peru, because of the natural
Speaker 3: migration of the of the apaca or as they say, alpaca. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, Peru is a very narrow country, and all
Speaker 3: in one country, you have the ocean, you have the desert,
Speaker 3: and you have the mountains, and so you have three
Speaker 3: microclimates that the upaca passes through. So it's it's its
Speaker 3: hair is very temperature regulating.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: It's it's truly it's not called natural selection, Okay. It
Speaker 3: evolves as time goes by based on this environment. And
Speaker 3: so the yarn itself is temperature regulating. You come in
Speaker 3: from outside, it's thermal. Wild's outside. You come inside, you
Speaker 3: remain comfortable Okay, I've got alpaca socks on. I wear
Speaker 3: them every single day now because I go in my life,
Speaker 3: I go from a warm house to a hockey rink,
Speaker 3: so like literally, you know, from from seventy five degrees
Speaker 3: to you know, anting on an ice cube. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it completely temperature regulates and it is the most thermal
Speaker 3: in my mind of all the yarns.
Speaker 1: Well that the wolf sock is so because people you say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, these socks are wool, and they're like if
Speaker 1: they're runners, They're like, no, no wolf socks.
Speaker 2: But yes, they're actually the best socks. Yeah, you sweat less. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The key, well, the key to all comfort as a
Speaker 3: performance story is staying dry. Water is a conductor of temperature.
Speaker 3: Anyone who's ever jumped at a pool in September knows
Speaker 3: exactly what I'm talking about. You get out of the pool,
Speaker 3: the cool breeze hits you, and you're instantly colder, you know,
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what moisture does up against your skin.
Speaker 2: In both ways.
Speaker 3: If you've got moisture gets your skin, it's hot, you
Speaker 3: feel hotter, humid, overheating, you know, and the same thing
Speaker 3: with being cold. So the idea is to keep your
Speaker 3: your your whatever, your skin dry and then you and
Speaker 3: then you add insulation to it. Well that's what Alpaka does.
Speaker 3: So we're launching an i'll Paca sweater this season and
Speaker 3: golfers have always worn outpaka up until this, you know,
Speaker 3: the dawn of tech. And because it does temperature regulate
Speaker 3: as you're out on the golf course, you start in
Speaker 3: the morning, it's a little bit cooler, it keeps you warm.
Speaker 3: Then as you get through the day, it continues to
Speaker 3: breathe and it regulates so you don't feel like you
Speaker 3: have to peel it off as soon as you get
Speaker 3: to the seventh hole and the sun gets above the trees.
Speaker 3: So that's another thing that this season we're bringing back.
Speaker 3: You know, we showed it to Paul McGinley yesterday and
Speaker 3: you know, all the guys who are forty plus who
Speaker 3: have played golf remember the beginning of their golf career
Speaker 3: where you know, everyone wore these outpacka cardigans, you know,
Speaker 3: And so he tried it on and oh, Bill, I
Speaker 3: think you've got something here, you know, as only as
Speaker 3: he can say in his Irish accent. But it is
Speaker 3: fun to kind of bring you know, the natural side
Speaker 3: of performance, you know, back into golf.
Speaker 1: It's just interesting how the trend, how it swings, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty years back. But there's there's so much that you
Speaker 1: can take from the previous trend and learn from right.
Speaker 2: Oh completely completely.
Speaker 1: Where you can almost take cherry pick your best the
Speaker 1: best features of something that happened ten years ago and
Speaker 1: and injected them into something.
Speaker 2: Well that's that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And that's why I keep referencing that, you know, when
Speaker 3: I when I uh my time working on the sales
Speaker 3: floor at Timberland, you know, learning about gortex, you know,
Speaker 3: is exactly the reason why we made the you know,
Speaker 3: the the jackets that Tiger and the rest of the
Speaker 3: President's Team cup war at the at the President's Cup
Speaker 3: last month.
Speaker 2: It's because I have lived.
Speaker 3: With this fabric for close to thirty years now and
Speaker 3: what it does and it's features of benefits. And even
Speaker 3: though I wasn't a hiker, biker, rafter or climber, you know,
Speaker 3: I understand gortex because I talked to guys that walked
Speaker 3: up mountains and and did this led dog race, the Iditarod,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, and understand what the benefits of
Speaker 3: gortex and that type product is and now can then
Speaker 3: apply it to design for golfers.
Speaker 1: That's its spark almost like I look outside a lot
Speaker 1: of times for ideas outside of golf, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to pay attention to what another golf
Speaker 1: media site's doing, Like let me look at what you
Speaker 1: know tech website's doing, like that's right, it's about tech,
Speaker 1: and say, oh that I could use that idea for golf.
Speaker 3: Exactly yeah I I People ask me, have you seen
Speaker 3: this or have you said? I said, I tried not
Speaker 3: to look, especially within our industry, at what other people
Speaker 3: are doing, because the last thing I want to do
Speaker 3: is spend a lot of time on something and someone
Speaker 3: else has got exactly the same thing, you know, and
Speaker 3: you build it up at the sales meeting and they're like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, they also have that.
Speaker 2: You know they also.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had something where like you totally screwed up,
Speaker 1: but the but the mistake yielded something better than you
Speaker 1: ever intended on.
Speaker 3: This is like your question last night about the worst
Speaker 3: golf course, worst golf shot you ever had.
Speaker 2: I try and forget about those things, but where it
Speaker 2: actually like the mistake was good.
Speaker 3: For sure, for sure, it happens all the time. Happens
Speaker 3: all the time because from sketch to you know, from
Speaker 3: sketch to final, I'm not the one sewing the garment
Speaker 3: or I'm not the one that made that trim not available,
Speaker 3: or you know, sometimes you sketch something in a prototype
Speaker 3: and it comes in a different way, but you're like,
Speaker 3: I love this it actually this is actually better. It
Speaker 3: actually happens every single season. You know, I can't think
Speaker 3: of one where it actually ended up being like incredible,
Speaker 3: but but it's part of every design season for sure,
Speaker 3: where it comes in a certain way it wasn't what
Speaker 3: you intended, but you actually like it better. So I
Speaker 3: mean it was truly a mistake, a mistake by the factory,
Speaker 3: or a mistake in the way I tried to communicate
Speaker 3: what I wanted through a s you know.
Speaker 1: That's how you hear all the architects talk about like, oh,
Speaker 1: we sketch out the idea, but what the end product
Speaker 1: is very rarely looks is exactly what the sketches because
Speaker 1: stuff happens out in the field.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's that's truly what design is is problem solving.
Speaker 3: It's it's about getting a task and not giving up
Speaker 3: on it and making the.
Speaker 2: Problem of that of your design.
Speaker 3: Okay, the person that can take that problem and circle
Speaker 3: it around their head a million times to come up
Speaker 3: with the right solution or a solution, or an innovative solution,
Speaker 3: those are the best designers. It's not the person who
Speaker 3: can design the most innovative thing on a piece of paper.
Speaker 3: It's it's too creation that makes the great designer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and being able to I mean everyone who's
Speaker 3: in my life will will stand up and yell about
Speaker 3: how annoying I am when I get on a problem,
Speaker 3: because all time ceases to exist because I'm working it
Speaker 3: over my head so much. You know that I could
Speaker 3: forget that I got to pick up my kid at
Speaker 3: the hockey rink because I'm working over how do we
Speaker 3: make this thing into a role, you know or whatever?
Speaker 2: You know? How do we how do we make that
Speaker 2: hood roll up properly? You know?
Speaker 3: And I it circulates in my head consistently until what
Speaker 3: I feel like I have a solution and.
Speaker 1: Talk about problem solving, like what how do you go
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Ignore everything else in my life to a fault and
Speaker 3: work on it until it's until it's work on it,
Speaker 3: on the solution until it's until you have something. It's
Speaker 3: it's it's a for me, it's a very physical experience,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a very it's it's it's the ability
Speaker 3: to tune out the rest of the world, which is
Speaker 3: again it is my greatest asset. Is is also my
Speaker 3: greatest fault, you know, where uh, you know, I can
Speaker 3: become the most ignoying person on the planet because I'll
Speaker 3: stay up till two o'clock in the morning working on something.
Speaker 3: Once like, once I you've got a beat on it,
Speaker 3: you know, like I said, all of life ceases to exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get in the My wife says, I'm like
Speaker 1: I turn into like a manic person. Yeah, where like
Speaker 1: she can't even be in the same space as me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be up at two and then I'll be up
Speaker 1: at six, like jump out of beat it. Right.
Speaker 3: That's why having a house is great, because you can
Speaker 3: go into a basement and you can gotta be your
Speaker 3: your ogre self and and and work through this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. But it's but it's also the most gratifying
Speaker 3: you know, when you kind of when you're able to
Speaker 3: kind of need through the dough of the problem and
Speaker 3: smooth it out, and and what comes out, you know,
Speaker 3: in your mind and and perhaps of other people, is
Speaker 3: actually truly better.
Speaker 2: Is it's it's it's really quite satisfying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, I mean those are
Speaker 1: generally the things that the things you have to work
Speaker 1: at the most are generally the things that turn out best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And it if you you know, I don't
Speaker 2: read a lot of books because of my little attention.
Speaker 2: You know, I have the same problem. Yeah, but some
Speaker 2: of the books.
Speaker 3: One of the books that always struck me most was
Speaker 3: with the Keith Keith Richards book when he talks about
Speaker 3: writing music. You know, it's like it's it is not
Speaker 3: a time based process. You know, it's not like it
Speaker 3: just comes to you and you do it. You know,
Speaker 3: it is there's a there's a process that leads there's
Speaker 3: a creative process that leads up to it.
Speaker 2: And I think you find that, you know what I
Speaker 2: what I found is other.
Speaker 3: Creative pursuits are as as important about being a creative
Speaker 3: professional as that true discipline. So for me, illustrating or
Speaker 3: creating you know, backgammon sets or whatever are as important
Speaker 3: as creating golf shirts because it hones that that problem solving,
Speaker 3: you know, and that idea creation process, you know, so
Speaker 3: that so that you can get quicker into the moment
Speaker 3: where you have to perform your job, you know, and
Speaker 3: and churn out five new jackets in a season. You know,
Speaker 3: you can get into that creative You don't leave that
Speaker 3: creative mode actually, is what it comes down to. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't design a season, take four months off from designing,
Speaker 3: and then start again. You're doing other things that hone
Speaker 3: that creative process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm like the king of the
Speaker 1: half written article. If you looked at my computer right now,
Speaker 1: you see like thirty different single pages of half written articles.
Speaker 1: But then like one day I think about something and
Speaker 1: that half written article then writes the rest of itself
Speaker 1: exact because I sit down and it's like oh and
Speaker 1: it just but like you can't force you can't say
Speaker 1: I'm going to write this is just the way I feel.
Speaker 1: I can't just sit down and write something. The hardest
Speaker 1: thing for me to write are things when somebody says,
Speaker 1: can you write this for me? Yes, and it's like,
Speaker 1: well that's but like that those are that's a different
Speaker 1: creative that could just say it, like you said, design
Speaker 1: five new jackets, Like yeah, yeah, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: very difficult task.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but when you're every day you wake up and
Speaker 3: you do something that starts that the problem solving mechanism
Speaker 3: in your.
Speaker 2: Brain, it becomes a lot easier. You know, you're in that,
Speaker 2: you're in that headspace.
Speaker 3: You're not you're not trying to figure out how you're
Speaker 3: gonna You're you're checking account is going to last. It's
Speaker 3: a bad example, but you're not doing something that's not
Speaker 3: similar to what you do in your job.
Speaker 2: You're doing something that's similar. It's not exactly it, it's adjacent.
Speaker 2: It's adjacent.
Speaker 3: And and maybe something that you do in that helps
Speaker 3: move forward your idea that you having that article, it's
Speaker 3: sitting in your what do you.
Speaker 1: Do if you're say, you're at dinner with your wife
Speaker 1: and something like you just solve something in your head
Speaker 1: because I assume.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, she has it. It's called billy world.
Speaker 3: And and you know, I think I'm I'm in it
Speaker 3: way too much for her comfort level. And I'm not
Speaker 3: blaming her.
Speaker 2: It is me. I know, my my whole family can
Speaker 2: speak to it. From the moment I was I was
Speaker 2: born he's in.
Speaker 3: They would call it a call the same thing Billy world,
Speaker 3: you know, and probably all these pictures are some you know.
Speaker 2: Version of where billy World is.
Speaker 3: But it's like, uh, it's just like I said, all
Speaker 3: world ceases to exist.
Speaker 2: And I think it's frustrating to be around me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think it's.
Speaker 3: Funny and funny, entertaining, I think, I am. I think
Speaker 3: it's really frustrating to be around me.
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't want to keep you from
Speaker 1: uh from you got you got slang.
Speaker 2: The CEO just.
Speaker 3: Showed up like he's gotta start, he's got to start
Speaker 3: hurting his job.
Speaker 2: Enough fun, enough fun here in the den. So thanks
Speaker 2: for coming.
Speaker 1: And I think people enjoy this inside look into kind
Speaker 1: of the creative process. Okay, so thanks, it's been been
Speaker 1: fun talking to you.