Get BALLZEE^®!

Todd Pitock, 04.24.06

ive years ago, Ed Sprague was playing golf with his brother-in-law and some buddies. Standing on the tee, he watched as one of them wiped a ball on his pants, leaving an unseemly streak of dirt.

“I thought to myself, there has to be a better way,” says Sprague, who had patented other inventions as a sideline to his job as a partner in a suburban Philadelphia fulfillment center. “So I went home and cut out a flat piece of vinyl from a school folder, cut it on the fold to close on itself, then glued a terrycloth towel to the inside. It was waterproof and could hold the towel.”

Thus was born the crude prototype of the Ballzee, a patented ball-cleaning tool that you can moisten and carry in your pocket without getting your pants wet. At first, Sprague envisioned his product attached to, say, a box of Titleists as a value-added extra that might attract customers deciding which box of balls to take off the shelf. The executives, Sprague says, liked the tool but said people wouldn’t understand what it was. They suggested that he go promote it and come back when the product had more recognition.

As he blazed his trail, cold-calling journalists and handing out his product to anyone whom he trusted to give him an honest response, Sprague, along with partner John Foster, discovered other ways to promote and sell the Ballzee. They got on a radio show and offered a free sample to callers. When folks called in, they pitched them a pack of eight for $19.95 (versus $3.95 for one). Sprague claims every caller took the up-sell. He estimates that at least a third of people passing his booth at this year’s PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, where the Ballzee was named “Best New Product 2005” in the miscellaneous category, knew what it was.

“For us, it’s about getting $3,000 worth of exposure without spending $3,000 on advertising,” he says. “How do you make it all happen and create an awareness of and demand for the product without spending millions of dollars?”

A burly ex-linebacker who signed with the New York Jets in 1983 before an injury nixed his pro chances, Sprague exudes an attitude toward destiny that transcends his lack of formal credentials. He finished just one year of college and has no regard for “business models.” Indeed, with the Ballzee having reached its first anniversary in January, his approach could be called tactical ignorance.

“I want to be careful about what I read,” Sprague says. “I don’t want to be so educated about how things are done in the golf world that I only do what other people have done. We don’t want to stifle our creativity. We have to find a way of doing things that works for our particular product and circumstances.”

Those circumstances, and the obstacles, though, are typical of what many of golf’s inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs face. The industry is attractive because people love the game and because they perceive an opportunity in the masses of affluent golfers. In garages and basements all over the world, people putter around, so to speak, on evenings and weekends, designing clubs, gloves, tools, gadgets, novelties, learning aids and more.

For many, the PGA show is the coming-out party. Typically it draws 300 to 350 first-time exhibitors. Another 900, including celebrities, sponsors and representatives of major brands, fill the Orange County Convention Center’s 500,000 square feet of floor space. This year’s gathering included such innovations as the Optee, a device that loads balls on the tee at a driving range, saving you from bending over; the Polara ball, a “self-correcting” ball that its makers say reduces sidespin, helping to correct a hook or slice; and a device called the Explanar Golf Training System, which drills students in the “optimum biomechanical swing plane.”

But if the game of golf can be a genteel challenge, the business of golf is contact-sport rough. Established companies have every advantage: a solid hold on distribution channels and shelf space; dedicated media relations departments; research and development operations; huge advertising budgets; and enough money to survive whatever strategic mistakes they make along the way. As if that leviathan competition weren’t enough, independent start-ups have to navigate the politics of relations between independent sales reps and distributors, and then manage to be heard over the din of other independents. Beating on the doors of inundated, if not jaded, retail managers isn’t usually an option, either.

“The competition is really brutal,” says Shelby Futch, a veteran golf entrepreneur and president of the Scottsdale Golf Group, an Arizona-based company that owns and operates golf courses, services and products. “I’ve seen a jillion products over the years, but very few stick around for any length of time. You don’t last if you don’t have a good product, and if you do have a good product, at a certain point you need to get bigger, so it winds up going to a bigger guy in the end. If you have a real good product, some big company will come along and do a knockoff. It’s really tough.”

There are challenges that are general to everyone, but particular products have their own. Kye Power, a Manchester, New Hampshire–based entrepreneur, started her apparel company, Kye Power Inc., because she loved the game but couldn’t relate to the clothes.

“I set out to come up with a cool golf line and solve the casual-day dilemma, which is that men can wear chinos and a polo shirt with a blue blazer and look fine for the office or the golf course, but there was no equivalent uniform for women,” says Power, who had previously worked as an audit manager for Coopers & Lybrand. “The problem is that I’m in New Hampshire--not exactly the fashion mecca of the world, and which also has a shortgolf season.”

Low-cost manufacturing in Asia, though, wasn’t an option. Her initial production scale was too small, and the domination of the delivery lines by major global companies meant unreliable deliveries. Manufacturing in the United States would raise the price of the clothes. “And if you’re going to be expensive, you’re competing with the Ralph Laurens and the Burberrys, so you have to be really good.”

But she decided to take the risk and used top New England mills. Like Ballzee’s Sprague, her lack of credentials didn’t deter her from creating her own designs. Right out of the gate, following her debut at the 2003 PGA Show, she won that year’s Polartec APEX Design Award for her Power Shirt, beating out heavyweights including Patagonia and Nike.

“We did a good job in not making it look like golf apparel,” says Power. That, too, was as much determined by market circumstances as by her vision. Women don’t tend to go into golf shops, so golf shops don’t stock a lot of items for them. That meant Power had to get her line into boutiques as well, especially at resorts. Three years later, she has managed to get on the shelves and racks of places such as the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua in Hawaii, which carries her line in the boutique and in a golf shop.

Futch, who developed a wedge in the ’90s, figures one category that remains relatively open for entrepreneurs is putters, which are like umbrellas insofar as people tend to keep trying new ones because they can’t get any single one of them to work that well.

“People are always looking for another putter,” Futch says. “They’ll have one driver but six putters. It’s fairly easy to get someone on the tour who carries them around and lets the guys try them.” Fairly easy, that is, if you’re in the business. Unfortunately, not just anybody can show up and sidle up to the stars.

Nevertheless, that’s the tack Larry Weeks, who just launched his company, Dead Straight Golf, is planning to take. His introduction to the business came from his own common-enough situation, namely that he was a decent ball striker and a lousy putter. Weeks was also a mechanical engineer, and he devoted himself to creating his own putter, which took into account the physics involved in the roll of a dimpled ball on the surface of a green. In 2005, GolfTestUSA, a Consumer Reports-like equipment rating company, gave his Middleweight the highest score for distance control of 150 putters it tested and the fourth-highest rating overall. (In 2006, he dropped into a tie for fifth best overall and was about to be retested at the time of this writing.)

“I’ve had on my design-engineer hat,” the San Diego resident says. “Now Ihave to wear a business hat, and it’s been tougher than I expected. But I’m not interested in being bought out. It’s my creation, my baby, and I don’t want to hand it over to somebody else.”

If the plan bucks the advice of veterans, it’s also a common enough refrain.

For the moment, Sprague and Power both appear to be beating the odds. Major retailers carrying the Ballzee include Golfsmith, Edwin Watts Golf and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Power has crossed a few thresholds herself. “Our goal was to increase our number of doors by 100 percent during our initial five-year strategic-plan period, with revenue tracking accordingly,” she says. “To date, we’re on target.” In addition to the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua, her apparel is in a raft of prestigious private clubs and resorts like the Wailea Golf Club and the Doral Resort & Spa in Miami, and the Westin La Cantera Resort in San Antonio.

The cautious attitude, if not downright skepticism, of buyers at Power’s first show, though, remains a reminder of how elusive success can be. “You could see they’d had it with turnover in the industry,” she recalls. “They’d say, ‘Love the product. If you’re still here in two years, we’ll buy from you.’”