Putting Style on the Map: Golftini's Rise in Women's Golf Fashion

Hi, I’m Susan Hess. I am the founder of Golftini and a designer. I started it unknowingly 19 years ago. We are a women’s golf brand introducing men in May. Tomorrow.

Okay, so, Ryan, do you want to introduce yourself, and then I’ll go?

Yeah, and I’m Ryan Hess. I am Susan’s oldest son. I have a sales background, but I’ve been doing marketing for Golftini for the past four years. I loved golf, always really wanted to be a part of my mom’s brand and COVID came around and we finally got the chance to do it and we jumped on that idea and it’s been an enjoyable four years and I think we’re going to with a parent is one of the coolest things you’ll ever be able to do.

And it works because we live in different cities. No, it’s great. It’s really fun. So I unknowingly started this brand. It didn’t have a name. I took up golf 20 years ago. And my grandparents had golfed all over the world. They were the coolest people that I ever met and they golfed till they were 90. So I wanted to get in on it after I did my regular sports and my first career as a salesperson. I just was a stay-at-home mom and I went to a county course and learned how to golf and I got the bug fast. And I would rush to get my kids at school and.

I do all the things you do as a mom, and then all of a sudden it was 10 at night, and I was in this ugly golf outfit. And I’m like, okay, this is a cool game, but this isn’t gonna work. So I always say if there was a cool brand that I liked at the time, I’d be on tour, but I’m not. So I work a lot. But I had no background in business or fashion, and I went to New York City, I lived in New Jersey at the time. I found a sample maker to make what I was looking for in my mind and couldn’t find, which was just a simple score. I walked by a ribbon store, I had her trim it in ribbon, and I wore it to my golfing group, and they liked it. They said, where’d you get it? I said I had it made, and they said, would you make me one? So I went back to New York and made two for them, and one for me.

And this continued for a while until I had a nice little wardrobe of skorts. And word kinda got out that I was selling these skorts out of my house. And just to friends. But flash forward, someone knocked on my door, and said, can I sell them in my golf shop? And I said, maybe. And I didn’t have a name, I just had the size in the back. So I grabbed my friend, we went to a martini bar and we named the brand Golftini. I have a passion for breast cancer awareness and research and everything. And so I was thinking about something being pink to represent my mother. And Golftini was the word on the napkin.

But then we drew a little martini glass and we made it light pink. So it’s always light pink on, no matter what since day one. So it’s just a little light pink logo in memory of my mom and now I support a lot of breast cancer research and awareness through every sale. So that’s the net-net, but I started with making skorts and then I made tops and now I make sweaters and now I’m making everything and men’s.

Yeah, just so easy like that, right? Just go make a skort. No, it’s been an amazing journey. We started with printed and patterned skorts. My friends were like, will you make me a top? And I’m like, I don’t have time. I’m raising these three boys. I said, just wear your Lacoste. And then it kind of took off in these stores and I ended up at a trade show at the PGA show in 2005.

Not knowing anything, I had a banner made. I made some shirts. I sourced some sweaters. And I took my two friends and we went. And I told my family, when we get back, everything will be back to normal. I’ll make dinner again. And this is what we call the new normal. I’ve made dinner since. I can order it and manage it, but like, yeah. So it’s been amazing. I’ve learned everything probably the hard way. I now can hire people who can do things that are better at it than I am.

But like from the start, it was just really figuring out how to like, bill a customer. At that show, I got a big order for $70,000 on my first day. And I had one lady making one at a time in New York. So that was a challenge right out of the gate and I had six weeks and I didn’t have any money left. So I just figured it out, which sounds crazy. It sounds like crazy talk, but yeah, it’s been such a change in 19 years where, when I started, I didn’t tell anyone I was women-owned because that wasn’t, you can’t get a loan 19 years ago.

Yeah, so, you know, it’s just, it’s changed. Like my best friends are my golfing friends now. Like it’s brought so much. My kids were basketball players and I know you love golf now, Ryan, but they thought it was stupid, you know, 19 years ago. And now they’re all addicted and we have a pretty cool foursome competitive.

Well, for women, like when I started, the 40 to 55 year-old, but now it’s the 20 to 80. I just went to Pinehurst with my 80-year-old friend, and girlfriend, and she walked three rounds this last week. And it was incredible. And so it’s everyone. And then in the men’s market, I’ve got younger kids. And then I call the dads the 20s to the 80s. So it’s anyone. The men’s is exciting to talk about now. And just because I’ve never done it, I feel like I’m starting over. And I learned a lot. It is launching officially in two weeks. And, but we have this stuff, almost everything right now, and we’ve tried and tested it and gotten feedback. And we launched it at the PGA show. I was gonna wait till 2025 for my 20th anniversary, but I decided to push it forward because I got excited. It has a big play on pink, Navy in pink, and the reason behind it, besides the three boys pushing me, is the men’s market is bigger and I can give back more because we give 1% of all sales back. And so I figured let’s get in the game, let’s get the men in the game and have some fun.

I love that question. One, I’ve been in the space. At my first PGA show, someone said they would buy from me if I was back the next year. And I’m thinking, why wouldn’t I be back? And they also said ship complete and ship on time. And I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t know things could happen. I didn’t know anything. So I was like, OK. And the next year I was back. And I said that this man who bought for a lot of places came by. And I said, I’m back. And he said, I know, I’ve been watching Golftini and you’re doing a great job. But I think what initially kept me in the game is I was in it. I had to fill this big first order. And so I had to make more than I needed. So I had to sell and my first career was in sales.

So I’m always selling. I love selling. I’m selling when I don’t even know I’m selling. I’m having, meeting someone at the coffee shop and the next thing you know, they’re buying Golftini. So like, I think the sales in me kept it thriving. And I also was born in the Midwest and the customer’s always right. But I started a company in the Northeast, no offense to the Northeast, but you’re not always right there.

So I did all the right things. I shipped on time and shipped completely based on the strategy that told me to do that. I never, I just did it. Like I didn’t, that’s all I knew. I like to get things right away. So if an order came in that day, we shipped it out that day and we still do that today. People are shocked that they get it so quickly. The customer is always right even if they’re not, in my book and in everyone who works for me. So I have two fabulous customer service girls. We answer the phone. They have relationships with my customers. They walk them through it. They help them find their size. That is why I think that we are still in business and people respect us and I won’t put out a bad product, like quality wise. So I just, it’s quality and it’s service. And now the aspect of when I couldn’t afford to give a dime back, I put a little label, in pink, on all my clothes that said, we support breast cancer awareness. And I would donate a skort to a club and they would raffle it and they would give money back. And the minute I was able to give some back, I’ve continued to do that.

I’m a public speaker now. It’s fun. I speak from my heart. Like when I say that, people ask me to talk about my story and hopefully I inspire people to do what they dream of. I mean, I didn’t dream of this, but I can’t even imagine what I’d be doing if I didn’t do this. This is my entire existence and I’ve met amazing people.

I work with my son, my other one wants to come in, and the third one’s on the fence. So it is, it’s pretty special what I get to do every single day. I’m stressed out and kind of a perfectionist on most days, but I do get out and have fun. And my fun is playing golf and playing, you know, meeting people. Like golf is a common denominator.

Like you talk golf, I was at Pinehurst and I’m running into people that know me, they’re in Golftini, they’re from, you know, all over the country. Like to me, that’s fun. The very first time I saw someone I almost attacked them. Now I’m like kind of cool but not that cool. I’m still excited every single time I see someone wearing a Golftini that I don’t know. Like I’m kind of crazy like that.

Well, it depends on the season. We just were talking about that because we just finished designing 2025. We went through phases and I started with one length scored it was all stretch cotton. I still make a stretch cotton score just because I like it. We’ve switched to performance fabrics. We now do two lengths for the women and that’s like opening up a whole new, I think it’s opened up the younger, the shorter, the personal preference, pickleball, tennis, sport. Everyone’s running around in a golf or tennis outfit, like just off the golf course. So it all started with a printed-in patterned score. And that was kind of my recognizable part of Golftini. All my shirts were solid. It just was like the party was on the bottom and that’s what we did. And so we added a little party to the men’s, just a little touch of fun on the back pockets. So you have to look at our website. They’re on there now. But it just has a stripe and a martini very tastefully on the back pockets. So it’s the little touches of detail that we do that people like. So I have some wow, like, fun prints. And then I have solids, but just little touches of detail.

We have this Be an Athlete jacket and two sports, two different lengths. It’s water-resistant. It comes in a bunch of colors. People can’t wait for the next color. That’s a big hit right now. People talk about our sweaters all the time. I love our sweaters. People love our sweaters more than I love our sweaters. We dye them to match. We do have the same solid colors every year, so you can wear that same shirt with the shorts you already have in your closet. But then I have the people that want all the new ones, so those are my super fans, which are fun. But it’s fun to see an older skort and takes me back to where I was when I designed it. I remember it. We name all our skorts, so we’re in the Adventure collection right now. We’re going into the GetUp and Go collection, and we just put fun names on the back of each skort.

So we have fun with that and marketing has fun with that. Ryan has changed my marketing in the last four years. People who don’t know he’s my son say, your marketing has changed for the better in the past four years. So it’s been fun to watch Ryan learn and the team like how to do things that I don’t know how to do. And I still don’t know how they do them, but they bring them to me and I trust what they’re doing and I get the feedback that it’s great

Yeah, so I’ve been here for four years now. And like I said, I didn’t have a marketing background. I studied in school, but they don’t teach you how to use any of these applications. It’s hard to reach out to anybody in the space without just working directly with an agency or having somebody who is a mentor or something like that. So it was a lot of testing and learning for me. When I came in, I picked up email marketing. It was about 50% of our online revenue. It’s still roughly that today. It’s grown 5x since I’ve been here. I think our list was 6,000. We’re roughly 35,000 now. And that’s just our daily list that we send to. So email marketing has always been big. It’s how we communicate with our customers. But with this brand Susa,n had mentioned being a perfectionist. And we really, do sweat the small things. We want our customer journey to be really important.

So I’m always working on just buttoning that up and making sure everything looks professional. That comes from our end. In the last two to three years, we’ve started doing some PPC advertising with Facebook, Google, and Instagram. A great way for us to get new customers. Very skeptical when we initially started doing it, but it’s proven it brings people in. It increases brand awareness. And for us to just continue to funnel in new customers and just show them new products, it’s been a great way for us to grow our list and expand our reach. And then in the last year, we’ve started kind of going backward and working on social media marketing and building our story

I think for a long time people knew who we were, but didn’t exactly know that maybe we donated to breast cancer awareness or that, you know, the logo is light pink and always was and always is for breast cancer awareness and that we’re a women-owned brand. So we’ve started utilizing our social media platforms to tell our story, to put my mom in the forefront. And, you know, people do want to see her. They wanna talk to her. And when we were at the masters that all these events people are running around and at the PGA show, it’s celebrity status. And it was cool for me to see it for the first time, it was and still is. So people get very excited about it. It’s kind of in our little world. But we’ve always just wanted to kind of get my mom to the forefront and it’s her story. It’s her brand when people hear Golftini or hear Susan Hess, they think of Golftini. So it’s pretty much synonymous but
Social media marketing, email marketing, and then PPC are kind of our big three right now. And we’re diving into affiliates. We’ve just rebuilt a loyalty program. So customer journey is very important. We just want to kind of celebrate that with our partners and be able to give them a portion of that if they push the brand forward. And so we’re always just looking to grow and improve our methods.

And I’m still gorilla marketing. Like we match and when I play golf with all these ladies, we all come up, show up, we’re all matching, which is fun. We do have two women golfers on tour. I’ve always had someone on tour just to help them. I dress them, they’re appreciative, it’s fun. Lindsay Weaver just had a baby and she’s back at it and she’s wearing Golftini and then I have another two other girls that are on the other tour, which is just fun to watch them and stay interested and know that we are helping them because unless they win, they’re not making any money. So it’s fun to watch them, you know, make the cut and play and, you know, see it on TV is fun.

Well, I love what I do, so I can’t imagine not doing it. I do want to be recognizable. If I meet someone, I want to say, do you know Golftini? I want them to say yes. I still meet people that say, no, I’ve never heard of it. And I’m like, OK, I got to work on that.
I feel like every single day I want to do it better and differently. I think the men’s could be fun with this. Designing it’s just a whole different, men are easy, like small, medium, and large. Women have their differences, it’s just totally different how you design it. But I think moving forward, keep growing, keep giving back.

I support it, right now I’m with the American Cancer Society and this group called Pink Aid. And one is research, as you know, American cancer, they’re huge. And then the other one is like compassion until there’s a cure and they give every single dollar that we raise like back to someone that needs gas for their car to get to their treatment.

They touched my heart last year and I was already committed and I said to Ryan, I’m going rogue on this one. I need to do it, it feels good. So right now that’s who we’re working with. But we do give donations and we’re focusing on the breast cancer aspect of it. I have friends who are survivors of 20 years. I have friends who now have daughters who have gotten it. People are still getting it you know, there’s a percent of men that get it. So it’s just like, it’s something that hits home for me. And it feels good to give back. We always have something pink. But it just feels good. All this work. And it is work like it’s just if it wasn’t work, everyone would do it. I don’t know.

It wasn’t a planned plan. And that’s what I say to everyone. If you have an idea, just do it. I have failed along the way in many areas, but then I just get better. And I just never quit. I mean, I didn’t have a chance. I couldn’t, because I was in it. But there was maybe one day in all the days that I was like, you know what, enough is enough. But then the next day, I’m right back at it.

The pandemic was scary at the beginning, like what if no one buys anything ever again? So that was just a challenge in itself, like with everyone else, I packed boxes and, I packed boxes, that’s what I did. So, and made emails and did stuff that I didn’t even know what I was doing and we just did it. But that was fuzzy now. But no, I wanna keep doing what I’m doing and maybe this will be a legacy thing that I pass on. But for now, this is where I am.

Yeah, I hope my two brothers join the force and we get more martinis out there. So that would be my goal is having us four together working would be, even for a couple of years, a cool experience.

Um, I’m not sure. I mean, I think that if you’re new to golf or new to business, go for it. I think that golf is, as Steven, you’re a golfer, like you know, like it is this like amazing, like just group effort of like-minded people that like to do something that’s crazy, a little ball like way down the fairway into a little hole, which can make you insane. But I played on Sunday, it was cold, and we just like powered through, you know, but I’ve played at beautiful places. I’ve traveled with women that I don’t even know all over the world. That, and I’ve just been able to do that in the last couple of years, and I’ve met amazing people doing it. So, I mean, I think golf is amazing and I think business is fascinating and the two together is just like where I want, this is the space I wanna be in. So.

And I would say just check out the men’s line. It’s coming out in two weeks. And we’re out.

It’s different. It’s fun, but it’s everything.

What do you think?

Yeah, and that’s what we tried to do. And like we say, we Golftini eyes, whatever we make, so we just put a little twist, not too much on it, but we’re excited about it and there’s more to come. So yeah, buy men’s and keep buying women’s.

Perfect. Thank you very much. That was fun.