Swag Golf Taps Into Collector Psychology To Drive Sales

‘Putterheads,’ aficionados who fawn over flatstick releases, tend to follow the same playbook as those obsessed with sneakers. Their interest gets piqued by limited-edition drops, custom one-offs and top shelf classics.

A sleek Scotty Cameron Santa Fe with a slightly offset neck is responsible for getting the ball rolling on Swag Golf CEO Nick Venson’s lifelong putter predilection. His obsession would eventually jumpstart his career as a purveyor of D2C putters, headcovers and apparel.

“It was an unattainable product for me at the time. It was up high on the shelf at the golf shop that I was working at and I just loved the way it looked. It had a shiny black finish and a copper insert in it and it was something that I basically couldn’t afford,” Venson says.

In grade 9 at the time, Venson took out a loan from his father and worked extra hours that summer in order to pay off that first putter. He began researching the market, poring over buy and sell forums and message boards to cultivate an understanding of the market for Scotty Cameron putters, the dominant player in the collectible market. He found that Japanese buyers were very interested in certain releases that were in short supply in Asia and so he began striking up relationships, making deals and bartering his way to an impressive collection.

“eBay wasn’t what it is now and there wasn’t a Golf WRX so I used that to my advantage to build and maintain a collection by swapping for putters that were hard to come by,” Venson explains.

As his profile as a collector grew, he became an authority on Scotty Cameron putters and in 2001 got a chance to design his own custom Scotty that got made. By his junior year in college at the University of Iowa, Venson decided to turn his side hustle into his full-time gig. He was approached to run a store in West L.A. called the Art of Putters which was one of the few Scotty Cameron distributors in the country at the time and made the decision to dropout of school to pursue his passion.

“My job was to be the liaison/concierge to these guys who wanted really cool custom one-offs or limited-edition tour product,” Venson says. Later Venson moved back to the Chicago are, where he’s from, and became a distributor for Bettinardi. Beyond his role as a key cog in their supply chain, he also chipped in on the planning, design and finishing of new releases for the domestic and Korean collector markets.

In 2018 he decided the time was ripe to go his own way. Armed with an attitude-laced ‘Don’t Give a Putt’ trademarked slogan and a logo he dreamed up years back of a skull wearing sunglasses, Venson assembled a team and launched Swag Golf. The D2C player quickly earned a reputation for pumping out limited-quantity pop art centric headcover designs and precision milled putters that sell out quicker than it takes to nuke a bag of microwavable popcorn.

“The golf world has always been a little more old-school and traditionalist. With the new generation of golfers coming in, and even including myself, I felt that there was nothing out there that really spoke to me or my friends who may not be your traditional golfers,” Venson explains.

“That’s the idea behind not giving a putt about what the rest of the industry thinks or what some other golfers or the country club thinks. It’s a way to express yourself in what I call the new age of golf,” he adds.

Instagram, where the company has 77,0000 followers, and to a lesser extent Facebook have been the company’s primary customer acquisition vehicles. Many similarly modelled D2C companies have seen margins crimped as Meta substantially raised advertising rates on their platforms in the past couple years, but Swag escaped the rate hike largely unscathed.

“We are a very unique company in that we chase the demand of our customers. The change in Meta’s advertising rates hasn’t really affected us. Since the inception of Swag four years ago we have spent less than $5000 total on social media ads,” Venson says.

The company does engage in influencer marketing with formal partnerships in place with three-time LPGA major winner Anna Nordqvist, social media golf personality Paige Spiranac, and skateboarder Eric Koston. They also have struck up licensing deals with the likes of Kraft-Heinz, Capcom, Vienna Beef and most recently WWE in order to grow their business and penetrate new markets.

“I think most people would probably say wrestling and golf don’t really go together. But we thought it would be a fun thing to do because we think there are guys that love WWE and golf,” Venson says.

A drop featuring ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin blade, mallet, driver and fairway wood headcovers, priced at $125 apiece, completely sold out yesterday in less than 60 seconds. In a bid for complete transparency, Swag keeps an archive on their website documenting the number of units in each product release which has ranged from as few as 12 to as many as 700 units per item the lasts couple months. Some Swag fans may feel frustrated if they miss a drop they had their eye on, but in a way, that’s exactly the point.

“One thing I always tell people which I think is funny to say is if we were making enough for everybody to get it all the time, it wouldn’t really be cool anymore. Part of the reason it’s cool is not everybody can get it,” Venson explains.

To reel in new customers who may not be either inclined or fleet-fingered enough to participate in drops, they launched a Spring apparel line via an e-commerce partnership with Saks Fifth Avenue.

“We’d seen success with all of our apparel on our own website in smaller batches and we had the pieces in place to take it a little bigger. So, when we got the opportunity to join Saks’ wellness collection it was a no-brainer for us to at least have a chance to align ourselves with some other luxury verticals in the space,” Venson adds.