Vancouver’s Haywood Golf Debuts Woods Line

Golf’s recent boom may feel like it’s approaching the 18^th hole and ready to recede but industry experts retain their bullish stance on the sport’s future. According to a recently published Infiniti Research report, the global market for golf clubs is forecast to grow by over $700 million from 2022-2027, increasing at a compound growth rate of 2.7% per annum.

Haywood Golf, a Vancouver based clubmaker run by Joshua Haywood and his fiancée Haley Lloyd continues to ride the wave. Haywood undercuts the prices of the big OEMs by removing the middleman from the equation and going the direct-to-consumer route. They’ve carved out a niche in the marketplace by milling timeless looking premium clubs at a more affordable entry point.

A seven-club set of their CB Irons, a cavity back design, go for $799. For comparison, a same-sized 4 iron to pitching wedge set of the Callaway Apex TCB irons Jon Rahm has in his bag start at $1400. A set of that same brand’s entry level Rogue ST Max game improvement irons run for $999.

Before plunging into clubmaking, Haywood was the head of business development and sponsorship for Small Business British Columbia, a non-profit focused on supporting B.C. based entrepreneurs as they started and grew their businesses. The job he held for three years provided a firsthand education into what it took to create a successful venture.

“It was an interesting time in my life because it allowed me to see what other people were doing, their processes, the amount of work that it took and the type of entrepreneurs that succeeded and the ones that ultimately failed. I noticed difference in personalities and work ethics,” Haywood explains.

His partner Lloyd has a similar background, with a decade working as a business development manager for a variety of digital agencies under her belt.

“I was exposed to a lot of different industries and saw businesses grow from the ground up and in different stages of their lifecycle. I saw how they developed products, what their ethos was, and that has helped me round out and handle the marketing of Haywood,” Lloyd says.

The spark to build a direct-to-consumer golf equipment brand came five years back when Josh was visiting GolfTown, Canada’s largest golf retailer, on the hunt for a fresh set of wedges. The grooves on his Vokeys were worn out and he was looking to upgrade to the newest model. When the clerk rang him up at the register and the price came out $700 for three clubs, he balked.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money, it was more that I didn’t understand why I should pay this much for new wedges,” Haywood recalls.

He just couldn’t justify the expenditure, feeling there just wasn’t enough of a value-add in his mind between the company’s legacy clubs and their new models.

“I didn’t understand the difference between a Vokey from five years ago versus today and I still don’t. I’m not knocking them—they are a great product. All the major manufacturers make really good products but when you look at a Vokey wedge today versus ten years ago, what has really changed other than the cost? It’s not like they have improved the materials and changed them,” Haywood adds.

With his interest piqued, Haywood spent a solid six months researching how golf clubs are made, quizzing suppliers and interviewing metal experts. It wasn’t like he was starting straight from scratch, he had tinkered with assembling his own clubs in his youth, but manufacturing them and navigating the world of forging, finishing, milling and grinding was unfamiliar territory. His due diligence proved eye-opening. He realized it was possible to make clubs of the same quality and performance as the big OEMs, despite lacking their purchasing power, and sell them at a more attractive price point minus the big-boys retail markup.

Haywood went through 20-something prototypes before debuting their initial wedge line in 2018. The couple, who kept their day jobs for the first 18 months of operation, bootstrapped the company themselves and to date have not taken on any outside investors. Their startup costs were in the ‘mid five-figures’ ballpark and the company netted just $20,000 in its first year in operation. But growth has been impressive with their top-line revenue hitting the million mark just four years later.

“The [initial] investment was a big chunk of money. At that time, Haley and I were changing jobs and it was a risk for sure,” Haywood admits.

Golf gear heads, obsessed with new clubs made up the bulk of early customers but over time their demographic has morphed to mirror the general consumer golf market, attracted by the aesthetics, price point and positive customer reviews.

“Most people are drawn to our products through word of mouth and other people that are using them and we think that type of review is much more powerful than seeing an ad for a product that we are so inundated with constantly now,” Lloyd explains.

While they run occasional ads on Facebook and Instagram, putting customer service first is the lynchpin of their marketing strategy. After going into a tangent on his experience dealing with an endless maze of automated prompts trying to reach a human on his cell phone provider, Haywood apologizes for his passion for the subject before dialing into what it means to his company.

“It’s talking to people directly, having them call and having me answer, it’s getting back to emails in less than 24 hours. Our turnaround time for emails is 3-4 hours tops. It’s making sure that any questions that they have in order to purchase our clubs are answered, any questions during the process and after the fact; it’s making sure they feel supported and valued as a customer because they are. We care,” Haywood explains.

After two years of development and fine tuning the structure and internals of their woods, the company is getting set to release their debut drivers and fairway woods which will be available for presale later this month. They ran the final product, a titanium bodied and carbon fiber topped big stick with an adjustable hosel to change the loft, through the paces at Golf Laboratories in San Diego, the industry leader in independent equipment testing. When the driver was swung at 95 mph on the robot, the total driving distance was 247 yards putting them within a yard of the leading brands.

“That was the goal for us. It was not to beat them. Our goal was to say our woods perform the exact same as all the new products out there and we are still going to be 25-30% less expensive,” Haywood explains.

Emerging players in the golf equipment space tend to focus on putters, irons or wedges because woods are multi-material and much more costly to produce, especially when we’re talking about producing an original product as Haywood is and not just slapping a logo onto an open-source design from an overseas manufacture.

“It’s a big endeavor for us. I honestly didn’t expect us to be at this stage yet. When we started I thought we’d never get into woods. We don’t have massive funding behind us—it’s not like we have millions of dollars sitting in a bank account that is ready to go. We are still bootstrapping today. We’ve come a long way and continue to do well but it is a very big expense,” Haywood explains.

Following the same tack they took with their club lines, Haywood does not intend to release a new incarnation of their woods for the 2024 golf season. Low-spinning and super-forgiving versions are on the drawing board but in terms of looks, performance and feel, there will not be a redesign for at least a few years when they feel advances in club technology merit a revamp.