As elite professionals like Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and Brendon Todd head from the 18th green to the clubhouse, they may carry different clubs and represent different sponsors, but within their golf bags, there is one brand in common – STITCH® Golf. Known for designing handcrafted premium leather and knit headcovers, STITCH Golf products continue to be the preferred choice of top golfers and their caddies around the world.
“We have product in the bags of well over 100 players on the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, Champions Tour – and the vast majority of those are not sponsored,” says Brad King, STITCH Golf CEO. “They carry the product because they like the product – and that says something.”
While STITCH Golf continues to make a splash in the golf industry around the world, the company’s roots are right here in the Triangle.
Charlie Burgwyn, chief design and creative officer, founded STITCH® Golf in 2011 after creating a custom headcover that was distributed at one of the largest golf events in the world.
“During our first year, we had the ambitious goal to get STITCH products into the top 100 golf clubs in the country – by the end of the year, we were in 93 of them,” Charlie remembers. “By year two, we were in hundreds of locations across the U.S., Japan, Korea and Europe.
Quite a feat for a new player in an industry known for its commitment to tradition and dominated by well-entrenched brands like Titleist and Callaway.
As STITCH Golf continued to gain brand recognition and customer loyalty, Charlie knew he wanted to expand the company to offer more than just club covers. Then, one afternoon in 2015, as Charlie was having lunch with his father at Prestonwood Country Club, in walks his high school golf coach Brad King.
Brad, a Cary native, was a member of MacGregor Downs Country Club in 1990 when he was approached by the principal at Apex High School about helping coach the golf team.
“I was young at the time – in my mid-20s and recently married, and figured I could relate to these young guys so I agreed to it,” Brad remembers.
A former business leader, by 2015 Brad was doing consulting work and agreed to meet regularly with Charlie to discuss opportunities to expand the STITCH brand.
“I had a great coach-player relationship with Charlie and I was interested in the work he was doing. I needed to wrap my mind around an industry I didn’t know much about, but I made a commitment to guide him in the process and see where those conversations would take us.”
By 2016, Brad presented to Charlie a business plan of how to evolve the company into a larger brand within the golf industry and then agreed to join the company as its chief executive officer.
“We created some fresh products – including our SL1 golf bag, Ultimate Garment Bag (UGB) and apparel – and presented them during the 2017 PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando,” Brad says. “We wanted to see if the consumer could view us as something more than a club cover company.”
The bags in particular, designed to be lightweight, innovative and stylish, were a natural next step for the company whose aim it is to help customers “dress your game.”
“We see it all the time – a man pulls up to the clubhouse in his luxury vehicle with his pressed golf apparel, opens the hatch and pulls out a golf bag that’s kind of a mess,” says Charlie. “They know which brands to wear and what cars to drive – but they don’t know how to put together a stylish golf bag. And, until STITCH, it was a segment of the booming golf industry that few brands had tried to touch.”
The feedback to the new products was tremendous. STITCH was mentioned as one of the PGA Show’s “best of” categories, helping the company continue to grow in recent years.
As the company looks to the future, Charlie and Brad believe the key lies in saying true to its brand strategy.
“We want to pull customers in with our golf bags and club covers, then expand to become part of their travel and leisure, and ultimately have them become brand ambassadors who want to wear our apparel,” Brad says. “We will remain a golf-focused company, but we’re excited to have some innovative products coming out in 2021 in all three of those segments that will truly wow the industry.”
Even with all the innovation, one thing will remain consistent – STITCH’s commitment to quality and detail.
“It’s even in our name,” Charlie says. “It’s about attention to detail – down to the very last stitch.”
STITCH Golf products can be found locally at Prestonwood Country Club, MacGregor Downs Country Club and online at www.stitchgolf.com.
