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Eastside Golf is opening its first U.S. store at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in July.The 300-square-foot store will be located in the McNamara Terminal at gate 34.
Eastside Golf — the apparel brand known for its “Swingman” logo of a young Black man wearing a sweatshirt and jeans with a gold chain around his neck while swinging a golf club — is opening its first U.S. store at Detroit Metro Airport this month.
The 300-square-foot store, located in the McNamara Terminal at Gate 34, will offer its Swingman logo sweatshirts, tracksuits, polos and bucket hats and will be operated in partnership with Paradies Lagardère, the operator of PGA Tour shops.
Eastside Golf founders Olajuwon Ajanaku and Earl Cooper describe the store’s opening as a “full-circle moment.”
Both Ajanaku and Cooper, who met when they were golf teammates at Morehouse College in Atlanta, have several ties to Detroit. Cooper was born in Flint and spent years working as a PGA teaching professional at the Detroit Golf Club.
Ajanaku, after playing professional golf for a few years, started working in commercial finance. After 10 years, he was about to get a promotion to vice president of sales.
“I got home one day, fully suited, and I was just like, ‘This ain’t it,’ ” Ajanaku said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press. “First off, it’ll take 25 years until they let me become president of the company. But also, that’s just not where my heart is.”
He created the Swingman logo and showed it to Cooper, who said he should put it on a T-shirt. He did, and while he was working as a Midwest regional sales manager for a finance firm and spending a lot of time in Detroit, he wore the T-shirt walking around downtown Detroit.
“I got stopped 100 times,” he said, with people asking, “Who are you? What’s that logo? Where can I get it? Do you play golf?”
That’s when Ajanaku said he knew he had something with the brand. Eastside Golf was founded in 2019, and has come a long way since Ajanaku was fulfilling orders out what was then the Jeffersonian Apartments along the Detroit riverfront.
The opportunity for the store at Detroit Metro Airport came after Eastside Golf was one of the top-selling brands at the PGA Tour airport stores operated by Paradies Lagardère.
More brick-and-mortar stores are a part of the brand’s strategy moving forward. Eastside Golf will have a pop-up shop in New York City, Cooper said, and earlier this year, the brand announced partnerships with Nordstrom, Golf Galaxy, DICK’S Sporting Goods and House of Sport. The company also operates a retail store in Tokyo.
“We take so much pride in the development of our products and it’s nothing like being able to touch and feel the garment, especially when you look at the price point — not to say it’s expensive — but it’s one of those things where it may take the ability to touch and feel it (for someone) to say, “Alright, you know what, I’m ready to do it,’ ” Cooper said.
While the brand isn’t named after Detroit’s east side (it refers to Atlanta’s Eastside, where Ajanaku grew up playing golf), Ajanaku and Cooper would love to open a store in the city.
“We’re just big fans of the city and … who knows, one day we hope to have a brick and mortar downtown or somewhere in Detroit, maybe on the east side,” Cooper said.
Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com
