The Secret To Starting A Golf Brand Without Going Broke

Are you thinking about starting your own golf apparel brand but worried about wasting thousands on inventory that never sells? In this video, I’ll show you the secret to launching a golf brand profitably — using presale instead of retail.

Most golf brands fail within their first 12 months because they tie up all their money in product that just sits in the garage. But presale flips the script: you generate interest, collect money upfront, and let your customers fund your first bulk order.

You’ll learn:
✅ The difference between presale and retail (and why one is a trap)
✅ How to run a profitable presale campaign in your first year
✅ My proven strategy for locking in 40–100 unit sales from local golf outings before your product even arrives
✅ How to create urgency, build hype, and get golfers excited to buy your apparel

If you’re serious about building a golf brand that lasts, this is the playbook.

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#GolfBrand #GolfApparel #GolfBusiness #GolfMarketing #GolfEntrepreneur #PublicCountryClub

This is not a fun fact, but most golf apparel brands fail within their first 12 months of existence. But if you don’t want to fall into that same cycle, then continue watching this video because I am going to show you a proven way on how to launch your golf apparel brand profitably. Hi, I’m Derek. I started a golf apparel brand called Public Country Club, and I make videos on how to start and scale your very own golf apparel brand. So, if that sounds like something you’re interested in, please hit that subscribe button and let’s dive into the video. So, as I mentioned, most golf apparel brands will never see their first birthday before they shut down their website and close up their business. And why is that? It’s because they spend thousands of dollars on inventory that just sits in their garage collecting dust. But there is a smarter way. You have to focus on pre-sale, not retail. So, let’s break it down. What is retail? Well, to me, retail is any sale that comes through your website. What does retail look like? Well, retail means spending thousands and thousands of dollars on whatever you’re about to sell. polos, hats, hoodies, pullovers, whatever it is, spending thousands and thousands of dollars on unsold inventory in hopes that you get a sale. So those boxes arrive at your house, you stack them in your garage, you take pictures, you put them on your website, and then crickets. Literally nothing happens. And now you’re stuck. You have thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars tied up in unsold inventory that is just sitting there not moving. And then you start to pray that a social media post will blow up and take off or that Facebook ads course that you’re getting targeted on Instagram magically works and you sell hundreds of pieces and that’s simply just not going to happen. And that’s an incredibly tough spot for you to be in because during your first year of the brand, it’s all about brand awareness. So you have to have money readily available to throw into the business so you can run ads or uh get awareness out there about your brand or make content around your brand. And if all your money is tied up in unsold inventory, you your ship is sunk before it even takes off. Now, pre-sale, on the other hand, flips that completely. Instead of buying your inventory first, you sell your inventory first. So, you generate the interest, you collect the money, and then you place the bulk order. So, it’s doing the exact opposite of what a retail site would look like. So, your customers essentially fund your production. Think of it as like a Kickstarter for your brand. And why does pre-sale work? Well, pre-sale works for a few reasons. Reason number one is that pre-sale creates urgency, right? Like everybody wants to be part of the club before the club opens. And reason number two is that people want to believe in your brand and want to be part of your brand from the beginning. So with pre-sale, you have a 15 to 30-day window to pre-order your item. People don’t want to miss out. They sign up, they give you the money for the item before it even gets to your door. And then suddenly you have cash in hand before the boxes even show up. I like to call this the Bad Birdie method because if you listen to the story about Bad Birdie and how they launched their apparel brand, most of the time when Bad Birdie was launching, when they were on Shark Tank, they even mention it that they were pre-selling the items and they would be sold out before the item even hit their website. Like, that’s the goal. That’s the dream. There’s no overhead. There’s no risk when you’re pre-selling an item that everybody already wants. Now, how do you make that happen in your business? Well, stick around because I’m going to give you a few actionable tips on how to actually pre-ell your apparel before it even ends up at your door. So, tip number one is go where your audience is, right? Call your local golf shops and ask them about their outings. Every single course in your area has corporate outings, has company events, has charity outings, and things like that where they all need tea prizes. There’s an easy way to do this. Just call up any golf shop in your area. Hey, Mr. Pro. Um, my name is Derek. I run a golf apparel brand right here in our backyard and uh I know you guys do a lot of outings. I know you guys do a lot of corporate events and I know they’re always looking for tea prizes. I just want to see if it’d be possible for me to show you some of my apparel and see if we can’t pitch that as part of your tournament package this year. And golf shops are super receptive to this. You can phrase it in a way, hey, what I’d love to do is I’d love to sell you the shirts, you sell them as part of your tournament package. We both make a little bit of money on the deal and you never have to stock any of the product. And as an added bonus for making us an official vendor for your tournament package, what I’m going to do is I’m going to give all your employees uniforms for free for the upcoming season. Now you’re adding value on top of your value. You’re giving them a tea gift that they can’t get anywhere else. They’re dealing with a local vendor, which they love to do because they know you’re going to be reliable. They know you’re going to show up and they know where to find you if you don’t. And that’s how you create a win-win. They’re making more money off their tournaments and you’re selling 40, 50, 60, 100 pieces of apparel per tournament throughout the entire season. And if you can get them to lock in for a purchase order for one to two tournaments for the season just to try you out, you’ve automatically sold anywhere from 80 to 200 pieces before a single box arrives at your door. Tip number two, run a 15 to 30day pre-order window on your website, through your social media, through your email list. Your first 2 months, 3 months of launching a product aren’t actually launching the product. They’re building an email list for people to generate interest in your brand. Take that list and then offer a pre-sale. Hey, do you want early access to this brand that hasn’t even released yet? Well, I’m here to give that to you. And here’s what we’re going to do. If you place your order within the next 15 to 30 days, what’s going to happen is you’re going to receive a free gift once the product comes in. This is an exclusive offer only for our early bird investors like yourself. And that gift can be simple. It can be a hat. It can be a towel. It can be a thank you note. It can be, “Hey, here’s 20% off your purchases for the entire year for believing in us from the beginning.” Something as simple as that, generating interest before your brand even arrives at your door is a massive, massive, massive value ad to your company. And you can do that relatively simply by just creating general interest in your brand by creating content, building an email list, and marketing to those people before you even have anything in stock. Tip number three is how do you generate that interest in your product before you even have it in stock? Well, this is simple and it’s easy, but people overlook it all the time. What you need to do is you need to develop a story around your pieces. Every single one of our best-selling pieces in our first year all had one thing in common. They all had a really cool backstory to them. Our number one seller by far was our ode to Arie hoodie. And what that told me is very simply, people want to identify with the story. Our ode to Arie hoodie was an homage to Arnold Palmer, right? It had tea leaves on it. It had lemons on it. It had crowns on it because he was the king. I marketed it around that. And in this area where Arnold Palmer is from, it was a massive success. Simply put, products sit, stories sell. All right, I’m going to say that again because I think it’s important. Products sit on shelves, but stories sell. If you can get somebody to commit to the story and somebody to commit to what your brand stands for, they will choose your product over everybody else’s product every single time. It’s very simple. And our final tip, tip number four is create a sense of urgency. People aren’t going to get on your pre-sale list or they’re not going to pre-order something if you’re not offering them something exclusive or unique. So, offer them something exclusive. Create a membersonly exclusive VIP print or a VIP polo that they can only get during the pre-launch. They will line up at the door to get that because it’s exclusive and not everybody else can get it even once the company launches. So now you’re creating an additional value into your brand by offering this one time only print that you will get if you pre-order now. Even doing something exclusive like that is like a small run exclusive print can add so much value to your company and add so much money coming into your company that you wouldn’t have otherwise. And again, you’re not stocking any of the pieces that you pre-ell because they’re already sold as soon as they get to your house. All you have to do is package them and ship them out. So, by adding that exclusive print they can only get one time right now if they order right at this exact second, you’re adding urgency and you’re adding cash value into your brand. Now, don’t get me wrong, retail has its place in business. Once you’ve built your loyal customer base and you have cash flow coming into the business, then yes, carrying a bunch of inventory makes sense because you’re going to move through it. It speeds up fulfillment. It helps you scale to be able to sell into pro shops. But in year 1, pre-saling before you even place a bulk order is your lifeline. It’s how you’re going to survive long enough to grow. So, there you have it. Pre-sale versus retail. If you’re just starting your golf brand, like many of us are, pre-sale is essential. Please, please, please don’t gamble your savings on boxes of polos and and and outerwear and hats that are just going to sit in your garage. Pre-sale them. Create a hype. Build the brand while you’re building the brand. and let your customers who want you to succeed fund your launch. And as an added bonus, if you want to learn how to overcome objections when pitching to golf courses for their tournament packages, or if you want to take a deeper dive into your personal golf brand, I do offer some consulting work on the side. You can click the pin comment down below and schedule a time for us to talk. I would love to hear more about your brand and see how we can make it grow this year and next year and four, five, six years from now. So, please don’t forget to subscribe. It helps me out a lot and helps get this content out in front of more people. And until then, I will see you in the next one.