Depressed by the boring clothes that golfers traditionally wear on the fairway, two university friends have set about shaking up the sport’s stuffy image. They have launched ‘Dressed To A Tee’, a clothing range that aims to do for golf what Fat Face and White Stuff have done for ski and sailing style.

Sam Varney and Harry Green are self-confessed golfaholics. On holiday in Ireland they camped in nearby fields to get the early-bird slot on the first tee, and they play in all weathers, in pursuit of the perfect round.

‘We had a slightly younger, more relaxed approach to the game,’ says Green, ‘but there was no clothing out there at the time that we would wear, so we felt there was an opportunity to get into the market with well-designed, good-quality clothing that would appeal to our market.’

Adorned with slogans

Currently, Dressed To A Tee offers men’s and women’s T-shirts and polo shirts, balls, tees and pitch repairers. All are branded with the company’s logo and a variety of golfing slogans. The clothing is all 100% organic cotton, sourced from Portugal.

The company’s core focus is 25- to 35-year-olds, but Green has found that all age groups are buying their clothes.

‘We certainly don’t want to exclude anyone, but we don’t want to damage the brand, either,’ says Green.

As part of developing the company ethos, Green and Varney have constructed a marketing campaign around the ‘Swing Easy Tour’, which brings together characters based on their own friends who embody the ethos of the brand. The characters include Colonel Bogey, Vicar Chipper and Sister Swing.

Part of the thinking behind the ‘tour’ is to provide an opportunity to review golf courses on their website through the eyes of one of their characters. A redesigned and relaunched website will include blogs from the tour, as well as providing an opportunity to buy the gear.

Although the brand is all about injecting fun into the game, Green and Varney take development of the business very seriously. At an early stage they joined the Mentoring and Business Assistance programme at Coventry University Enterprises, where they tackled some of the fundamental start-up issues. One mentor on the course ran his own clothing company and talked the pair through areas such as supplier relationships and quality control, and even embroidery and collar development.

Three degrees

‘It felt like we had been doing a textile, design and business degree all at the same time,’ jokes Green. Not that they were completely inexperienced. Green once worked for Kingfisher, owner of Woolworths and B&Q, while Varney used to be with a market research company. ‘We both had experience in terms of branding and marketing, as well as a passion for golf,’ says Green.

It has taken two years to go from concept to trading.

‘We do pretty much all the work ourselves, but now we are at the stage where we understand what we want our business to be and are in a good position to add people who can take it on. This would free us to concentrate on marketing and selling.’

They are not looking for extra funding immediately, although Green says: ‘Our plan for the next two to three years is to expand the business organically, increasing the profile and gradually adding to our product range. However, we appreciate as we go from one stage to the next we will need to raise finance to keep expanding.’

Dressed To A Tee sells direct to the public through its website (www.dressedtoatee.co.uk), via other online retailers and through golf pro shops at a number of golf courses. With development behind them, Green and Varney will now be able to concentrate on growing the sales and pushing the ethos. As they say: ‘It’s our aim to make golf and golf clothing more fun, and in the process more appealing to a much wider range of people.’

The main challenges

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