What’s your definition of catching lightning in a bottle? How do you define stepping in it — big-time?
Try this: You’re this fledgling apparel company with a quirky name, Quagmire Golf, headquartered in the noted fashion capital of Mississauga, Ontario (okay, actually a suburb of reasonably cosmopolitan Toronto), and you’re cranking out slightly irreverent, somewhat directional golf sportswear because you basically think Ashworth, Adidas and Nike are too establishment.
Then, because Canadian professional golfers are a hip but disadvantaged lot, they start hitting you up for free product. With all that positive feedback, you figure why not take a flyer and check in with the big boys. So you start surfing the web, looking for PGA Tour golfers who fit your demographic and budget (read: total unknowns who have never won).
You quickly cross-reference the players and contact the agents representing said unknowns. One of them bites.
You decide you’re going to sponsor Chez Reavie, who was 18th on the Nationwide Tour money list (with one victory) last year and also won the 2001 Public Links Championship, but has little else to recommend him as a future winner on the PGA Tour, much less a breakout star. But, get this, he’s 26, has game and really digs the clothes.
And then the PGA Tour comes to town (and by "town" we mean colloquially because we really do like Toronto) for what also happens to be your country’s national championship of golf. Your guy climbs the leaderboard the first day, shoots lights out the rest of the way, and, in a feel-good, up-with-Canada golf story Lorne Rubinstein wouldn’t have predicted, goes wire to wire to win the title.
After four days of cheering Chez on, getting him some of the newest styles, tweaking and stitching on last-minute logos, he rides into the winner’s circle ahead of guys named Kim, Weir and Furyk. You spend that Sunday night dining and partying with Chez. The next morning your phone is ringing and you’re asking equity investors to prepare their presentations.
Well, with an emphasis on the last 96 hours, that’s a short history of the last three years of Quagmire Golf, a company that loves its name, even if it makes you scratch your head.
"That’s why we did it," said co-founder Geoff Tait. "Quagmire is the shit, a tough situation. Everyone else is so clean-cut. Look at Ashworth, Fairway & Greene. We want to be known as these two dudes who are telling you if you hit in the quagmire, it doesn’t matter."
Said partner Bobby Pasternak: "Quagmire is the long grass, the marsh, the stuff you hit your ball in if you’re not the best golfer. Hence our motto: ‘Not Fit for the Fairway.’"
Before dismissing Mr. Tait, 29, or Pasternak, 25, as the unlikely beneficiaries of impossibly good fortune and timing, it’s worth considering that chance favors the prepared soul. These guys have been at it for three years, with Tait having some limited previous experience in design (he made beach pants while a university student in Australia), and Pasternak having embraced entrepreneurialism with an events-promotion business while studying business at McGill in Montreal.
The two met while leading 30 teen tourists on a three-and-a-half-week summer golf fantasy camp that toured Florida’s PGA Tour venues. (Who knewthatexisted?)
While leading the teens through Bay Hill, TPC Sawgrass and the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Tait and Pasternak couldn’t help but notice how the kids dressed. "Even though they were golfing kids," Pasternak said, they were wearing non-golf-specific brands: heavy on Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle with doses of surf and skate brands (Billabong and Volcom) thrown in.
Tait and Pasternak saw an opening. "It started as a casual younger line, with the kids in mind," Pasternak said. "But we realized there needed to be something more. Something we could wear on and off the golf course."
So while there are elements of surf and skate, there’s a bit of retro inspiration as well. There’s some color blocking, piping, contrast pockets and plackets. Is it entirely original? Of course not, but tell me what is? We’d stop short of saying there’s some club kid influence because it’s sporty enough that a young golfer would think to wear it first on the golf course.
And while Tait and Pasternak may sound like rag-trade rebels, they at least have a passing knowledge of previous revolutions. "I know John Ashworth’s story," Tait said. "I was a 13-year-old kid wearing Ashworth and playing golf."
So while they’ve opened about 275 golf accounts (about 80 percent are in Canada), they have 15 sales reps on board for spring 2009. Both Tait and Pasternak declined to state annual sales. Still, both are aware that distribution is equal to image, and Tait said they prefer to take a small order from a hip sportswear store than a giant order from a mid-tier department store chain, like The Bay.
In fact, when The Bay (a Canadian cross between J.C. Penney and Kohl’s) came calling, Tait and Pasternak had never seen a purchase order with so many zeros. And yet they held off.
"The Bay has approached us a million times," Tait said. "If we sell The Bay, there goes our street cred. You got to make a plan."
And sometimes it helps if the stars align, as well.
Reporter’s notebook: While Reavie has a two-year deal, Tait confirmed that he will be paid a bonus. Quagmire was a compromise name with Tait urging "Dirty Ditch" and Pasternak lobbying for "Muck & Mire." Of the 30 kids on the fateful Florida trip, 16 have retained lawyers and are filing a class action suit for Quagmire’s failure to disclose that they were, unbeknownst to them, being used as a focus group.*
*These last two sentences are total fiction. We just wanted to see who’s reading to the end.