Ed Brown is not a well-known name in golf industry circles but, as they say, give him time. Former Patrón CEO Brown took fledgling tequila and turned it into a powerful ultra premium brand. He is also an accomplished race car driver, being part of the team that won the Rolex 24 at Daytona in 2016. A University of Texas graduate, it’s no surprise that Brown is also thinking big about golf. A good right-wing player who has tried his hand at professional golf, Brown is now CEO of Clear Sports, creator of the high-end line of Clear golf balls. In this interview with Golf Digest equipment editor E. Michael Johnson, Brown talks about his background in golf, the parallels between tequila and golf balls, and how a round of golf with a former New York Yankees player ultimately has resulted in the golf industry.
Tell me about your golf background?
I was pretty good as an amateur and actually tried playing pro for a couple of years. My dad said, “Here’s $ 10,000 and when you run out of money you’ll have to go to work.” I tried for a couple of years, but around that time I realized there had to be a better way to make a living. I played a lot early in my career at Seagram’s and Patrón because golf is a great work tool. But then I started racing cars professionally and did it for 15 years. I haven’t touched a golf club during that time. Once I retired from racing in 2017, I had the golf bug again, perhaps even worse. After I sold Patrón I played even more. Graeme McDowell is a good friend of mine and we play AT&T and Dunhill Links every year, and a couple of years ago we made the cut at AT&T. Being a scratch player that’s not easy to do. It was one of the funniest weeks I’ve had on the course in a long time.
How did you get in touch with Clear founder Garry Singer and what attracted you to the Clear brand?
I met Garry through Paul O’Neill, the former New York Yankees outfielder. Paul had asked me to play golf and was one of Clear’s ambassadors. Garry started telling me about the golf ball and sent me some and I thought it was a great golf ball. I didn’t really like the logo or the packaging, but it wasn’t mine at the time. I had recently sold Patrón and Garry asked me to come aboard. I didn’t really want to go back to work so soon but it convinced me.
What have been some of the changes you have implemented?
I immediately made changes to the logo and packaging. In the beginning it was also a subscription program, to which I told him: “I guess then you are involved in sales prevention.” They had to make it accessible to everyone. I have seen a lot of synergies between high quality drinks / alcohol and high quality golf equipment. My wheelhouse is ultra premium products and how to push the price ranges with the consumer and how you explain yourself to that consumer to be able to sell them.
I felt that the golf industry in general was ripe for it. There had been some success with brands like PXG. I’m friends with Bob Parsons and have had a lot of conversations with him about the golf club industry, and I think he did a great job of raising golf club prices. The golf ball is an important piece of equipment for the best player. It was intriguing to get into the dynamics of it all and figure out how you could market this golf ball and get it out there and explain to people that it’s the most important piece of equipment you use.
Quite right. But golf clubs are durable. You will have them for several years, maybe longer. And while Template it is a consumable, you know you will enjoy the whole bottle. A golf ball can be lost in one shot. That said, how do you convince golfers that the prize is worth?
That’s a great question. If you look at golfers, we’re all as crazy as they are when it comes to finding that unicorn to help us play better. We are all chasing him. Golf balls are close to most on distance. So, you look at accuracy and that’s a point of difference for Clear. Our tests show an incredibly tight dispersion. For good players, this is really important. I disagree that it’s not an easy sale. But even selling $ 40 bottles of tequila when everyone else was $ 15 wasn’t an easy sale. It will take time. It takes an educational process and a key part for us was getting a tour player to use it.
You have that player Charl Schwartzel, who played very well at the 3M Open with the ball. How difficult was it to get a player, especially a former Masters champion, to sign?
I’ve done very difficult things in my career and finding a player on tour was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I thought it would be easy, because I know so many. Even with Charl, we got along right away and probably played 20 rounds of golf together trying to get him to play the ball. I didn’t push it, though. My approach to tour players has always been to not ask them to change if they didn’t feel it was something that would make them play better. We didn’t want another Bubba Watson-type situation where there was a problem when he changed golf balls. This would not help the player and it would not help Clear. But Charl’s play this year shows the ball behaving. Now we have to educate the consumer.
Golfers take so long to search for the perfect driver head and shaft. The same with irons and wedges. What I’m looking for with Clear is to start adapting people to the golf ball. We will have a formation of about five different balls with which we can do this and get people into the best ball to suit their game. Golfers are a unique breed in that they look for whatever is the best equipment that allows them to shoot their best round.
On the Clear website, the description of golf ball technology is rather superficial. Is this something you are looking to change as it is a category that tends to promote technology or do you feel it is more of a branding game?
We will push the ball technology out and why it is better. We are preparing to launch a couple of balls, Proto 1 and Proto 4, in September. Proto 4 is the ball that Charl plays and Proto 1 is the ball we developed for Justin Rose. Those will be the two lead balls for us and when we throw we will be very aggressive in talking about their technology and why people should play with it. If you do this and are consistent with your messages and never have to apologize for your product, you put yourself in a good position.
These are the keys to developing a relatively unknown brand and it’s easier to build brand awareness now or 20 years ago when you were getting Template going?
It’s a bilateral answer to your question. Thanks to social media and digital media, there are ways to directly target your consumer more efficiently. From this aspect it is a little easier. The other side, however, is that the consumer is much more educated because at the touch of a screen they can research and discover anything. Twenty or 25 years ago you could make claims about your product and no one could verify it. You can’t do that today. Social media is also a place where people can badmouth your product if it doesn’t live up to the claims. But on balance I think it is easier and more convenient. In the past you had to cover all forms of media to reach the consumer. We are building a great direct-to-consumer program with Clear because I think it will be hard to beat the greats in the traditional golf retail space. We also have incentives for club professionals, even if purchased through our website. The consumer can enter which club he belongs to and the professional still gets the incentive. But to make a dent we must primarily go directly to the consumer.
Is it part of the appeal of this brand that it is not a well-known brand and gives golfers the feeling of “look what I have that you don’t have” on the first tee?
Absolutely. I don’t care if it’s golf balls, tequila or handkerchiefs. Consumers will pay a little more because they want to have something that someone else doesn’t have. There is something beautiful about having a ball unlike anyone else in your quartet. There is a mystique to this. But it has to work as promised.
What’s the most exciting part of being in the golf business for you?
I want to be disruptive and change what has been the norm, but I want to do it right. When I started with Patrón, Cuervo was the monstrous brand of tequila and people were trying to get me to speak ill of Cuervo. I would not. They opened the door for consumers to know what tequila was in the United States. It is the same in this. I will never talk about Titleist, Callaway, TaylorMade and others because they have truly opened the door for all other golf ball brands. There are many quality golf balls. But what makes my blood flow is the ability to be disruptive. I think we can shake things up a little.
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