Unofficial Partner Podcast
Unofficial Partner Podcast
UP479 Wedge Issues: The Most Interesting Golf Brand You've Never Heard Of
This is an episode of Wedge Issues where we focus on the business of golf, with regular co-host, Jasmine Sanders, The Jazzy Golfer. Today we've got Luke Davies and Jojo Regan, founders of Manors Golf, the challenger brand that's rewriting the sport's marketing rule book.
This episode of Unofficial Partner is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is a new breed of agency that combines world class creativity with deep sponsorship expertise, flawless operational delivery.
And a culture of marketing effectiveness. We've got to know the team over the last few months. They're an impressive bunch who believe that sports marketing can and should be done better. They've got a creative philosophy of producing famous campaigns and activations that build buzz and conversation in a category that too often looks and sounds the same.
And they're pioneering a new standard of effectiveness in sports marketing using econometrics and attribution models to go beyond traditional media, ROI. So if you're looking for an agency to take your brand to the top, get in touch with the team at Sid Lee Sport where brands become champions.
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Hi, Richard Gillis here. Welcome to Unofficial Partner. This is an episode of Wedge Issues where we focus on the business of golf, with my regular co-host, Jasmine Sanders, the Jazzy golfer. Today we've got Luke Davis and Jojo Regan, who are founders of Manners. Which might be the coolest, most interesting golf brand you've never heard of.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:as someone who loves brands and a bit of a all the gear, no idea person. When I first adopt a sport, I want to find who are the brands that are really interesting me and support them and really dig in. And I just felt for golf, even though I'm an absolute sucker, there was just no brand that was pulling me in and telling the story that I kind of guess we felt that golf was actually defined by, and by that I mean not performance and just if you think of the way sports, like surfing or mountain running or, or cycling or snowboarding, like there's a big element which is about being good at it. But a far bigger element is just being outdoors, exploring, going on adventures. I just felt no one was communicating that story about golfers not a performance sport. It's, it's a lifestyle adventure. It's not epitomized by the PGA tour, which was very controversial, considering that's what every other brand defined their marketing campaigns about.
This episode of Unofficial Partner is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is a new breed of agency that combines world class creativity with deep sponsorship expertise, flawless operational delivery. And a culture of marketing effectiveness. We've got to know the team over the last few months. They're an impressive bunch who believe that sports marketing can and should be done better. They've got a creative philosophy of producing famous campaigns and activations that build buzz and conversation in a category that too often looks and sounds the same. And they're pioneering a new standard of effectiveness in sports marketing using econometrics and attribution models to go beyond traditional media, ROI. So if you're looking for an agency to take your brand to the top, get in touch with the team at Sid Lee Sport where brands become champions.
Richard Gillis:jazz, I need to just get you to introduce the guys'cause I don't know them. You do. I'm really, really interested in this. There's so many bits of this. Conversation that will resonate beyond golf
Jasmine Sanders:Yeah.
Richard Gillis:and into other things. But just set it up for us.
Jasmine Sanders:Yeah. So, I guess manners are fantastic outside the box thinking brand that have really come into their own over the last couple of years. They are, in my opinion, very, very unique. They're not necessarily doing what other clothing brands are doing, and I think there's a huge focus on the storytelling and the content, which we'll have to dive into because the business model behind that is also fascinating. We, we have Jojo Regan and Luke Davis, both co-founders of Man Manners joining us today. And yeah, I'm, I'm really excited just to get stuck in,
Richard Gillis:so we need the origin story. We need the superhero origin story. So just take us back a assume nothing, just give us, you know, a few minutes on the what and the why and all of that stuff.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Unfortunately, the, the origin story is, is less of a superhero story and more of a crash and burn for the first year and a half.
Richard Gillis:They often are,
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Me, me and Jojo have known each other since we were 13. I didn't play golf at that point, but when we left school, we reconnected. How, what year was that? Jojo
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:I think 2018.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:I reached out to Jojo just seeing on his Instagram that he played golf. And we organized the game. And I think anyone who comes to golf late in their life, they see that. The whole brand space of golf is very unwelcoming,
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:I've played golf my whole life, and Lou came to golf very late. But we came together, uh, worryingly. He got good very quickly.
Richard Gillis:You know that is annoying.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:and we, that summer we played a lot of golf together. And the main thing that we both did, Luke more so than me, was that he he, you know, dressed in a way which was a lot less golf, a lot more, you know, what you would've seen in more streetwear culture. And I think I, I, I couldn't go as far as saying I was, uh, in that same bucket, but I definitely wouldn't have been in the kind of more traditional bucket in what I was wearing. I think just through our backgrounds, Luke, being a creative director by trade, and then I came, I was running a digital marketing agency. You know, we, we launched brands like Castor and we worked with Remar and, you know, we had a good idea about what you needed to do online. We just kind of started to speak about this idea of like, if we brought our brains together, could there be something interesting in the world of golf? that idea kind of stuck. We couldn't really let go of it. And ultimately we decided that we wanted to give it a going. We wanted to try and put something out there, you know, a product, a clothing brand that we felt represented how we wanted to dress on the golf course. And we didn't know if there was anyone that was gonna kind of follow us on that journey. Fortunately there was you know, we had a good initial at Traction and, and that gave us enough impetus to, to say, right, let's do this properly. Let's go raise some money and try and make this thing a, a real legitimate business.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:to be honest, at the beginning when you say legitimate business, there wasn't a legitimate business, but there was a real confidence that the space of golf felt like there was a story that wasn't being told there. I think when I, when I first started playing, I realized that all of my friends in the film industry, so often people, if when I told them I played golf, the reaction I got was so, it was like I just told'em I was going shooting or something. It was. Yes, it was unaccessible. The clothing wasn't very nice. I find Tiger at that point was just kind of in his dip. So it wasn't
Richard Gillis:Yeah,
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:wasn't holding the whole tour up
Richard Gillis:post fire hydrant.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:And so we just, I just felt there was, such as someone who loves brands and a bit of a all the gear, no idea person. When I first adopt a sport, I want to find who are the brands that are really interesting me and support them and really dig in. And I just felt for golf, even though I'm an absolute sucker, there was just no brand that was pulling me in and telling the story that I kind of guess we felt that golf was actually defined by, and by that I mean not performance and just if you think of the way sports, like surfing or mountain running or, or cycling or snowboarding, like there's a big element which is about being good at it. But a far bigger element is just being outdoors, exploring, going on adventures. And I found best rounds were never the ones where I played the best. It was ones where I. I was going and finding some hidden gem of links course in Ireland, or I was with a group of friends. I just felt no one was communicating that story about golfers not a performance sport. It's, it's a lifestyle adventure. It's, yeah, it's not epitomized by the PGA tour, which was very controversial, considering that's what every other brand defined their marketing campaigns about.
Richard Gillis:So let's just unpick then and well done. That's a great setup and I agree with, I was nodding along with what you were saying there but let's just unpick what it is you are pushing against. So what is the traditional route of selling golf stuff?'Cause I've got it in my head. I've, you know, I've got certain brands I might go to. I'm older than you guys but you're right there, there is a sort of diet that I'm, I'm faced with and I'm just interested in, what you do differently. But you've got the product obviously, which is different, but I'm interested in, let's talk about the route to market.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:I think there's an interesting balance. Covid, I, you know, we'll probably get into Covid specifically around you know, engagement and participation, but specifically from a distribution standpoint, people were not able to shop in pro shops. So behaviorally there were
Richard Gillis:Yeah.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:that saw them having to choose online shopping to find their golf clothing, which is where they previously might have found their high street or, their day-to-day stuff. that gave us a competitive edge to be able to utilize our, our content and our ability to get in front of people on socials to, you know, get them on our website. I think. The, the other side of that is looking forward, obviously pro shops are open and have been now for some time, but it's, it's a conscious decision for us to not push at, into a scaled green grass account approach. Because where we see our best leverage is in going into, you know, department stores, multi-brand department stores. Like, we just launched in Herod's. We're now in Selfridges. We are in some of the biggest department stores in. Kong, Korea, uh, we're in Germany, you know, uh, the us. So this for us gives us an opportunity to better visually merchandise, to have a smaller but still large distribution because each of those accounts orders and quite heavily. And then not try and compete with a quite antiquated system, which is how do I go and drive up and down the country utilizing a huge amount of time and resources to try and tell Joe who runs the pro shop at X Club, why they should stock us, and not one of the other brands who's already been knocking on his door for the last X number of years, who he's mates with and plays golf with, you know, twice a
Richard Gillis:Yeah.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:So we'll leave that to the professionals. Maybe one day it's part of it, but for now are our competitive edges in the latter, which is what I mentioned before.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Again, though I would say seconding, that it was born outta necessity. The fact that pro shops, stock brands that have been around for 10, 20, 30 plus years, the relationships are really hard to get. And the awareness for just the general golfing public to come into a pro shop, number one, they wanna buy the club logo, but the reason they're gonna pick, you know, a foot joy or a Galvan green is one, the awareness at the top level. They've seen pros wear it, and also the relationship that's been forged over, you know, summer, spring after autumn, winter after summer, spring. And so those two things we didn't have. So whilst jojo is very good at eloquently putting that strategy down, like that was something we, we found out of going. Okay, well. Pro shops don't really want us, which feels mad'cause that's where we feel our customer are. So we have to find a different customer. Someone who's not just interested in buying the golf club logo, but is more interested in what's the unique product offering and story that brand is telling.
Jasmine Sanders:How do you balance the, I guess, authentic, storytelling element of the brand the audience that you are reaching out to, which, as you say, is the everyday golfer with. Then stocking in somewhere as kind of high end and exclusive, like a Selfridges or a Herod's or some of the top shops in, in Korea. How, how do you, balance that out?
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:I think there are a handful of wholesale accounts that are definitely on that end. I think the problem for a startup is you can't really corner off and go, this is, we're only interested in serving these people. So our, our demographic is split between the uk, north America and Asia, and the customer just likes different things there for, I would say our biggest account in the UK is still the likes of trendy golf and silver Me. So it's just like there's a real spread there of people who are buying our clothes purely because. like the quality and, and the unique style. And then I would say the trendy golf, the, the, the more green grass customer who's coming through different D two C websites is probably more interested in the story we're telling. But it is a hard balance and I think where you are we are constantly juggling you. You don't get to say what your brand means. People define that for yourself, and they define it in every single move you make, whether that's a, an Instagram reel or where you decide to stock or who you decide to create content with. And so we are just constantly making decisions, and most of them are based on gut. Is this, is this good for the brand? And then jojo is this good for the business? And if those two things get a moderate nod, then we go in full steam ahead and know that we've made mistakes before and we'll make them again.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:Yeah. I think we say no to a lot of accounts because it's really about. Basically managing the demand of our brand with the supplier product in market. So that's what I spend a lot of my time working on and saying, look, there's X door, you know, who could put in and double our pos for this upcoming season, but do I want that much product in market and do I wanna risk not having the demand to then satiate that supply and then end up with a bunch of product on discount at the end of the season? Like that's where I think we've done a very good job and we've chosen to leave, uh, to leave money on the table when it comes to sell through, because we are specifically making sure that we don't want to be in a position where we oversupply. And I think that's something that, you know, the people, you know, our investors and shareholders are, are very understanding of because it's important for us to make sure that brand positioning's in place.'cause that all then filters down ultimately to the way in which people experience the product and what they then obviously see through our sort of socials and, and everything as well.
Richard Gillis:What you are balancing there is is the sort of signal. like Herods and Selfridges, immediately we all, that's proper top end as you know, to Jasmine's point. but you don't want too many of them, you know, because actually it's, it's, that's also talking to price. you know, you've got that fragile sort of brand game that you're playing in terms of, okay, they're new, they're exciting, those, both of those are top end retailers. There's a signal there where proper we've arrived. There's a establishment question there. There's also, I think from the point of view of the retailer, if you come through the door, I think I, you are bringing a new audience to me like Silver Mirror. I love Silver Mirror'cause I'm a left-hander and it's got the only left-handed shop in Europe. But it's a traditional golf outlet. It's a great one, you know, and I should, I recommend it to everyone, but it's a, it's a proper golf club with a golf, you know, it's a, it's a super golf shop. So I can see from their point of view, there's a nice signal, okay, they've, they're stocking manners. That tells me something about what's going on. But I guess you're dancing across that all the time, aren't you?
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:on that. The biggest reason we chose to work with Silvermere, not only is it an amazing establishment, is family owned, you know, and we love them. They're great to work with. We also work with them specifically because one, they, they introduced the Elevate Store, which meant that it was going to be a dedicated space for brands that they felt were these, you know, kind of brands like A Manners or Melbourne or Grayson. They're all in that room, but two, it's also not online. So my, my product will not compete when it's in Silver Me, with trendy golf. And again, it's
Richard Gillis:Yeah,
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:opportunity to manage supply and demand in that, in that specific instance.
Jasmine Sanders:I have to shout'em out'cause they do also have the largest women's shop in the area, which is incredibly rare. We have, uh, our sury WGC meetups there. So just another shout out for silver Mick as i, I echo the sentiment.
Richard Gillis:right. Looking at the business, sometimes I look at your, what you are doing and I think, are they a retailer with an agency attached or are they an agency with a retailer, you know, a closed brand attached?'cause what you are doing in that creator space. I've got a load of questions.'cause these are really universal to every, everyone in sport because actually what they're, you know, the question is always. Every sport has got this sort of Gen Z anxiety. From the Olympics down. They're all, they're all making mistakes and trying to, to, find a route into this story. Just talk to me about the creator bit of this equation. How and why, and because there seems to be a sort, there's a, there's a performance versus, I dunno what the other word would be. Relatability, authenticity, I dunno, but just gimme a sense.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:So on the creator side, I mean, our content is basically split up into branded organic and then affiliates. And so we don't, we have maybe 12 ambassadors who are creators that will help support on various golf trips. They do set up YouTube videos for them, help on the production side, bring them on our campaign so they have more opportunities to shoot content. and it's a good way of just testing, testing where, which emerging markets to go to. But to be honest, it, we don't really rely on them that much. Like there are brands like Primo and who are doing it. Their whole marketing strategy is just around the creators. For us, the organic social comes first and then depending on who is attracted to that and which creators can, can leverage those opportunities to shoot content for themselves. They're the ones that we've started relationships with. We don't have the budgets to pay just base salaries to create it. So we really need to align from a brand side and they need to really engage with the story we're telling. And then that natural alignment and positioning means all of our ambassadors, even if they're not as big as the grant hall vats or Mac vouchers of the world, I shouldn't say Mac voucher.'cause he does, he does promote our stuff, but there is such an authentic relationship there that they're constantly wearing the stuff, they're real brand advocates. And I just don't think you can recreate that no matter how big your reach is and what your paid post schedule is. If they really love your brand, and that is, that's built from going on actual trips and opportunities together, like it is, it is totally genuine. That feels like it has such a better trickle down effect on conversion instead of when we've, when we have tested using kind of paid elements with, with, uh, certain bigger influencers. Can you see my, hear my dog barking in the background or.
Richard Gillis:Yeah, it's okay.
Jasmine Sanders:to the ambience.
Richard Gillis:Yeah. It's authe. It's authentic podcasting. You don't get the, you don't get that shit on Radio four.
Jasmine Sanders:I was gonna say, I, I think there's also an added element to what you are, you are saying there, Luke. Is it, it feels like you've been very.
Richard Gillis:I.
Jasmine Sanders:Particular about who you work with, and it also seems that your, your breadth of ambassadors or, or, you know, brand ambassadors from a very diverse background themselves. And I think also really important. I mean, I know we caught up at the, uh, G four D disability tournament where one of your ambassadors was playing in the, in the competition. So I just wondered if you could just speak a little bit to that about how you choose your ambassadors are or whether they naturally choose you based on the fact they love the product.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Uh, it's a bit of both. Adam Wabe, who you are speaking about, was our first ambassador, uh, who when we, when he actually found us, he, he saw one of our first collections and I can't remember who he was sponsored with by the time, but Adam Basses, his whole game on, he's different. He is got cerebral palsy. scratch golfer and one of the most charming and just charismatic people I know. And he reached out and just said he loved the product. He loved what we were doing, and, and he was gonna be over in, in London. And did we fancy, you know, having a coffee and just meeting Adam's like a brother to me now. I caddy for him every year at the G four D. He's involved in loads of our shoots. So for him it was very natural and just friendship first. And honestly, we, the, when I, when I normally speak to people about Adam, the fact that he's disabled doesn't get into it until, you know, quite a little way down the line.'cause he is just a lot of golfers. There's a, a kind of a stereotype of what your typical professional golfer looks like and Adam breaks that in every way imaginable.
Jasmine Sanders:A.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Yeah, he's unbelievably cool. So, just so confident, assured, so I'll be so nervous cad for him. But yeah, he's fantastic. But it changes a lot. Like we had, we had a, we have a, a swing instructor in LA called Josh Park, who's also a fantastic content creator who we needed a, we needed a, a someone to shoot a campaign for us. And he, he dropped everything without ever meeting us and just did a trick to Scotland to be part of this campaign.'cause he just never golfed in Scotland. And like, although that sounds just trivial and very lucky and it probably was, that's the spirit of manners. Like you are gonna drop everything and go on a golf trip to a place you've never been to like that is, and and to be honest, I would say that is the majority of how, it's always very random, but like that's the core of it.'cause when we reach out to a creator, we're never asking them to do anything other than we are going on this trip. Would you want to come and shoot content? No strings attached. You don't need to post anything. But it'll be an unbelievable time. And am aware though, that this is, I think the thing which we're conscious of going forward is it's easy to do this when it's 12 ambassadors. And so as we try and scale that one, does that become harder to manage? Or two, do we do, we go, actually, it's not a volume play and let's just deepen these relationships and try and move it from short form to long form and grow together rather than just trying to find who's the next big ambassador we can work with.
Jasmine Sanders:Hmm.
Richard Gillis:talk to me a little bit about sort of attribution then, in terms of from that marketing perspective, how I'm, I'm interested in the return on investment question.'cause you can imagine that we have a lot of brands on here talking about ambassadors and it's, it's quite often, you know, in a golf center you think, okay, what's the cost of a top 10 golfer? And how you balance that and how you get, how you judge a return and how, you know, how much would it cost to get a top 10 golfer as an ambassador, for example.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Do you have the numbers from last time we checked, we we do this maybe once a year. We'll, we'll do a little feeder out and the number will come back so vast that we'll kind of just shake
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:Yeah, I mean, a top 10 golfers you are, I'm pretty sure you, you know, millions a year plus bonus plus you know, obviously tons of kit and sponsors, you know, all that. The, the other route is similar to like Melbourne and the Jason Day deal, which I'm pretty sure everyone's pretty sure involved equity, but obviously you need to be a big enough business to give a big enough piece of the pie to make it interesting enough for a professional to walk away from a lot of money in lieu of taking equity in a clothing brand. But I think Luke will speak a lot, a lot more, uh, fluently on attribution in regards to content because it's a pretty, pretty good one that we've managed to kind of build.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:I think in our, just on our D two C revenue, I would say affiliates make up between 15 and 20% and that's coming from, less than 12 ambassadors. I. a couple of them are on, on base salaries, but the majority of their income is just based on the 15% commission they make on selling product. And I think in return for that, again, we provide a lot of opportunities for them to do trips that they probably wouldn't do otherwise. And then investment in our long form channels and then also through partnerships that we are doing with the PGA tour or the DP World tour. We've started trying to bring our ambassadors into those platforms as well. So the way we look at it currently and in this structure is the more we invest in them and build their channel, the more we are gonna get back as well.
Richard Gillis:So just talk me through that.'cause I, it is interesting. So what, how you, the affiliate then is the creator. The creator is what is, is how you're defining it. And obviously, you can track sales directly from their content through to your bottom line, presumably.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:so we can track that. We actually can't track. There is a, our head of marketing, Alex has been dying to invest in this platform, which will allow all the, kind of the, the earned media value from impressions and reach. However, right now we have a community manager who will check in every 30 days and, and do a finger in the air, okay, this was your reach, but again, we dunno how much of that was a deliberate post about managed. So we don't really track
Richard Gillis:Yeah.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:finite. much more, we look at total reach and impressions that they've got and obviously their bottom number. But it's it's much more feel, you can see the revenue coming in and if they're generating sales, which at the moment 15 to 20% of our revenue from, you know, a handful of ambassadors versus all the stuff we do on our own channels, uh, we're pretty happy with it.
Richard Gillis:It's, it's interesting, isn't it, that balance, because you could over reward individuals, as in you are doing a lot of brand work, aren't you? That you know, and the story is the, of the company and the brand. And, and actually, I mean, we had Nike on talking about that balance, the sort of brand story and the cliche being, you know, they've over extended into performance marketing and that, you know, discussed as a PhD. We're not getting into that now, but there is a whole sort of question there about where you are in that landscape. And it's quite interesting that comparison to the sort of traditional, again, just using you as a way of looking at what mainstream sports business does, in my, in my head I'm thinking, okay, if I get a top 10 player, I'm gonna have to put that million quit or, you know, whatever it is, multiple millions. But the message is performance, isn't it?
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:The message is performance, but I would say the traditional mold is you're gonna sponsor a, top 20 player for your awareness, and then you're gonna worry about your distribution and making sure that you're set up on all these different pro shops and you have these relationships and the kind of consideration work in the middle. You're gonna rely on just those two parts of the funnel working. Whereas for us, one, we can't afford to pay for that awareness. We have to use the algorithms to, to create content that naturally is relevant to our audience, which whilst it might be not as effective as Jason Day, you know, wearing Melbourne at the Masters, just the spend that we put into our content and we're scaling it now, but it is still an absolute fraction of what other brands jojo used to work a digital marketing agency. It's, it's a fraction of what other brands would do. And so it's, it's really understanding that your content strategy has to be reflective of your business objectives. And right now our business objective is as much awareness as possible. Use organic social to bring people into our funnel. And we are never trying to sell to them on social. We are just trying to tell'em a story that resonates and that we don't think anyone else is telling, saying.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:And just, just to add to that from a performance marketing standpoint, back at the agency, you know, the, the maths was just spend money hit ROIA ROAS that was scalable, spend more money and, you know, you could build a pretty good brand off that. Things have changed and the way in which you're able to execute on a strategy like that is totally different. And like, to put it in perspective is how unreliant we are on paid ads as a percentage of turnover. This year we'll spend about 7% on paid ads and we're actually spending less money this year than we did last year on paid ads. Yeah. From a turnover standpoint, we'll be up 200%. So we are, we, we massively index into our content spend because that's where we feel like we can generate the organic impressions and reach to then build the funnel as opposed to be put pushing people with, with paid ads.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Our head of defensive paid.
Jasmine Sanders:Because your, your marketing director posted on LinkedIn yesterday, I believe, saying that manners, you know, you reached, I think 15.5 million golfers in 2024 on socials with, you know, minimal, uh, ad spend, and you expect to, to double that into 25. I mean, that, that is pretty impressive. Thing I'd also love to speak to you about, and it's really interesting to hear the percentages on revenue, 15 to 20% coming from brand ambassadors alone. There's also another part of your business that I would love to speak to you about, is also from Alex's post. Thank you, Alex, marketing director. Where in the last 12 months, 25% of your revenue came from content production, clothes, not product. content and brand experience, uh, experiences for other businesses. I mean, you've, you've worked with, you know, PJ Tour, that I can, I can kind of reel off the top of my head.
Richard Gillis:else?
Jasmine Sanders:Yes, there you go. I mean, that's, that's unlike any other, I guess, brand that I'm aware of in the space. So, so how does that work? Do you almost have a separate, a add or brand agency behind the scenes, or is this, is this always been, I guess the intention?
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:it's interesting because both Luke and I in ways come from agency backgrounds, Luke from the creative side and obviously for me from the execution side. And when I left my agency, I was like, I'm super excited. I'm never gonna have to write a proposal again. And now I spend.
Jasmine Sanders:That's my PowerPoint.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:So much time building proposals. But I think the, the really interesting thing is from a competitive edge standpoint, our ability to have, you know, high margin product which our product being, you know, services relating to content is a massive competitive edge. And it's, it's a result of the fact that we have an unbelievable team in-house led by Luke and, and Alex and, and an amazing group of people that are able to basically say to people, look, we are doing these things anyway. We think that we can provide a huge amount of, you know, ROI on an investment relative to what you're spending anyway. And we can also leverage the fact that we have an amazing network of people who love to come on these golf trips with us. So it's just a perfect match. And they only add to the dynamic. They add value. This, you know, there's lots of people that have asked us to spend money for them in these ways, but if it's not going to be the right. Brand for us, then it wouldn't make sense for any party. So yeah, it's a massive opportunity for us to grow and, and from a percentage standpoint, the numbers are right and that 25% as a number is reflective of our total turnover in 2023 as a group. And that now is, you know, obviously a huge portion of the business going forward. So it's, it's a really interesting avenue that we're looking to, you know, grow.
Jasmine Sanders:Is it a prerequisite that manners, uh, apparel feature in those partnerships? Is that part of your arrangement?
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:No, the relationship is like, again, I would say the, the relationships with content. We, we are not trying to make revenue from doing these partnerships. This came about'cause we were trying to tell, we were trying to tell these stories anyway and there was just a natural synergy and so it happened organically and then we were able to deliver and then start to negotiate better rates than, and more opportunities to do this.
Jasmine Sanders:I.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:I think with the PGA tour specifically, we create travel log adventures and golf style content around some of their, uh, their landmark events. And'cause we are doing the creative, the production, everything up into delivering the film onto their YouTube all our relationships doing the production work. So a lot of the, the, a lot of the people that are featuring those films are either our ambassadors or people within our network, so it's very easy to organically seed, but I still think that the point of those videos is still not to promote products. Like even if it was the, uh, the PGA tour said, look, can't feature any manners in it. For us, the awareness work we're doing of still telling that story, the product people will find their way to our page and our products when they're compelled by that story. So it's, it's been, it's been kind of surreal having left 10 years of directing behind to now feel like every month we have a shoot somewhere. But all those kind of failed years of pitching has a, has, has come back to been quite useful.
Richard Gillis:So just talk to me then. Obviously our PO, you know, podcast is called Unofficial Partner. What is the nature of, are you framing those core relationships as partnerships and how do they look at them? Are you a service provider in that sense? Are they paying you for that service? Is it bundled in, you know, all, every rights holder will try and make something into a sponsorship relationship and a VIK type thing. Just talk me through that. How, how does that work? Because it's interesting about what sports sponsorship is now.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:So there will be a, we, we will pitch them a job. So very rarely we'll get a brief because people don't think of us as, uh, a media agency. So we will see an opportunity or have a relationship and go, I. And, and we will write a bespoke proposal, which is, you know, ticking off what objectives that company might have around a certain event. But trying to encase it in a way where we are gonna handle the creative or the production. And in return we expect one, the credits and help on distribution so we can get some awareness, but also just our base production budget covered. And the bonus of having Alex, who's our head of marketing, is also our head of production. And again, he's been my best friend since I was 12. We went to film school with each other. He's a producer by trade. I was a director by trade. Our whole our whole content team is very used to, to creating content. So our creative strategist is a presenter. So our, our marketing team is built to basically create long form and short form content. So if, we are aligned in our ambitions of what the story is, we would be doing this stuff anyway. And so we are just getting help either on a financial side or on a platform to, to, to reach more golfers.
Richard Gillis:Jojo, you mentioned there, we, there was something, I've got a question about organic and inorganic, uh, or whatever the other word is, you know, paid or whatever. So, and the reason this resonated is that on a previous episode we had Ryan Hausen on from Stay Shore, the insurance company that owns the senior tour. Bear with me. And then we also had Rick Shields on. And there was a right old row as you, you might be aware of, of, you know, one was claiming to be the biggest YouTuber or, or whatever, and the stay sure bloke was saying, no, it's us. And then Rick Shields tried to take him down and say, no, he has paid his way to that. Can you just sort of unpick I know the difference is one is being paid and one isn't, but is there a sort of brand question there, is there something else that's happening in a, sort of, in the intangible area that you are very aware of?'cause I, I am thinking, and you've used the phrase a few times and your, your number there, the 7% number is really interesting in that it skews massively the other way. But I'm wondering what the overall benefit of that strategy is. Yeah.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:I think.
Richard Gillis:As, yeah, you summed it up better. I, I took 20 minutes to ask the question and you've just said what's the difference between organic and paid, but yes.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:Rick Shields in that example, Rick Shields has spent years building up a loyal follower base who, when a new video drops, they make the time to watch it. You know, the other, uh, you mentioned
Richard Gillis:Stay sure.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:they have a commercial business with no specific loyalty to stay sure themselves. No one's a stay. Sure. Purist, you know that they're an insurance company. They might use their service, but no, there's no brand backing that there's a business backing it. And that business makes good content, I'm assuming, and people will watch it because. An advert serves it to them, uh, which they paid to serve to people, and people were enticed enough by the good content to then watch it. So I think the example, but when you put that back on the manners side is that we are able to get a better conversion on organic, you know, conversion, people seeing it more likely because people will like it, you know, view it for longer and therefore YouTube goes, I want more people to see this because it's clearly keeping people on platform, therefore continue to organically serve it. And that is something which obviously takes a lot more time to build that trust and you have to have higher production or at least better quality content whereby you just don't rely so much on, on the paid side where you can just say, right, I want a hundred thousand impressions. I'll put this much money into it and work out the algorithm to push it to as many people as possible.
Jasmine Sanders:You'd assume that people are almost more sticky if they have come upon a piece of content naturally and come back for it, rather than seeing the word sponsored at the top, uh, on, on their social platforms. Is, is that fair?
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:Yeah.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:totally. I also don't think the, we, we have two or three production meetings a week inside our content and marketing team at Manners, and it is difficult'cause we'll always, I. go through phases of being like we're, we're not tracking the data enough and the insights of what's, what reach, how many views and stuff. And then we realized one of our ambassadors, James Wilson short side, is his Instagram handle did this unbelievable challenge where he went to the Shetlands in December and couldn't leave the island until he had birdied every single hole. I don't think you saw one golfer during the, the however many days it took him to do it. And this unbelievable content was produced and it had, I think it was 25,000 views, which in the grand scheme of YouTube golf is, is hardly anything. But considering at that point, we had just launched our YouTube channel, barely had any subscribers. Those people who had come totally cold and watched a 35 minute film, the value of that watch time and that brand connection versus. You know, a, a real piece of awareness content on, on TikTok, on Instagram. It's just incomparable. So I think with all of these things, you have to both be aware of what the metrics and numbers are doing, but also know their kind of vanity metrics that you can buy. And really it's, it's, it's going to be in the comments and, and in the watch time. And the average, how many people are clicking on that? It really, uh, shows the truth.
Richard Gillis:I was gonna ask you what, what's the first data point you go to? What's the one that you wouldn't give away?
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:it depends on the platform.'cause each platform, the algorithm is set up to want things that are slightly different. So Instagram wants to connect people so you know, the shares per reach is really important. So how many people are that? It's effectively trying to connect people. So comments are good, but we look at saves and shares. How many people are sharing onto someone else. TikTok, it's, it's very much on just the reach. TikTok liking posts isn't quite as important. You use it to save stuff, but it's not like Instagram where you're showing your kind of support so much. It's, it's more personal. So it's just how long did they watch it for? YouTube, for me it's, it's average watch time. If you can get people to stay on past that, I think the, it's 30 seconds that most people click off a video. So if you can get them past that first 30 seconds and hold them for 20, 25, 30 minutes, the CPM on YouTube, if it is a high production value piece of content, the money you can earn just continues to grow the longer you keep them there. So it's really trying to go, it's hard to get people to watch a 32nd Instagram reel, but if you can hold people for 20 minutes plus, then, then you're really onto something both from a, from a CPM and also from a brand relationship.
Richard Gillis:myself and Jasmine, we do, we, we quite often talk about, you know, the sort of new golf, you know, live golf. TGL is, you know, has been a constant conversation. I'm interested in what your relationship is to tour golf, that, that end of golf, because it feels like you are in a different sort of area almost, and, and the excitement around golf more generally. There's bar stall in the states. There's a whole load of money going in, which is predicated on a few things. It's audience that you know you are talking to, but just gimme an idea about how your business relates to, the tours or the weekly diet of golf, or just the way, you know, television, golf, or TGL. Just gimme a sense of what you think about when you look at that world.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Can I quickly start, Jojo? We have, we made this mistake for the first four years of existing that every time there was a major on, we would go, how can we get attention? This is the most important we can go. And every single time, no matter what we did, if it was a capsule, if we threw an event, if we created loads of content, just, it fell flat.'cause everyone is shouting during those major moments this year, we were like, we are gonna do nothing apart from top, top, top of fund organic content that is not trying to promote any managed product, but is just relevant for people who are interested in watching the masters. And we had one of our best ever weeks on social. Now granted, no one's probably clicking through to our website from those posts, but I think we grew in the space of one week we had a 1% follower growth, which is when you're at north of 70 K followers. That's, that's really big from doing just organic content. think the other bonus we have is because we don't see professional golf as the pinnacle of the game, like we believe that amateur golf is where the magic really happens. We don't have the same allegiances with, I wouldn't say allegiances, but we don't have the same kind of level of. Hate and vitriol for the different rival tours. Like for us, I can see good things in all those tours. I'm biased. I love the PGA tour, like that's, that's my favorite, but I can really enjoy watching Liv, me and jojo played in a ProAm there and went to the JT B and thought it was terrific fun. TGLI think incredibly exciting. It's just those elements of the professional game, just nowhere near as exciting as being able to actually get out on the course and play ourselves.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:And to add to that, I think from my, my take is ultimately that all of these are, uh, people investing in the game in various formats. And a lot of this money is coming from people who probably don't want to see any of this fail. Uh, there's a lot of big, big names backing these things, and I can't see a reason why it's a bad thing that TGS on at 8:00 PM on a Tuesday night when nothing else would be on, and you can still find something live to watch for golf. So, you know, I think there's a lot to be said for the fact that there's lots more ways to consume it and lots more ways to talk about it and so on. So I, I see it as a, a very, very big plus for the industry at large.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:I think something I'm aware of as well is eventually we would love to sponsor a pro player. Of course. And I guess it's how we start trying to, to, to navigate our positioning and the nuance around telling that story with a profile that plays on tall. But I think that's a problem for, for another year.
Richard Gillis:what would that look like? It's quite interesting to hear you say that,'cause I thought that would be something you wouldn't wanna do. Just just take me through that. What would I, and I, I, you know, the Jason Day Melbourne thing is quite interesting, isn't it? I mean, I, you know, that resonates with people, my friends who play, you know, and, but it's a conversation about trousers on the whole,
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Mm. It's more fabric. I, well it's interesting'cause I think you get to a certain stage in your journey where our, our marketing mix is heavily reliant on organic social. There is a small demographic of all golfers that are on those platforms. And so after a while we are gonna hoover up a lot of those, tho those golfers. But there is a, there is a, there is a big part of the market that we still think we can, we can convince to become mans fans that don't have Instagram and don't have TikTok. And they, they, they, they watch PGA tour golf and they shop at their local pro shop when they. it's, it's how do we eventually try and reach players like that? And if I'm honest, I don't think you do without going to the traditional route at some point. It's just knowing whose money to risk when you are doing that. And are you going to flip a coin and if the player gets injured, well bye-bye. Manners. That's the end of the story. So I think there's definitely a time where we are going to be looking to do that. And I think Melbourne have done fantastic with Jason Day of the conversation. You're starting, you're still a disruptor, so it doesn't matter what people are saying. People are talking about Melbourne. I think the first day he wore that vest during the the masters was their most Google Day ever. I think for us, we're a little, I would say we're a little bit more true to the authentic game than that I love what they're doing. We're a little less disruptive. But I think what they've done with Jason Day is fantastic. And Lululemon with Max Homer and, and Miu Lee is also amazing. And I, it's, it's exciting to see how golf brands are sponsoring. And not using performance as their, their predominant message.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:And also I think that the, the nice thing is not just about what they do on the golf course, but actually doing things with them off the course. And can the campaigns and the stories that you can tell, like, we are not ready to do that. Yes, because it's gonna cost a lot of money, but also because we want to have a depth in range within our clothing offering. That means that we can actually utilize that talent for the best possible value across the widest possible range of gear. So it's a balancing act. And, you know, if we'd have wanted to go into the professional game, we've, we've been approached, but it's not about just getting into the game with, with any player. It's about doing it at the right time with a name, which is we think is authentic to the brand at the right time.
Jasmine Sanders:Would you, or would the objective be to go straight in with somebody that is well known and obviously has that kind of reach and existing personality and following? Or would you in the first instance, I guess, dip your toe in with somebody almost like kind of Monday Q Style that's got a, you know, a really interesting story. They're really grinding out through the, through the access tours and, and they look like they're on the up.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:I think the, you just said it. It's the, it is the story element that I think is most interesting. However, I would say that is more akin to what our current strategy is. Maybe that person doesn't have a huge profile, but we can help tell that story and build upon that. Whereas I think at some point, as, you know, the creative of me wants to always put the story first. I'm worried that eventually we'll get a list and it's like, these are the players who we could afford. These are the players who are in the top 25. How are you gonna make this story work? How are you gonna connect these things?'cause ultimately, I. I know that most golfers, they're gonna watch people on the tour. They're gonna see the brand, and then if they see it in a pro shop, they're more likely to to buy it. So there's, there's a bit of push and pull that will have to come. And I'm just hoping we we, uh, we find that right player who's got a compelling story and the, the awareness actually at the right price. Yeah.
Richard Gillis:To what extent do you still do you want is the long-term journey to be a golf brand? And I'm just, you know, I'm just picking on Jasmine's question there about whether or not it's a celebrity, you know, there's a different, there's a whole different conversation, but are you in your mind thinking about beyond golf?
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:As in the sector or more as like a.
Richard Gillis:Well, I don't know. It could be, a move into other sports is one question, tennis, or it could be into, you know, just more of a central fashion than you. You know, golf becomes a sort of, part of the brand, but not all of it.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:My problem is when we started Mans, one of the first problems I kept on saying is like, I hate the fact that none of these brands take it as a priority. You have core golf brands like Callaway and Title, they're a golf brand, but Nike, Adidas, Puma, like wasn't first for them. It was when Tiger was around. But as soon as Tiger starts the fall, you know. It's so it really annoyed me. Even, even Jay Lindenberg, which I love their product offering. It is okay, but they're, they're ski and snow and then they're, so, I, I do think there is an advantage. We're a golf brand made by golfers for golfers, and that's the story we're telling and that's the, that that's our, that's our heart. So, I do think there's probably room to, to tell that story. And, you know, I like to, to refer to ourselves as the north face of golf. And so that leaves the door open for other opportunities. But we are so laser focused on, on trying to claw market share as, as a core golf brand that I, I'm worried to take the eye of the ball there.
Richard Gillis:I sometimes wonder about the, Flex for golf brand. You mentioned Tailormade, you know, tight list, ping. These are just embedded in golf and you sometimes see them trying to broaden and trying, you know, there are new product areas. Adidas's new stuff is interesting. They're sort of, you know, they're new lines and the, the original stuff, but it's quite hard for them, isn't it? The, the really hardcore golf brands and they're constantly trying to push and broaden and do, there's a sort of audience question in terms of. They talk to me, but do they talk to a 20-year-old? You know, and it's, always that question in, in play and they must look at you and think, okay, we need to do a bit more what they're doing there. There's something working there, but how do we get there? That's quite a difficult question for them.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:Yeah, I I think the, the competitive edge of being so small is that it's that classic analogy of a big boat turning versus a small agile one. And I'm just pleased to see brands like Adidas taking a bit of a risk. We worked with them in 2021 on a really lovely collaboration. And you know, it was a great, we loved working with that, that team. We pushed really hard to try and bring the Trifold logo into that collab and they said, no, no, no, it will never happen. And fast forward, what, three years now and they've got a whole collection in golf dedicated to the originals logo. So I think there's an element of like, as times have gone on, they've like that have gone. It's taken a long time to get that over the line, but they have eventually'cause they realize that they've needed to. that's what customers want. They want newness and they want to see things that are different. And just whilst we are also trying to be agile and doing these things. We also don't have the ability to do lots, which again, is a competitive edge that Adidas does have, where they can bring out multiple collections, go deep into ranges, et cetera. So think it swings and roundabouts. It's, it's great to think that they're looking at what we're doing and trying to emulate it to a degree. And, you know, we'll just continue to, you know, use that competitive edge for as long as we're able to.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:There's something quite exciting though about when you are young and you don't actually know who your customer is, you are not compelled to. kind of aware of the ignorance that, okay, well we can create our customer.'cause we are just gonna say what we feel and what we believe. And you can take those risks and going, well, this is what golf should be about. Like, when me and Jojo first had the idea for Madison, we were going into our early investor meetings and trying to convince angels to, to support this idea. The narrative was golfers a dying sport. Golf clubs are struggling for membership. It's, you know, the demographic that plays it is 40 to sixties and it's just, I don't understand who you are speaking to. I don't believe these golfers exist. And over the last, you know, four years since Covid, that narrative has flipped on its head. And so there's been a lot of luck and timing, but ultimately we were in a position where we were like, if we tell this story, people will hear it and will be compelled because it's, we feel strongly about it. There'll be others that do the same. And I don't think if we had a, a big revenue behind us that we were trying to protect, we would've been as bold as going, there's a whole market here that you don't see.
Jasmine Sanders:Hmm. Can I, can I ask your thoughts on, I guess following on from the, the change in demographic that we are seeing, and obviously, you know, that kind of millennial golfer really coming into its own, what are your thoughts on some of the brands that are out there that have seen this trend have potentially jumped on it without the. Authentic in the golf, I guess industry. You know, I, I've seen lots of different brands that have, you've never heard of them. It's, uh, with respect to their advertising, it's quite clear that the people that they've got in the adverts dunno how to hold a golf club. And you are, you know, you are seeing, I can see you guys nodding. You, you know, you,
Richard Gillis:That's always a tell, isn't it? In the, in the, in the golf ad,
Jasmine Sanders:And,
Richard Gillis:the grip. The grip is always a real big tell.
Jasmine Sanders:and you're seeing, you know, golf bags being marketed at like 2000 pounds. It, it just seems almost opportunist, but hollow. What do you think,
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Careful. Now, Jojo,
Jasmine Sanders:sorry, if.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:I, I, again, I'll go back to default to my stance of the fact that if people are investing in it, then it's more people waving golf clubs about, regardless of how well or badly they're doing, so
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:there's also a big thing I find of, I'm not gonna say the brand's names, but there is, even if it brings someone into golf who wasn't typically interested but love this brand, so they're gonna buy their golf collection. If they do get into golf, we believe they'll start on a journey where they'll find the authentic brand. So anyone coming into the sport, it, it is good news. We have a, I think we were so aware of how unwelcoming golf felt before when we started Manners. We're always trying to encourage any brand that does anything in golf. We're hats off. Well done. Good luck. So,
Jasmine Sanders:feel like you guys are holding back on that answer.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:yes, we.
Richard Gillis:They definitely are. But one interesting sort of slight build is, and you both have worked in agencies. I, I worked at a sports agency and one of the interesting sort of things is, is when a client comes in, so it could be tennis, golf, football, whatever it is, is the lack of specialist knowledge, but also the cliches and the connotations that come with the sport. So when golf, a golf brief came, comes into a generic advertising sports marketing agency, there is a sort of period where you almost have to get rid of all of the category conventions. You have to get them out in the air. What are they? If you don't do that work and you don't take that seriously, you end up with really rubbish creative, I think, because actually it's just, okay, just we'll get that it's golf, you know? And so we'll just do what has always been done. there's the client brand, but There's also a whole industry in the middle. And you guys have sort of pushed that together because you are doing both jobs, so you don't have that problem. But I always thought that there, and there's also a question about whether do they actually like golf quite often, the creatives working or the, the strategy guys working on a, an advertising agency. They hate sport. They hated football, they hated cricket. They hate, you know, but when they got a cricket briefing, it was like, oh, fucking hell. You know? And they just, it was real. They, you didn't, never got to their best stuff because they never took it seriously, or they didn't wanna be defined. As people who liked these things. So I think you have to get, you have to like it to an extent. There is a limit to the, there's a position that you can take, which is a sort of, quite often, I'm a music guy, I'm not a sports person. There's that bit that gets in the way because I don't think you can actually do good work unless you really love the thing that you're doing the work on.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Hmm.
Richard Gillis:There's a,
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:harder now as well because just the, the trends on social media go so quickly. What's new and hot is an absolute trope and stereotype a month later. So it's
Richard Gillis:yeah.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:if you are not really plugged into to what's going on in the zeitgeist, so quick to become outdated and be like, okay, they did that campaign, or everything is constantly referring to something else now and is existing in a world post what the other brand did. So you've got to be plugged in, you've got to really enjoy it. And I, I think you just have to believe what you are saying. We, we speak to a lot of brands where I'm always aware when a, a creative director forces his brand message, like, this is what the message of this company is, It's like you shouldn't ever have to do that. Like people should know that themselves, and I should know it from just consuming a brand's content and just seeing what they, what they stand for. And I think it's a good litmus test for brands when, or clients when they're making content for brands, it's like if your direction, if your brief is going off, what their brand motto is, you've already missed it. Like there has to be a true, authentic position there. And then you've got fruitful ground to to, to create compelling content from.
Richard Gillis:Yeah, there's a final question. there's a sort of. Pushing us forward. What's the plan for the next year? Are you, I mean, do you go to the, the majors? It's interesting you said about the mistake about being loud in major week, which I can absolutely see. It's the same, it's the same as, when you know, people diarize the, you know, content calendar, sports calendar, it's always around big events and you think, okay, but everyone is in that space. So what does a year look like for you guys?
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:So I think we'll always go to those events as fans. Ultimately, we are massive golf nuts and all the golf media, the podcast, everything. So, you know, there's always a presence, uh, and an interest to be involved. In terms of kind of like what we're trying to, what we're doing, and especially this year, it's, uh, executing on a lot of the key learnings from last year and planning to make sure that next year is better than this year. So it's, you know, cadence is on the drops being increased you know, how do we continue to become, uh, you know, best in class or you know, better at content. So there's a lot of moving parts, but I think the interesting thing is within each of the departments, within the teams, everyone takes ownership on their own zones to make sure that they get better and better and then and improve. So that's the key cadence. That's kind of my outlook on it. Luke, if you wanna share yours.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:I would say, yeah, echoing Jojo on content. I think we've been scared to invest our own money on long form before,'cause it takes a lot of time. It's very expensive and we, we, you know, we only started posting at the end of last year on YouTube, so we're building our subscriber base there. However, over the next 12 months, we're really investing in that channel ourselves, regardless if we have partnership support. So on the, on the content, I think on short form we've done well, long form is, is a bit of a new horizon for us. And then on, on the product side and on distribution, whilst all the reasons we said we're not in pro shops still counts when you go into the merchandise tenant, the Open or the US Open or the Ryder Cup, it is unbelievable the turnover that those stores get. And I feel is a world where I would love to be entertaining some, maybe some licensing deals to get the kind of awareness and conversion of those, those merchandise tents for some of the landmark events where it's not, people aren't necessarily buying it just because it's manners, but are doing pieces that no other brand really does. So with the right support and logos on it, I think it could be quite a nice middle ground as we, as we grow our awareness into more of the pro game.
Richard Gillis:I've just got one very little question, which I've been, I'm dying to ask what's the difference between a good and bad drop?
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:We've only had good ones. I'm
Richard Gillis:Yeah.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:God, we've, what is the, mean, you know, it's terrifying because, you know, on your Shopify account you just, you know if it's gonna be good or bad within about an hour. So I would say it's getting a balance, right, of, you need some disruptive pieces in there that are gonna get press and that are gonna get the people who are in the community who know everything that's being released. Like they've taken a risk. However, those products normally don't sell that much in high volume. So it's like, have you got a compelling story with interesting product that feels new and fresh and different from what other brands are doing? But then have you got your boxes covered where you've got the basics that maybe someone who's not such a daring golfer in what their ATAR is, but really wants to represent the brand. So it's a split, but it feels like there's, there's so much I could, I could do an OWL podcast on just.
Richard Gillis:Come back. Come back. We'll talk about good and bad drops. I, I, I love that.
Jasmine Sanders:I, can I ask one last question? I, I guess this is probably, you know, selfishly'cause I want to know, do you have any plans on doing women's clothing?
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:I,
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Oh,
Jasmine Sanders:know, I know. I, I knew you'd know and I knew I had to.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:yeah.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:we absolutely do the, honestly, Jess, it is terrifying. We do probably once a year we'll do a, we'll do a focus group with a, a group of women who are like, this is the ideal female customer for this is what it looks like, so let's just mine that information and understand like, what's the consensus. And Jojo's been in those meetings and had to chair a few. It is terrifying because for the, we think we are very fit orientated when it comes to, for men. could not get, we couldn't get any consensus on what to do. So it is in the plans and the works, but we felt we needed to have one, some real strong female ambassadors to work with to help develop it. And also the problem is we've just stopped paying surge charges for not doing enough units on dying and on on OQs. So the thought of now eating back into margin when we've only just got an out of that is a little bit daunting, but it is coming. Can I say when jojo or we
Jasmine Sanders:Approx maybe.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:Approx is 27 Nick Wa. It's now live. That's our product director.
Jasmine Sanders:That's, that's really good to know. That's good to know. Thank you for the, uh, the insight there.
Richard Gillis:You heard it here first, we could go on for ages and come back. Really interesting conversation, as I said at the start, and thanks Jasmine, for just introducing me into this world. It's great. And it was one of those where it, it talks to much broader stuff. So it's about golf, but it's about other stuff. The other thing, Jojo, you should be praised because your friend who gets good at golf quickly is, that's just a terrible thing. That's one of the sad, one of the great sadnesses in life when you have to stop patronizing them and just, you know, and they're starting to play well. That's really bad.
Jojo Regan, Manors Golf:keeping track of the, the, our heads up matches. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's not looking good for me at the moment.
Jasmine Sanders:I want to know, are we going to get Richard in a pair of checkered trousers anytime soon?
Richard Gillis:Bring it on.
Jasmine Sanders:There you go, guys.
Richard Gillis:what's the opposite of ambassador that, you know, I. When you've had enough, when you've made enough money, just get me in a pair of trousers that'll, that'll kill the brand. Don't worry about that.
Luke Davies, Manors Golf:mannequin
Richard Gillis:Not actual size.