Every Monday night, our resort in the Dominican Republic has a huge V.I.P. Welcome Party and show. To direct guests to the party they put out several signs to show the way. On a previous trip, about a year ago, some of the people decided it would be funny to “steal” all the V.I.P. Party signs and put them into our friend Mark’s bedroom and throughout the villa. Although I was not a part of the original trip, as well as several since, I’ve always heard the stories. The staff at the resort promised to get even with the group on this trip…and did they ever!

We left the V.I.P. Party and headed back to our 7,000 square foot, private villa. Upon arrival, we discovered there was a goat, very much alive, residing in our living room, wearing a resort tee shirt and hat. Our friend Mark, one of the resort’s major shareholders, went up to make sure his room wasn’t disturbed since he had been an instigator on all the previous trips. His room wasn’t exactly as he’d left it! As he opened his door he discovered a 93 pound tuna fish lying on his bed with a chef’s knife impaled through it’s head, along with 3 live chickens. The resort had promised to retaliate but they weren’t even close to finished! Upon discovering our newly decorated villa, we decided to head out and steal the signs, which now was customary. Four of us jumped into a golf cart and headed down the hill to the first sign. Upon jumping out of the cart to pull the first sign out we found the stakes and edges of the signs were covered in grease….we couldn’t grab them with just our bare hands – we had to go get towels. When we got back to the sign with towels to pull it, we were ambushed by two resort employees wielding a fire hose. We were unable to get to our golf cart without getting soaked so naturally we turned and started to run up the hill towards our villa, that’s when we suddenly heard loud bangs! A couple other staff members were in a vacant field beside us and set off fireworks that would rival a small town’s 4TH of July display. Being the manly, macho men we are, we all ran back to the villa like screaming little girls, including our friend, the burly CT State Police Officer! Several of the women in our group took another of the carts and dumped 5 large bottles of Mr. Bubble (we purchased for this occasion) into the large fountain at the resort’s entrance. The following day the fountain had bubbles at least 3 feet high!

When we figured it was safe, we headed back to recover our cart and were treated to more high-pressure water. The “fire crew” continued to chase after our cart until they ran out of hose length. Finally, it was over! We were laughing about the fireworks and water blasts as we rounded the corner towards the V.I.P. Pool when we were attacked by cake wielding chefs…at least a dozen of ‘em! I got hit in the back with a full cake that exploded on impact and covered the cart’s roof, as well as the four of us occupants. One of the chefs was hiding behind a palm tree and ran along the cart and slammed the cake square in Mark’s face. At this time we felt it would be best to head back to the villa and re-group. Once we arrived at our villa a minimum of 20 resort employees, including several members of management, stopped by to discuss the evening. We assured them that they had won the battle but the war wasn’t over yet! We learned the entire resort had a staff meeting that morning to plan this. Everyone involved had an incredible time (including the 100+ staff members that we went to battle with). Within 5 minutes of the end of it all, the resort sent an entire cleaning crew to bring our villa back to show villa status, they changed Mark’s sheets and mattress, took our golf cart back for a thorough cleaning, etc. I will never be able to speak highly enough regarding the entire resort staff’s attention to every detail of our vacation, including the awesome battle. You won’t want to miss our next trip to the D.R.! I can assure you that livestock and 93 pound tunas will NOT end up in your bed!

While strolling through the woods (some call it golfing), I pondered what I believe is a pretty cool idea. As you know, we finally have our new polo line in and we need your reviews. We’re going to sell 50 of our brand new polos, stupid cheap, ONE TIME! We’re going to offer our first 50 fans the opportunity to buy one of our new polos for just $20, 50% off our already too cheap price!. Here’s the deal: If you are interested in taking part of this one time offer, send an email to tournamentsales@loftgolf.net and we’ll email you the details. Here’s the deal: we request that our “testers” evaluate the polo, post a review on our fan page and post a photo of yourself wearing it! These polos will NOT have the full L.O.F.T. GOLF logo but will have Stickmon on the left sleeve (right chest on the LG-1122 ’cause there’s no sleeves!). Once again, this is open to the first 50 fans that email us and is limited to 1 polo per person. Select the ‘Best Way’ shipping option ($7.99) and we’ll Priority ship it to you! Here’s the polo styles you can select from http://loftgolf.net/images/LoftGolfDesigns2011-updated.pdf

Murphy’s Laws Of Golf

These are very, very accurate…

Golfers who claim they never cheat, also lie.

A two-foot putt counts the same as a two-foot drive.

Never wash your ball on the tee of a water hole.

There is no such thing as a friendly wager.

The stages of golf are Sudden Collapse, Radical Change, Complete
Frustration, Slow Improvement, Brief Mastery, and Sudden Collapse.

The only sure way to get a par is to leave a four-foot birdie putt two
inches short of the hole.

Don’t play with anyone who would question a 7.

It’s as easy to lower your handicap as it is to reduce your hat size.

If you really want to be better at golf, go back and take it up at a much
earlier age.

If your driver is hot, your putter will be ice cold; if you can hit your
irons, you will top your woods; if you are keeping your right elbow tucked
in, your head will come up.

Progress in golf consists of two steps forward and ten miles backward.

One good shank deserves another.

It takes 17 holes to really get warmed up.

No golfer ever swung too slowly.

No golfer ever played too fast.

One birdie is a hot streak.

No matter how badly you are playing, it’s always possible to play worse.

Whatever you think you’re doing wrong is the one thing you’re doing right.

Any change works for three holes.

The odds of hitting a duffed shot increase by the square of the number of
people watching.

Never teach golf to your wife.

Never play your son for money.

Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind during your
swing.

The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about
the golf swing.

It’s surprisingly easy to hole a 50-foot putt when you lie 10.

The statute of limitation on forgotten strokes is two holes.

Bets lengthen putts and shorten drives.

Confidence evaporates in the presence of fairway water.

It takes considerable pressure to make a penalty stroke adhere to a
scorecard.

It’s not a gimme if you’re still away.

The more your opponent quotes the rules, the greater the certainty that he
cheats.

Always limp with the same leg for the whole round.

The rake is always in the other trap.

The wind is in your face on 16 of the 18 holes.

Nothing straightens out a nasty slice quicker than a sharp dogleg to the
right.

The rough will be mowed tomorrow.

The ball always lands where the pin was yesterday.

It always takes at least five holes to notice that a club is missing.

The nearest sprinkler head will be blank.

Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two triple
bogeys to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe.

You can hit a 2-acre fairway 10% of the time and a two inch branch 90% of
the time.

Out of bounds is always on the right, for right-handed golfers.

The practice green is either half as fast or twice as fast as all the other
greens.

No one with funny head covers ever broke par (except for Tiger Woods).

The lowest numbered iron in your bag will always be impossible to hit.

Your straightest iron shot of the day will be exactly one club short.

No matter how far its shaft extends, a ball retriever is always a foot too
short to reach the ball.

If you seem to be hitting your shots straight on the driving range, it’s
probably because you’re not aiming at anything.

A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.

The only thing you can learn from golf books is that you can’t learn
anything from golf books, but you have to read an awful lot of golf books to
learn it.

So, as I stated, I left work early today to cut my grass. Sure, I’m well aware of the predictions that the ‘rapture’ is coming tomorrow, May 21, 2011, and I just wasn’t willing to get sucked off this planet with my yard a mess! You see, we’ve had 7” of rain, in CT, over the past 10 days and cutting the grass was just not a possibility, and I was runnin’ out of time! That being said, thanks to a large lawn, a John Deere tractor and a couple of cold Bud Lights, I was able to contemplate my regrets, on this, our last day on planet earth.

I went back, deep in my childhood. Our mother left us when I was just 2 years old. My father, a very hardworking tractor trailer driver for UPS, raised us for most of our childhood alone. Yup, a way too young dad with 3 sons, ages 1,2 & 3 years. When I think back on my growing up, I certainly could have been a much better son to my dad, I wasn’t, and there’s regret number 1!

I was married November 22, 1980 to Michelle. Keeping up the tradition of doing things way too young, we were both only 19 years old! As much as I’ve tried, I haven’t always been the perfect husband to Michelle, and that’s regret number 2!

We had two sons, once again keeping with the way too young thing! Michelle was still only 19 when Jeremy came along (I was a MUCH older, mature 20) and Bobby followed a year and a half later. I tried very, very hard to be a great dad, I never, ever hit ‘em, I encouraged them in every pursuit they had, told them ‘I love you” everyday, but I could’ve been a better dad. That’s regret number 3.

I have owned several businesses in my 50 years, yet ran every one of them professionally and ethically, therefore, no regret there!

Just under 7 years ago, Madison, the daughter of our late son, Bobby, was born. I felt it was very important to step in for her dad as much as humanly possible. Ummm, that being said…NO regret there, I NAILED the Grampy thing!

Anyway, an hour and a half on a lawn mower, 24 hours before the end of the world, I realize a huge regret! Yup, I’ve worked very hard to live my life right, be an example for others and help those in need, yet I’m getting sucked off this earth with this one last regret…I have SEVERAL unused Groupons! I had every intention of using every one of these, yet no one informed me of the May 21, 2011 expiration date on our planet! Congratulations Groupon people, you won!

It is with extreme displeasure that I am writing this post, but feel I need to to prevent other innocent people being hurt, so here it goes…

Almost a year ago, we were approached by Clint Moody, for sponsorship. I listened to Clint’s proposal with interest as he spoke about the 59 he shot, the tournament he’d just won and the many tournaments that he had won, or placed in the top 10. Clint went on to explain that he was a major deal on the tour earlier but had drug and alcohol problems and walked away from golf. I was impressed with his openess and appreciated him sharing that very personal part of his life, especially to a potential sponsor! He explained that he was clean and rededicating himself to the game of golf, and needed some sponsors to fully dedicate himself to, once again, make it to the top. I requested he send me his sponsorship package for our review, which he did. I watched, with great interest, about the 59 he claims he shot in Montana and read his ‘resume’ of all his wins on the tour. I checked out his Facebook pages and was very impressed that he put himself out there as a very religous, charitable person, constantly seeking money to support his long list of charities. That being said, I waited ’til that evening to discuss the proposal with my wife, Michelle.

Michelle took the time to listen to my pitch, review Clint’s information and hear me drone on and on about the great marketing this would be for our brand new company! I explained that for only $5,000 our brand new apparel brand would be seen by thousands, if not millions, while Clint dominated the golf world! Clint was gonna put us on the fast-track to success! Well, Michelle has always believed in me and supported me in every way, so this would be an easy sell! After a lengthy discussion, Michelle explained that we didn’t have $5,000 in the L.O.F.T. GOLF account and we had invested an awful lot of our own money to put L.O.F.T. GOLF on the map, and she felt it would be best if we just grew our brand the old fashioned way and hold off on sponsoring anyone…just until we could afford it. A better husband than I would have listened to her great advise and sat down to dinner…but NOT me! I told her that we needed to “loan” L.O.F.T. GOLF another $5,000 because we needed Clint Moody on our team! I spent the next several hours trying to convince her, and I did! Yeah for me! I was confident that Michelle would tell me what a brilliant decision this sponsorship was the minute she saw a glimpse of our sweet logo on a PGA event on TV!

The following day I headed to the bank and got a cashier’s check for $5,000. Because Clint needed the money immediately, I agreed to overnight it to him so he could pay the entry fees for several upcoming tournaments. OK, the check was in the mail and I just needed to set my DVR for the next PGA tour stop Clint would be attending!

Clint was playing in a couple very small time tournaments, ya know, the kind with less than 10 players. He explained that he needed to whip through a few of these before he could move to the next step, The Hooter’s Tour. It sounded reasonable enough and made perfect sense to me, but there was one problem…he wasn’t winning any tournaments! I spoke to him several times and was always offered a bunch of excuses that sounded reasonable to me, so we forged on. Clint would constantly be reaching out to me for more money, for the next tournament, for hotel money, for gas money, you name it! I realized that my investment wouldn’t pay off if the only place Clint could be seen wearing a L.O.F.T. GOLF shirt was on his couch, so I sent him money, time and time again. Some of the money were “loans” but I never saw 10 cents being paid back, but I kept helping him! I explained to Clint that we needed more sponsors onboard so he could persue his dream and I could see my shirt being worn in the Masters! Because this is going on way too long, I’m gonna fast-forward a bit, but won’t leave out any important details.

I won’t get into detail about the exact money that I handed over to Clint, but it was substantial. I was often contacted, via Facebook messenger, from a Hubert Greer. Hubie, as he called himself, had a PGA logo for his profile picture and constantly told me that he was a high level PGA empolyee, and I needed to really step up and give Clint more money. He explained that the entire PGA wanted to see Clint make it to the PGA because he was good for the game! I often asked Hubie to call me because I really dislike the typing involved with the IM. He was ALWAYS out of the country, on official PGA business, so he’d have to call me when he got back to the states. Apparently, he’s still not back ’cause I’ve never spoken to him. One of his last messages to me was L.O.F.T. GOLF really needs to step up and help Clint financially. I replied that I really appreciated his efforts in getting sponsorship money for Clint, but I asked ‘What have you done”? he replied that because of his association with the PGA, he was unable to help Clint monitarily, but if Clint’s sponsors stepped up and helped Clint, he’d pay it back 30 fold by giving us free ads in the PGA Magazine. After a month or so went by, I questioned Clint about our promised PGA ads and he stated “Oh, I didn’t tell you, Hubie got fired from the PGA and no one can find heim anywhere, he even deleted his Facebook page”! Wow, I felt bad because it was yet another bad break for my friend Clint. Oh, by the way, there never was a Hubie Greer, we’ll explain that later in this post.

I spoke to several potential sponsor for Clint, as he would have them call me. I spoke so highly of Clint, explaining everything he’d done for L.O.F.T. GOLF, not on the golf course, mind you, but with constantly posting about how great we were! I must be a great salesman ’cause I was able to convince these other comapny to get on board and give Clint their hard earned cash! Great, now Clint can get out on tour! I won’t mention the companies here, but if you’ve been a fan of Clint’s you would’ve seen them constantly posted, as well as posts on our fan page. They’re all removed from his clintmoodygolf.com site as of this writing. If you do get the time, I encourage you to check out the celebrity filled Fan Club members he has posted!

I would get some updates from Clint on his progress on tour. Hundreds of excuses, but zero checks. I attributed his poor play to his constant money problems. If you can’t concentrate on your game 100%, you’re not gonna play too weel (just ask Tiger!). After he withdrew from another tournament, I had a stern conversation with him. I explained that he has our complete backing and support and I didn’t care if he shoots a 135, just never, ever quit. That’s a lesson on instilled in my children their entire lives, and I needed to instil it in Clint. I hate quiters! He took it well and promised me it wouldn’t happen again…of course, it did!

Let’s fast forward to the ranking school he just attended. He explained to me that he needed to get a PGA ranking and, if he had the money, he could attend ranking school in S.C. I asked what ranking school would get him and he told me that if he ranked in the top 20%, he could walk on to almost any PGA tour stop. I asked how that differentiated from Q school and he explained that he didn’t need to go to Q school because he had enough tour wins and top 10 that he didn’t need to go to Q school. Now, pay attention, he said he needed to be a ranked PGA player, not a ranked Hooter’s player he told me that this ranking would enable him to play PGA tour stops, NOT Hooter’s tournaments. Now you should take a break from this reading and spend a few moments telling your family that I am the stupidest man on earth! Go ahead, I deserve it!

Welcome back! Clint was able to get the money needed for tranking school from another company, not us. L.O.F.T. GOLF booked and paid for his hotel for 3 days. I got a message while I was in Florida with Clint asking me to PayPal him some money because he needed the room one more night (which is kinda funny ’cause he missed the cut and it should’ve been 1 day LESS) and he needed money to buy new golf shoes. Yup, I sent it to him! Heck, I don’t need our tourning pro golfing at ranking school with holes in his shoes! the following week he headed to ranking school with my best wishes and confidence! The first day I received a call from Clint explaining that he had a bad round…an 88! I asked what happened and he explained he shot a great round but had 5 penalty strokes! he also blamed his new putter that he was given by a potential new sponsor! Funny, before the tournament he told me it was the greatest putter he ever used! I told him to keep his chin up and just do better the next day. I didn’t hear from Clint until around 6:30 the following evening. He stated he wanted to update me but was just sitting down to dinner. He quickly said that he had a better round that day and was still in the mix! Oh, he also explained that he withdrew from the Hooters Tour that was combined with ranking school. When I aske why, he explained that there were players there strickly for ranking school, or strickly for the hooter’s tournament, but he was there for both. He told me he withdrew because the Hooter’s players were teeing off much closer to the green and that all the ranking school guys had to hit from the tips! He claimed he talked to a rules official that told him the PGA insisted the ranking school guys play a 7,400 yards. Didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but, hey, we’ve already addressed my stupidity! The following day I was out of the office and received a text. I noticed it came from Clint and that kinda shocked me ’cause Clint had never texted me before! I opened the text and saw picture, one of his Hooter’s Tour Card and his PGA card under it and another photo of Clint holding a card and an envelope in front of a Hooter’s banner. I was so impressed that I immediately called him to congratulate him. I asked what his ranking was and he explained that he wouldn’t know that for a week to ten days but he had a great round and was now PGA ranked! I was so excited that when i got back to the office I posted the pictures with the remark ‘Our pro golfer, Clint Moody needs to make room in his wallet’. The pictures turned out to be his undoing, here’s why…

I received a call from Clint’s potential putter sponsor about my post. He had called me several times asking how Clint was doing at ranking school and had nothing but negative things to say about Clint scores. I was getting angry listening to him telling me that Clint couldn’t rank with an 88 and an 85. he was clearly crazy (Clint had told me he was because he wouldn’t give Clint any money, wow, I wish I were crazy like him! ) and he didn’t have the phone conversations with Clint, so he has no idea! Nope, I was in the know, not him! The morning after the cards were posted I received a call from him explaing that he had a real problem with the cards. It bothered him so much that he couldn’t sleep the night before. He brought it to my attention that the PGA card was under the Hooters card and the date on the PGA card was intentually covered. The only reason i listened to him is that I had a split second feeling that the date may have been hidden, so I continued to listen. I blew the photo up large enough to get him the membership ID number and he went off to discuss this with the PGA. A couple of hours later, he called me with some disturbing news. Number 1, the Hooter’s Card was given out to everyone that paid the $2,000 entry fee to be on the tour and the photo of him holding the card and envelope was probably taken when he got there. What I find so interesting is that if I paid the $2K I could be a touring pro too…and I’m not a really good golfer! More bad news! the PGA card was a fake! The PGA ID numbers have 8 numbers, no letters and no dashes. Clint’s had dashes, A letter and a total of 9 characters! Hmmmmm, this isn’t looking to good! He went back to his investigation and we started ours.

I started to do the due diligence that I should have done several thousands of dollars earlier. I checked out the Hooter’s tour stats, 21 tournaments and he made the cut once! If you find this hard to believe, go to http://ngahooters.tourgolfscores.com, go to players stats and check it out! A bunch of missed cuts, withdrawals and DQs. While I’m involved with the investigation, I received a call from a very depressed sounding Clint Moody. he couldn’t believe that he wasn’t getting sponsors knocking down his door now he was a ranked palyer! He explained that he needed some money to attend the member’s Only Hooter’s tournament and the first two positions get their entire season’s entry fees waived, and the top 40 get a check! Now I need to rewind a bit!

I was told about this fantastic guy that Clint knew well…Roger Mandigo. I’m sure you’re aware of ‘Roger’ as he is Clint moody’s biggest fan! Clint informed me that ‘Roger’ was a big wig with the Canadian Sports League and L.O.F.T. GOLF was getting the opportunity to bid. Between Clint and ‘Roger’, I was a shoe in. This was a huge $3.7 million dollar order and L.O.F.T. GOLF was the lead dog! I told Clint I was kinda scared about the order ’cause we’re a shirt company and don’t have sourses for baseball pants, etc., but I’d do it. ‘Roger’, I was told a few weeks earlier, would be at his vacation home in the Cayman Islands, but he’d be in touch we me about my new found millions! Last friday I received an email from ‘Roger’ at mandigogolfcanada@live.com. Anyone can get a free email account on Live (it’s the same as MSN) without any identification. Wow, it was my quote info on the Canadian Sports League. As soon as I read it, I knew I’d be hearing from Clint soon looking for help! Remember how I told Clint I was worried about this quaote ’cause we’re a shirt company? My quote request came in and there were only shirts! No baseball pants…oh, and they need 64,000 of them. As expected, I was contacted by Clint later in the day. I told him about this great email and said that I needed to speak to ‘Roger’ asap. Clint informed me that ‘Roger’ was out of the country at his vacation home in the Dominican. Yup, I know earlier I said he was at his vacation home in the Caymans, but clint apparently forgot he told me the Caymans. Well, it didn’t take long ’til I got a instant facebook message from ‘Roger’! We discussed this great “opportunity” and he gave me some inside info! if anyone would like to see any of this conversation, let me know ’cause we took zillions of screen shots of our chats. During our chat session, he asked me if there was anything i could give to Clint because he needs to be out on tour because Clint Moody can beat anyone out there! He was kindenough to say that he’d put up $2,500 if I’d match it. I asked him if he could send it then and he said he’d try, but didn’t know if PayPal would work internationally. I assured him it would and a few minutes later he posted that he payPaled it but needed to use his checking account so Clint wouldn’t receive the cash ’til Tuesday. Now he asked me if I could get some to him earlier, so he could play some tournamnets. I never said I’d match his money, he just kinda assumed it, I guess. I had noticed, after staring at my computer screens for endless hours, that when Clint would disappear from friends on chat, ‘Roger’ would pop up, add comments to everything Clint would post and then disappear, just before Clint’s picture popped back up! Now we needed to figure out a way to grab the IP addresses of both Clint and ‘Roger’, so I contacted my friends in the computer business. i explained to my good friend, Mark, what was going on and he said he’d get back to me. 6:30 Tuesday morning Mark called and asked me check my emails. He developed a fake page to his other businesses website advertising a Meet and greet Clint Moody in the D.R. He set up the page to track all IP addresses and now i just had to figure out a way to get them to sign up for the trip. I emailed both Clint and’Roger the link with the explaination that I was sending the same email to the top 50 fans to get a level of interest before posting it to our page. I got a call that afternoon that Clint had signed up, but no ‘Roger’! I sent a message to Clint saying it didn’t look too good and that we only had 7 people sign up to the page. remember, the only 2 people that got this link were Clint and ‘Roger’. he asked me if I had sent the email to his sister and I said I hadn’t ’cause i figured he would. I got a call from my friend who asked who Marie was. I explained that it was Clint’s girlfriend so the matching IP address would make sense. Then he got a reply from Clint’s sister…same IP address, then, finally, our good friend ‘Roger’ signed up as well! It seems that he most’ve flown to Kitty Hawk, NC after our chat because he responded from Clint’s IP address! As a matter of fact, every person that signed up had the same IP address! I figured that if I confronted Clint then that he could explain it off as he’d spoken to ‘Roger’ and new he was going so he signed him up. I had to wait until the next morning to expose this, and here’s how I did it; I sent ‘Roger’ and email requesting him to get a hold of my ASAP, as I had a question about Clint prior to PayPaling the money to him…then i waited, staring at the computer. Clint appeared on the Friends on Chat section, deleted some of his earlier posts and disappeared. 2 seconds later, ‘Roger’ appeared! I knew it was show time. ‘Roger’ typed “Good morning, John, I replied with “Hey Roger, how’s the Dominican, he replied with “It is good, it is always good” I then thanked him for signing up for the D.R. trip and he said it was no problem. Then there was silence…he came back with “you had a question about Clint?” and I let loose! I found out that you can type as much as you want on the chat section, unlike the regular posting. I replied wit “Oh, I almost forgot, yeah i do, did you know that Clint Moody and Roger Mandigo are the same person, did you know that several companies (I named names) as well as the PGA and Hooter’s Tours have been investigating “them”, and I asked if he was aware of computer IP addresses, and was he aware that my friends were in the computer business and the link wasn’t real. This went on for some time but when i finally stopped typing, he replied with ‘Excuse me?” Then he went on with a profanity laced tirad telling me that he knows more about ISP addresses than any of us (yup, he said ISP) and it was explained that Clint had set up his facebook pagge, as well as several others, and that’s wjy the addresses were all the same. When i explained that we didn’t get the IP’s from Facebook, but from our vacation sign-up page, there was a whole bunch more swearing! I responded with ” Hey Cloint, I think you should sign of now as Roger and resin in as Clint because we all enjoy seeing the friends on Chat photos change…then BOOM! Roger’s page disappeared, then Clint messaged me telling me he could prove everything he tought I was a friend, so on and so on! Them…BOOM, the entire chat session disappeared! I was now officially blocked! You know what’s happened since.

We have several people working on every detail. People are investigating the 59 claim, the Cart path tournament (which he has recently deleted from his website and a very big interest by people investigating all his charitable work. Does everyone remember the boy Colby (we originally refered to him here as Ryan, in error) that was dying of cancer? We truly hope that the charities were legitimate, but we’re making sure they are. Understand, we are NOT suggesting that the charities were not legit. Once we learn, we’ll let you know.

Oh, one more thing, Clint told me that he met with the Golf channel that’s doing a series about up and coming golfers that desperatly need the money! We haven’t had the time to investigate this yet, but we thought you’d be interested.

As I stated at the beginning, we have no pleasure in doing this but need to prevent others from this scam. there are so many honest, hard working players trying to make it to the big stage, and we were trying to help someone that we felt truly deserved it. We felt that if we didn’t expose this, several others would have been hurt. Even one of our fans gave Clint $1,100. This had to be brought to light. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Installment 11, The Win McMurry Photo Shoot!

We had finalized our plans for our photo shoot with Win McMurry. She requested that we do the shoot in Wilmington, NC. That’s where Win grew up and she’d be back there visiting her family in August. Her family are members of a very prestigious, private country club and she’d be able to get us full access for our photo shoot. That sounded great to me, so I headed down to Wilmington. I arrived the day before, and seeing I never learn, I checked into a really bad motel, yup, once again, with am M! I had this great, quickly growing golf apparel brand and was still looking for $29 accommodations! I settled in to, yet another COPS episode motel, to try to get some sleep. I was awoken at 2:30 in the morning by someone banging on my door, shouting “Bennie, Bennie”! Since I wasn’t, and never had been Bennie, I tried to ignore it, but they weren’t going away. I finally got out of bed, fortunately, I was completely dressed (‘cause I was sure I’d be killed there and didn’t want the police to find me naked), and slid the curtain to the side and said “There’s no Bennie here, go away!” I swear to you, I had no idea if this person was a man or woman but, whatever it was, told me how cute I was and asked me to let them in. I declined and told ‘it’ I had called the police so they might want to run along. I attempted to get back to sleep, but that didn’t happen. My photo shoot wasn’t until 3:00 that afternoon, so I had some time to kill. I took a shower and headed to the beach. I was amazed at just how beautiful the Wilmington area was. I pulled up to one of the beach roads, paid at a little kiosk to park, and headed to the beach. It was beautiful! I sat on a bench wondering how a place this gorgeous could be, literally 10 minutes away from the Motel I almost died in! I took out my iPhone, took some beautiful pictures, collected some sea shells and headed back to the car. Great, now there’s only 8 hours to go before our shoot! I drove around, got some breakfast and drove around some more. Whew, now there’s only 6 hours and 45 minutes ‘til our photo shoot! People that know me say “No, Halvorsen’s NOT a Type A personality, Type A’s tell him he needs to relax! That being said, I wasn’t really excited to have more than 6 hours to wait.

I got to the course an hour early and it was beautiful! I had never seen such a beautiful place! I honestly was concerned that if we took photos from the first tee, it would look like a back-drop, it was that nice. I wondered around the clubhouse and decided I’d grab a beer at the bar. Nope! They didn’t accept cash. Being a private club, the only way you could purchase anything was on your account. I’m in no way an alcoholic, but once I was told I couldn’t buy a beer, I learned exactly what an alcoholic goes through. Once I was told I couldn’t have one, it became the most important thing in the world to me, but, no beer! About 45 minutes later, people started to show up. Luckily, since I was wearing a L.O.F.T. GOLF shirt, they knew who I was long before I knew who they were. I was greeted by Patricia, the photographer that I hired on the request of Win, and Win’s mom and sister. I was amazed by how incredibly friendly they all were! The first thing I’d noticed was Win’s mom was stunning, and the sweetest southern woman you’d ever meet! Part of our agreement with Win was a 2 hour photo shoot so we’d have to hurry. Patricia was metering the sun, settings, etc. and I was very impressed with her professionalism. Win arrived shortly thereafter; we met and went to work, wow, she was one of the nicest people I’d ever met! I handed Win several shirts and she discussed what skorts, shorts, pants, she would wear with each with her sister and mom. Patricia was hard at work metering the sun, spotting photo areas, etc. When we started the shoot, the entire course shut down. Several people had recognized Win, and those that didn’t thought it was really cool that this event was happening at their course. Our first shots were taken by the first tee box, under a tree, on a bench. Patricia felt that the photo would look more natural if Win had a drink in her hand so someone headed to the bar (yup, the same one that wouldn’t sell me a beer) and got a club soda with some red stuff in it, topped with a cherry. This particular photo has been seen thousands of times and features Win in a pink cotton L.O.F.T. GOLF shirt. The entire course waited while we took hundreds of pictures. The course, and although I’d love to give them credit, and publicity, for being so nice, wanted to make sure that no one knew who they were because they were an exclusive, very private club, gave us full reign of the course. We jumped in our carts and went from hole to hole, stopping all play as we shot! I kept looking at my watch concerned that my 2 hours was coming to an end. I finally mentioned to Win that we were running out of time when she asked “Do you have somewhere to go?” No, I said, it’s just we only have 2 hours, I told her. She responded she’d be there as long as it took to insure I had everything I needed. Wow, at that time I knew that she was a true “Team L.O.F.T. GOLF” member! We continued working well after dark. Win never looked at a watch, she was there until we were finished. I was so impressed! We continued to shoot until it was too dark to continue. I really can’t explain how much I appreciate the hard work from Win, her sister and mother, and Patricia, and her sister, for everything they’ve done for L.O.F.T. GOLF. Patricia is not only the best photographer I’ve ever worked with, she’s also the nicest! Patricia has earned the position of “The Official L.O.F.T. GOLF Photographer”. Patricia went back to her studio and spent countless hours working on all the photos she’d taken, printed all 600+ pictures and had everything to me the following week. As we receive our 2011 line, we’ll be working with Patricia again. If there’s any of you from the Wilmington, NC area, and need a great photographer, contact me and I’ll get you her info!

Installment 12, Product tests, samples and more marketing stuff!

Installment 10, The Wonderful Win McMurry!
Once we came to the realization that the world was not going to learn about us from the Golf Shopping Network, we got back to work figuring out a way to let the world know that we’d created the “greatest golf apparel company on the planet”! We had a meeting to discuss our past marketing efforts, as well as what we needed to do going forward. We revisited all of our previous efforts and came to the realization that, perhaps, we should look into something that would work! Everyone that had been introduced to L.O.F.T. GOLF loved it, but there were far too few people that had heard of us, and we needed to change that…quickly!

It was the spring of 2009 when I was contacted by a management company that worked with Win McMurry. When I was contacted by them, to be honest, I had no idea who she was. Her agent, Hunt, explained that she was a very well known broadcaster on PGATour.com. I had never seen PGATour.com, and asked that he gave me a few days to do some due diligence, and I’d get back to him. Once I hung up with Hunt, I went to the site and was able to see some clips that Win was in. She was absolutely beautiful! She was also a true professional! We spent some time researching her before deciding that she’d be absolutely perfect as a L.O.F.T. GOLF spokeswoman. To deviate from the story a bit, we started to see huge increases of our female customer base. To be completely honest, we were very surprised by that. We knew that men would love the brand but kinda figured the women would not. Sure, we had worked very hard to create beautiful ladies apparel, mostly to provide for mixed tournaments, but really didn’t think women would love us! Wow, we were wrong! Suddenly, women’s purchases were outpacing the men’s. We couldn’t have been more pleased to discover women really liked us, and more importantly, got us.

We needed to show the world that L.O.F.T. GOLF had a fantastic line of women’s apparel and knew that Win would be the way to do it. Now, for those of you that have read the installments from the beginning, you know that we weren’t broke, we would’ve had to borrow some money to be broke, we were beyond broke! I got back to Win’s people and explained to them that we were a brand new company and, as much as we would love to have Win a part of our team, it just wasn’t in our budget. He was great and understood 100% and said to keep Win in mind as our company grew ‘cause they all loved the brand. I thanked him and went back to work! I knew we had to work really hard because I wanted Win to represent our brand! Once again, those that have followed from the start, realize that I don’t sleep really well, and that night was no different. I laid awake imagining Win wearing our sweet gear and how having someone as well known as her would certainly help but us on the map. I laid awake, staring at my ceiling fan, thinking that we’d have Win on board the next year, and then everyone would know us. She was the perfect spokesperson for L.O.F.T. GOLF, and we were going to get her. With that thought, I was able to fall asleep.

As I had mentioned in an earlier installment, when I was in the boat business, we had created a half hour infomercial. I needed to find “talent” for the shoot and looked over, literally, hundreds of candidates. I felt that the “talent’ (that’s what they call it, I’m not being “Hollywood”) needed to be an attractive woman. Having spent my entire life as a guy, I realize that we generally control the TV remote and have the attention span of a fruit fly. That being said, it’s always been my goal to channel surf quickly enough that the sound doesn’t catch up to the picture, oh, Michelle hates this! I was trying to figure how to get someone to stop on my random channel because our infomercial was broadcasted over a few different network channels, none that anyone would ever look for. I knew to catch a man’s attention, allowing us to spend the next 28 minutes explaining to him why he needed a boat, we needed the right “talent”. I watched several videos, featuring beautiful women. I needed a woman pretty enough that the guy would actually hear some audio, but she had to be acceptable to the poor woman forced to watch the channel surfing experience. I knew a pretty woman would stop the thumb pressing but a morally loose woman would turn the wife off and she’d insist on a channel change. That being said, after pouring through hundreds of tapes, I decided on Gina. Gina was drop dead gorgeous, yet was very wholesome and cute. That’s it, we had our girl! Prior to our 3 day taping, I met with Gina and she was everything I’d hoped for. She was articulate, professional and, yes, very pretty. Our 3 long days of taping, at each store location, on the CT River and Candlewood Lake, were great! We had fun, Gina was great, and the final edit of our infomercial was incredible.

A few weeks later, our infomercial aired! I watched the first airing from my office because we put an 800 number up and we felt that someone needed to be there to answer the incoming calls. We got a lot of ‘em! Our first airing was at 8:30 PM and people watched it, lots of people. We started airing the spot 2-3 times a week and the response was huge. It was funny; I couldn’t go to the mall without someone coming up to me thinking I was a big time TV star. The moral of this story is, Gina was the right choice. Several times a day, when couples would come to the store, it was the wife that would talk about the infomercial, and all of them would say Gina was adorable. That’s a stark contrast to if we used a handsome man, the men would all assure their wives that ”Yeah, he’s definitely gay”! Don’t blame me, that’s just how guys are.

Wow, that was a long detour from the Win story, but I felt it was important. Anyway, I am not a patient man and didn’t want to wait a year to have Win join our team. I realized that it was time to explain to Michelle that we needed to spend more of our personal money and retain Win. I was convinced that Win would bring the star power we needed to ignite the brand. The following day I contacted Win’s “people” to negotiate our deal. Win was excited to become a part of our new brand so she agreed to work with us at a much lower price than she deserved, but she was smart enough to realize that she’d have a great future with L.O.F.T. GOLF. She agreed to work with us, ‘cause she really liked the brand, and we hope to have her a part of “Team L.O.F.T. GOLF” forever!

That being said, our next installment will speak about our photo shoot. This was all going to be covered in this installment, but it ran kinda long. The next installment will cover our shoot and what an absolute pleasure it was working with Win and her team.

Installment 11, The Win McMurry Photo Shoot!

Installment 9: Golf Shopping Network, Lauren Thompson and Marketing!

While we were at the 2009 PGA Merchandise Show, several people stopped by our booth representing the brand new Golf Shopping Network (GSN). I took the time to speak with one of their people. They were creating an entire network for golf products, based off the very successful Home Shopping Network (HSN). The concept was great, unfortunately, way out of our budget. Later in the month, while back at the office, I was contacted by a representative of GSN. He explained that they had made several changes to the original program and very much wanted L.O.F.T. GOLF involved. While in the boat business, we ran 3 half hour infomercials every week and got great results from it, so I really wanted to replicate that success, just in the golf apparel business. GSN had it all figured out, and I was impressed. A client would go to Tennessee, film a two and a half or a five minute video, and soon it would be seen by millions and millions of golfers throughout the country. They had negotiated with several different networks to run a half hour GSN show and would be compensated with a percentage of the sales. GSN was to handle all the fulfillment and order processing, all we had to do is sit back and count the millions of dollars coming in to us. It sounded like a great deal, so I started negotiating. Number 1, I insisted that we do all of L.O.F.T. GOLF’s fulfillment, as I have always hated when companies bang you on inflated shipment charges. They agreed. Next, I had to negotiate paying the two and a half minute video rate for the five minute taping. They agreed. Next, I learned that Lauren Thompson, a beautiful, talented member of The Golf Channel, was also involved with GSN. I told them that the only way we would proceed is if Lauren was a part of our video. They agreed. After a few more hours of discussion, we were making travel plans to get to Tennessee! They created a script and emailed it to us. It was very well written, yet very, very boring. After several discussions and revisions, I said that I’d prepare the entire script to try to reflect on the humor of our brand. I spent several late nights trying to fill 5 minutes of dialogue. Finally, it was ready so we headed to TN for our taping!

We got into town the day before the taping was scheduled and met with several GSN staffers. I handed them my new script and they gave me all the details for tomorrow’s filming. The segment was to be filmed in a church. Nope, not the kinda church you find in your neighborhood, but one of the huge, nationally broadcasted churches you see on Sunday morning TV. I thought that was an unusual place to film, but it was what it was. I was invited to dinner with two of the GSN partners. We headed for the restaurant and after a long day of travelling, I really needed a beer! When our waitress came, I quickly ordered a Bud Light, and my meal partners ordered Iced Tea. It could’ve been my imagination but, when I order a beer, the looked a bit shocked. During dinner, our conversation was mainly about their new venture but was peppered with the fact that they were very involved with this church. I accept everyone’s religious views but was a bit concerned that the script that that I prepared was in the breast pocket of John’s sports jacket. You see, in adding humor to our segment, I kinda wrote in a part where I would mention my wife, Michelle, and notice that Lauren had just entered the camera shot, at which time I explain to Lauren that I certainly was unmarried and proceeded to hit on her. I’m pretty sure that my script wasn’t read ‘til filming day because as the filming was taking place, Lauren walked in and I proceeded to try to pick her up! The reason I was sure that not many people had read the script, we had to retake the entire piece because all the camera people, etc., laughed so hard that you could hear it on film. I also realized that the partners were NOT laughing and looked mortified! Someone yelled cut and I was suddenly surrounded by people that had a better script idea. I wouldn’t change it because the reaction we got from the crew was precisely the reaction I wanted from the viewer. They agreed so we resumed filming. When I hit on Lauren this time, the snickers were quiet enough that we could keep rolling. Lauren was a true professional! I could tell that she was a GREAT actress because how painlessly she blew off my advances on camera! OK, that probably wasn’t acting! She was very friendly and an absolute pleasure to work with. The host asked me how we came up with our cool logo, so I told the story about how it was developed in a bar…CUT! It was explained to me that saying it was created in a restaurant would be better, so I agreed. Throughout this entire process, I kept wondering if they research what L.O.F.T. was an acronym for! The filming was finished and I was brought into the control room because I insisted in being involved in the entire editing process. This was something I’d always insisted on with any advertisements. I approved the rough edit and headed back to CT, excited about what we had just accomplished.

We were told that the video wouldn’t be ready for broadcast for about a month, as it was sent out for Closed Captioning. A month later, I was informed it was still out. Finally, the closed captioning was complete and we were ready to air! I contacted GSN to get the airing schedule. I had posted that our great new infomercial was ready to air and we’d be posting airtimes and airing dates. Everything was proceeding well until I was informed that GSN didn’t have a single network that would air their show, for free! Let’s recap, shall we? We spent thousands of dollars, travelled half way across the country, spent hours and hours of work and created an advertising masterpiece, and no one was gonna see it! Perfect! The GSN site was recently pulled down, as well as our video from You Tube. We had over 53,000 views on You Tube, but now, even that’s gone!

For those of you keeping count at home, we had spent enough to purchase a helicopter, on marketing, and still hadn’t made it yet! The good news is that while we were chasing all these marketing opportunities, we also were hard at work growing our brand, and it was working! Our website visits were increasing and people were buying our L.O.F.T. GOLF apparel online. I do wish I had bought the helicopter, though!

Next Installment: The wonderful Win McMurry!

Installment 8, I guess there’s no ‘open’ sign on a website!

I was well into this chapter when I realized that I never did explain why we don’t own loftgolf.com, and it’s a great story! I mentioned earlier, when researching our L.O.F.T. GOLF idea, there was a L.O.F.T. GOLF in existence. When we decided to go after the brand, I contacted the owners of loftgolf.com. I explained what we were doing and mentioned, since they hadn’t update their site in years, we would be interested in purchasing their domain name. I spoke to one guy, and he said he’d have to bring it up with the ‘partners’. A few days later I received a Cease and Desist Order from them! They wrote that they owned the brand, as well as the Trademark. We started to be ‘C.C’d” on their conversations. They made it clear that they owned the L.O.F.T. GOLF brand. I explained to them that they did NOT have a Trademark on the brand, as we did, and they proceeded to explain that they had a trademark attorney that assured them that their trademark was valid and they should sue us. When I requested the name of their Trademark attorney, they told me it was “Mary Smith” (Mary Smith is in quotes ‘cause it’s not her real name). We googled “Mary Smith” and learned that she was the nations Trademark specialist, and out of Iowa. I was really sure that they had never retained “Mary”, and called them on it. All of our emails, up to this point, were very professional, that is until I wrote “I just thought you should know that we’re very impressed with your retaining “Mary Smith”, as your Trademark attorney, as she is the best in the business. I just thought it was important to inform you that during our telephone conversation this afternoon, she had no idea who you guys were! The emails that we received were no longer professional, they were now laced with profanities and seemed to be written by a 15 year old, a very pissed off 15 year old! That being said, we’re pretty sure that we’ll never own loftgolf.com but are preparing a lawsuit, as I type, to get them to go away. As much as we’d love to have the domain loftgolf.com, ‘cause that’s most people’s knee jerk search, loftgolf.net proudly owns the first several slots on google when you google “loft golf”. To make a long story kinda short, we offered them some cash for the domain, and promised to outfit their entire organization with our sweet L.O.F.T. GOLF gear…they lose!

Well, we got back to CT, as you can tell ‘cause if we didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this. I’m sure you’re curious about our accommodations on the trip home, well, we stayed in a hotel, with an ‘H’! Anyway, as I wrote about earlier, I researched how to do create a great website, we spent money we didn’t have to have it programmed. We poured over every bit of information we could find to insure we got the website right. Now, it’s time to go live! We have a program, Awstats that tracks all traffic to the site. It was so cool to watch all the traffic our new site was attracting; unfortunately, almost all of the visits were from me! Hmmm, we had to do something about this, so we did. The L.O.F.T. GOLF corporate account had roughly $15 in it but I realized that in order to increase the corporate account balance, I’d have to transfer more from our personal account, and throw it at marketing. I transferred $10,000 and started researching companies that would quickly increase our traffic count, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and over all website performance. There are a zillion companies to chose from so we spent weeks researching all zillion, then we started to throw money around! I’m not going to mention company names, as I prefer to NOT spend the next several months in court, but they ALL had the answers. Each of them explained what we were doing wrong, and how they were gonna help us. Wow, that sounded great! We spent a month, not working on our site, but sending all these website gurus money. We also threw a bunch of money to a guy, and it’s very, very hard for me not to post his name here, that explained exactly what we needed to do to be huge, in a hurry! He was going to put us on the map and all we needed to do was figure out how to ship all the new-found sales! As an experienced businessman, I knew that money will fix everything. When we had a slight slump in sales at the boat dealership, we’d throw some ads in local papers, and, viola, sales increased! That’s not how it works on the internet!

As mentioned in a previous installment, my “brain storm” was the Cart Girl of the Month” competition, I think I even referred to myself as a genius! We had designed this page to bring people to our site everyday in order to vote for one of the hundreds of nominees, ‘cause you could only vote once a day. Right off the bat we got 2 nominees. We watched with interest as our site membership increased by both the nominee’s friends and family. Perfect! This was exactly what I had envisioned and it was working beautifully. We knew that to attract as many “Cart Girl” nominees as possible, we couldn’t just throw up a grand prize for the “Cart Girl of the Year” of a $100 gift certificate. One part of my plan was to have a grand prize so great we’d crash the entire internet with beautiful cart girl images uploading to our page. We offered a grand prize of an all inclusive, 3 bedroom private villa in the Dominican Republic! Not only would she get the villa, we were paying for their all inclusive daily fee, airfare, etc. They were to get a private helicopter tour of the D.R. and be whisked around the island in a beautiful, white stretch limo. Every nominee was to receive a beautiful L.O.F.T. GOLF Cart Girl of the Month Nominee” shirt to wear on the course, encouraging their customers to log in and vote for the…everyday! She was also to receive 500 ‘Business Cards’ with voting info on ‘em. I said it before, and I’ll say it again…genius! Now, our only concern was that when Al Gore ‘invented’ the internet, he had done so with our genius plot in mind and there would be enough bandwidth, worldwide, to handle the uploads! Well, he did! All of our concerns were put to rest once we learned that the internet was, indeed, capable of handling BOTH of the nominees! Yup, I said both. As I type this, I really have no idea why this part didn’t work, but am very happy that we had our attorneys put in minimum requirements just in case it didn’t work. We have been interviewed hundreds of times and everyone wants to discuss the Cart Girl Competition as they all believe it’s brilliant. We’re probably going to pull that page down, unfortunately.

Another part of our research found we really needed a forum. While designing the site, I spent weeks signing up, and participating in other golf forums. I needed to study what made the good forums good, and more importantly, what made the poor ones bad. I spent hours on about every forum out there, keeping notes on what worked. As a life long car guy, I was excited to see one of the most active topics on one of the ‘good’ forums was about cars, so I wrote that down, that would be a topic. I learned that you need to have several different topics to have an active forum, and we developed it! Once we went live with the forum, I was concerned that we’d need to recruit several members to monitor the forum and keep it going strong, the good news is we didn’t need to hire anyone as I was able to respond the activity myself, in roughly 3 minutes a day! I know what you’re thinking, “Hmmm, why didn’t a forum focused on a fun group of golfers with great attitudes not work”? The answer is simply…I have NO idea! At the time I was watching the forum dying, I attributed it to the fact we had so few members and so little traffic. What were all the people rolling around naked in the cash I paid them doing to increase our traffic? Apparently, they are still rolling around naked in the money ‘cause there isn’t one that did anything for us. IMPORTANT NOTE: This is NOT an invitation for all you SEO gurus to tell us that we were dealing with the wrong companies, and you are different. Been there, done that, thank you.

Over the past 2 years our membership and site traffic has increased steadily to a very respectable number. We now see more people before noon than we used to see in a month. Even with the increased traffic, our forum and Cart Girl Competition remain on life support!

Next Installment: Golf Shopping Network, Lauren Thompson and Marketing!

Installment 7: It’s Show Time!

We were very excited as we headed to the opening day of the PGA Merchandise Show. As we walked through the entrance, we saw our great looking signs atop the revolving kiosk. We headed to our little booth in the back, passing by the biggest names in golf apparel. We arrived at our booth, made a few last minute changes, and we were ready! The show opened at 10:00, and we were ready! Our friend, Bill, joined us to help out and the three of us stood there…ready. The show is so big that it took the masses 40 minutes to even appear in our view. All of a sudden we were surrounded by people in the golf business. We really had no idea how people were going to take our new brand. There weren’t a lot of companies marketing a new apparel brand to the golf industry. But there we stood, greeting people from all over the world. We were pleasantly surprised at the response to L.O.F.T. GOLF! Soon our fears of being stabbed to death with our bodies discarded by the dumpsters next to the loading docks disappeared. People liked us, no, people loved us! Our tiny booth was soon so busy that security had to keep asking the attendees to stop blocking the aisles. There were golfers, from all over the planet, hanging around our booth and sharing their own L.O.F.T. stories with each other! Now, this was fun! We had people heading straight for our booth ‘cause so many people were talking about us. We also gave away tee shirts, complete with our sweet logo across the chest. We only ordered 150 tee shirts. I was pretty sure that no one was going to want one, even for free, and it’d be a lot easier throwing 150 tees away, then 1,000. We soon realized that we needed to ration the tees ‘cause everyone wanted ‘em.

On the second day of the show, we were still one of the busiest booths in the place. An ESPN radio affiliate, out of Texas, came over to do a radio interview stating we had the “Coolest new product at the PGA Show”. We had people come back that had seen our tee shirts at the bars the night before and wanting to know why we hadn’t given them one. People were loving the brand, the concept, the story and the logo. Yup, that was great…ummm, why weren’t we signing up thousands of pro shops? Later that day, a guy with years of experience in the golf apparel industry, stopped by to tell us that he thought our line was very cool. I thanked him then asked him what we were doing wrong. We were so busy, yet, we hadn’t signed up a single course. He was kind enough to explain that our concept was great, our logo was very cool and we had a great story. He came to us after hearing many people talking about our busy little booth. “Here’s the problem with your product”, he said, “no one wears cotton polos on the golf course, everything is now moisture wicking polyester, switch to that, and you’ll do great, people love the brand!” Since we had invested just under a trillion dollars on cotton shirts, I needed to prove him wrong. I thanked him for his input and headed out to the big name apparel lines to see their beautiful cotton offerings, thus proving to myself that I knew WAY more than this industry veteran. What I ultimately learned was nobody wears cotton on the golf course!

Retail sales are not allowed at the PGA Merchandise Show, but, on the final day, you’re allowed to sell your “samples”. Before the show opened we had a bunch of vendors approach us to purchase some samples. Yup, they knew no one wore cotton on the golf course, but they loved the logo. We told them we needed to have them for display in the morning but if they came back in the afternoon, we’d sell them some. We had people from all over the world asking to buy our samples, so we sold ‘em. We had bins of surplus polos in the van, so I snuck them in the back door. As we sold off the racks, we restocked. At 3:00 that afternoon, there was a long line of vendors and attendees waiting to purchase our cotton shirts! We were very disappointed to learn that we had the wrong product, but happy to learn we had the right brand! That afternoon we broke everything down, repacked the unsold shirts, re-loaded the van and headed to Mark’s house, exhausted, but happy.

Next Installment: I guess there’s no ‘open’ sign on a website!