What Swag Golf’s $10 Million Injection Says About Today’s Golf Customers

Brendan Menapace

The golf landscape has been changing even since before the pandemic, but when people needed a way to safely gather outside from a distance and get some exercise, golf took hold of younger people. With that comes a shift in the way golf apparel and golf products themselves are marketed to younger generations picking up the sport.

Swag Golf — which capitalized on millennial and Gen Z demand for exclusive and limited-edition product drops, is one of the biggest names in the “new wave” of golf, creating decorative and colorful golf products like club covers and clubs — is continuing to show that it knows where golf demand lies by securing a $10 million growth round by New York investment firm Verance Capital. Part of that investment came from professional snowboarder Shaun White, NBA player Zach Levine, and a financial firm affiliated with the San Francisco 49ers.

“I founded Swag after spending many years in the golf industry and noticing a distinct lack of original expressive design and quality,” Swag Golf founder and CEO Nick Benson said in a press release. “This investment will help us broaden our incredibly innovative product base. Our limited edition, premium product releases typically sell out in minutes. With this investment, we will be able to increase our manufacturing capacity to meet increased demand and satisfy our ever-growing customer base while enabling us to innovate on the next generation of Swag’s product lines.”

As Venson pointed out, a lot of this money will help with the company’s capabilities to manufacture its own process. In 2020, the company acquired Ecktron Performance, a Georgia-based manufacturer, to create its golf club head covers “in-house.”

Since then, the company has gained attention in moments like when Anna Nordqvist won the British Open using a Swag Golf putter, or signing its first PGA Tour athlete, Nick Hardy, who won the Zurich Classic this April with a Swag putter.

By Swag Golf’s own admission in its statement, the golf sector is being driven more by “a younger, more diverse audience,” with collector culture joining the sport, and less focus on the formalities of the past.

Swag Golf’s success should inform other distributors who include golf products in their offerings to think about how they can adapt to the sport’s new tastemakers, and set themselves apart from the competition that might be depending more on the traditional past.

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