“Balls in the Air with Charlie Rymer” Podcast Episode 32: The Fascinating Journey of LA Golf’s Reed Dickens
From being assistant press secretary in the George W. Bush White House, to founding the baseball bat company that took on (and beat) a century-long industry titan, to taking that maverick approach to another sport in founding LA Golf, the journey of Reed Dickens has a bit of a self-described Forrest Gump feel to it. He sat down recently with Charlie to share his story, and explain how such seeming disparate parts of his life have affected one another and influenced his current company’s steady rise as a power player in the golf equipment industry.
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Transcript:
David Williams (00:09):
Hi everyone, and welcome back into the Charlie Rymer Balls in the Air Podcast. I am not Charlie Rymer. I am his producer, David Williams. You all might have remembered me from a couple earlier episodes this year. Charlie had a little bit of surgery and is still recovering, so I’m filling in, just to do a brief intro before we throw it over to probably the most interesting interview we’ve ever had on this entire podcast if I’m being honest, Reed Dickens from LA Golf. We actually recorded a couple weeks ago during the DJ World Junior, fascinating interview, fascinating conversation. Charlie did a great job, so I’m just filling in for Charlie here briefly while he recovers. We hope all is well, and we hope to see you soon, Charlie.
David Williams (00:43):
Before we get to the Reed Dickens interview, everybody, I want to tell you about the Golf is Great competition. We all have our reasons why golf is great. It may be that shot that you hit from your round that you play back time and time again. It may be the memories made with family or friends. It may even be that extra wad of cash you won off your buddies on that weekend in May. Whatever your reasons, we can all agree that golf is great. If you have a story on why golf is great, you might just win a golf trip to Myrtle Beach. To learn more visit www.golfisgreat.com. That’s www.golfisgreat.com. Now, Reed Dickens.
Charlie Rymer (01:22):
I love talking to very interesting people, and we’ve got one in Reed Dickens. And Reed, you’re going to have to hang tight for a second because it’s going to take me a minute or two to get through this bio that you’ve got here. Reed is currently the CEO of LA Golf Partners. LA Golf Partners is really on the cutting edge in sports and technology and that intersection, really shining right now in golf, innovating with an American made product. And we’ll get into that down the road as well. But he has quite a few PGA TOUR players involved in what they’re doing there, including Dustin Johnson. All of that’s really interesting, but I want to go back and have a look at this bio.
Charlie Rymer (02:04):
And Reed grew up right down the street from the Robertsons, Willie Robertson down in Louisiana. Huge fans, Louisiana Tech graduate. This really piques my interest because I’m a fan of politics. I follow it pretty closely and I don’t know how all this works into your bio, and we’re going to get to that, but Reed worked as a White House assistant press secretary under who I think is the best in the business, Ari Fleischer. And that was in the George W. Bush administration. Founded a crisis management and public affairs firm a little bit after that, and then the other thing … I just don’t … We’re going to have to connect a lot of the dots. Marucci Sports, who really changed baseball with developing baseball bats, my kid used some of the, I believe it was carbon fiber and titanium and space metal and all of this sort of stuff. All I know is when my kid started using a Marucci bat, he started hitting home runs. And Marucci Sports now is the number one bat manufacturer in MLB.
Charlie Rymer (03:11):
So without any further ado, Reed Dickens, man, what a career you’ve had at this point, and you’re not old yet. It looks to me like you’re just getting going.
Reed Dickens (03:20):
I think I’m the oldest 44 year old you’ll meet. I feel old. Thanks for having me.
Charlie Rymer (03:23):
Oh, my pleasure. My interest is piqued with working as White House assistant press secretary. Politics, it’s just something, I’m a political junkie and have been fortunate to have some friendships with some politicians over the years, and occasionally getting to see behind the curtains. But that industry, it’s tough and mean now, and it’s got teeth. But tell me about your experience working in the White House.
Reed Dickens (03:48):
Yeah. I had a little bit of a Forrest Gump experience. I went to visit a friend at the Air Force Academy when I was about 16 years old, and saw President Clinton land in a helicopter in a parking lot, and I told my friend, “I want to do that one day,” and I had never met anyone who worked in politics, didn’t know anything about politics. And I mean, I don’t know if you believe in manifestation, but about seven years later, I landed in the same parking lot on the same helicopter with the next president.
Charlie Rymer (04:16):
Oh, my goodness.
Reed Dickens (04:17):
And so I drove over to Texas after college and literally talked my way in past the security guard, volunteered, ended up, long story short, becoming an assistant to Ari Fleischer, then got promoted to be the White House assistant press secretary. And a kind of fun trivia factoid, or a couple trivia factoids in terms of the spirit of Forrest Gump is I was the last person in the Oval Office on the night of September 11th with George W., not because I was important, just because I was there schlepping the media out of there after he addressed the nation, but just kind of a surreal moment to find yourself in as a 24-year-old redneck.
Reed Dickens (04:51):
And then I did my first official White House briefing on the field at Yankee Stadium for the reporters behind home plate the night he threw out the iconic first pitch. And so I always recall those two moments as just a snapshot of drive to Texas, volunteer as an intern, and a year and a half later, I’m giving a White House briefing on the field at Yankee Stadium, so it was just a surreal four of five years. Did almost a million miles on Air Force One.
Charlie Rymer (05:13):
Wow.
Reed Dickens (05:13):
Just incredibly grateful for that time getting to be … I had a front row seat, not just for the President of the United States during two wars and a historic moment in history, but also the CEO of the country. Right? I got to sit in a lot of his meetings and watched the decision making processes, and it was a really surreal experience.
Charlie Rymer (05:33):
What are some of the lessons you learned from observing President George W. Bush that you might apply in your work today as a CEO?
Reed Dickens (05:42):
Yeah. You know what, I would say by far the number one thing I took from George W. Bush is his, I call it ruthless prioritization. Tim Ferris is a life hacker, blogger, the four hour … He talks about life hacking and prioritizing your life. I get asked often, “What was George W. Bush like before 9/11 and after 9/11?” And I always say, “Before 9/11, he was really disciplined. After 9/11, he was ruthlessly disciplined.” And what I mean by that is he knew how many hours he had in the Oval Office. He knew what his one thing was in each kind of bucket. He knew what his priorities are. And if you weren’t on that list, there were a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of hurt egos because you could be a cabinet member that was running an entire government bureaucracy or organization, and if you weren’t on his priority list, it was hard to get time with him.
Reed Dickens (06:28):
So I really do even to this day, there’s a famous story when he ran the Rangers, Texas Rangers, there’s a story about how he called the management team in when he first started running the team and said, it was the president, and said, “What are the three ways we can make the most money for the shareholders?” And they told him, and he said, “Okay, never talk to me about anything but those three things.” And so that really was my biggest takeaway from being around him was the prioritization.
Charlie Rymer (06:50):
Those days after 9/11, it really, sitting here looking back, it seems like that’s the last time we were really together as a country. And what was it like being in the White House, being where you were in those days?
Reed Dickens (07:13):
Nothing unifies like fear and uncertainty. Right? When 9/11 happened, there was a lot of buzz in the intelligence community that it was going to be the first of a five-wave attack. So probably for a year, we were bouncing around to secret secure locations, and I thought I was going to blow up. I thought I was going to blow up in my sleep for probably a year after 9/11. So I think the unification of the country, just having a common enemy, just like World War II, and also having this kind of fear because it was an invisible enemy. And I think that was a unique moment in history that we had an enemy that was invisible, and there was a lot of uncertainty. And George W. called it the fog, the fog of war.
Charlie Rymer (07:57):
From your point of view, I imagine security had to be really tight. You’re around people with M-16s. You probably couldn’t tell your folks where you were. That had to be a strange time.
Reed Dickens (08:09):
Yeah. For the first few days after 9/11 especially, we ended up at Camp David, and he had kind of an informal war cabinet meeting with every secretary of defense and CIA director from the last several administrations. And the security was wild. Right? I mean, people ask me about September 11th often, and that was a blur. But September 12th, I remember like it was yesterday because I walked into the White House with a tank going down the street and two guys with machine guns escorting me down the street. And I was 25 years old and it was wild. But the world changed forever, and if you think about it, it was the new normal. That was when people started using that phrase, and it really did change everything.
Charlie Rymer (08:46):
So from my point of view, Ari Fleischer had what I imagine is one of the toughest jobs on the planet, being the White House press secretary. And also from my point of view, he’s among the best, if not the best that’s ever occupied that position, doing it with knowledge, with authority, very fair in the way he handled a lot of situations in front of him. Tell me about your relationship with him and some of the things that you learned from him.
Reed Dickens (09:20):
Yeah. So first of all, I emphatically agree that Ari Fleischer, I always say, Mike McCurry for Bill Clinton and Ari Fleischer are the two best press secretaries to ever stand behind the podium, and there’s a lot of reasons for that beyond just being talented guys. First of all, before social media, the White House briefings really mattered. Now they’re strictly theater, news, Twitter has replaced the Associated Press. Social media has replaced … The White House press corps was put in the White House to have proximity to the president and to be the first to get the news.
Reed Dickens (09:51):
A story I tell often is the head of the Associated Press came up to me and just went crazy on me one day and punched my desk and kicked the wall and said, because I had sent out an email, an electronic statement from the president, an email in 2001. And he said, “You don’t do that. You put that piece of paper on the wall. That’s the way it’s always going to work. The Associated Press gets the news first around here.” So the proximity to the president was why the White House press corps existed, and so the briefings mattered. Ari Fleischer was good because he always said he was never afraid to say, “I don’t know.” He would stand there for 30 minutes with the lights beating down on him and say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’ll refer you to the Pentagon. I’m not sure. I can’t speak for the president on that.”
Reed Dickens (10:28):
And he also, he had what he called the one sentence rule. He had his best one sentence. There was no topic you could ask him, and I still live by this, I don’t get on any call or walk in any meeting, I actually don’t go into my day without knowing what my best sentence is on any topic. And so Ari wasn’t afraid to say, “I don’t know,” he always had his best one sentence. And he also would repeat that sentence 100 times. You aren’t going to get him to elaborate because he knew you were only going to use one sentence in the New York Times, or on the news. Right? And so Ari was insanely disciplined. And I think, like I said, considering the circumstances of 9/11 and then Mike McCurry had Monica Lewinsky, those were wild days. I sat in 350 briefings. And I’m telling you the press corps, they’re like piranhas, and Ari was unflappable.
Charlie Rymer (11:13):
To me, the hardest part of that job is you’ve got to be truthful. There’s certain things that you know and you just can’t share. And you’ve got the press out there that’s trying to get those things out of you. I mean, that’s the ultimate cat and mouse game.
Reed Dickens (11:25):
It’s tough because there’s the old adage in DC that there’s things you want to know, and there’s things you need to know. And obviously, when you elect a president, you’re trusting that leadership to decide for you what you need to know versus what you want to know. In the day of Twitter, the public, the emotional mob has decided that the public needs to know everything. Right? That everybody needs to know everything. But the White House’s job is to decide what you need to know. One of my favorite DC expressions is that everybody who knows doesn’t talk, and everybody who talks doesn’t know, and so it’s a tough balance.
Charlie Rymer (11:59):
So the next journey in your career path is in crisis management in a public affairs firm. I get that. I understand. It’s a natural progression.
Reed Dickens (12:09):
Pretty natural, yeah.
Charlie Rymer (12:10):
Right. And I was going to ask you some of the lessons that you learned. You covered that wonderfully. The one I don’t get is the jump into founding Marucci Sports, which the heritage there is a baseball bat company. So how do you go from working in the White House, crisis management, and all of a sudden, you’re making the coolest baseball bats on the planet?
Reed Dickens (12:31):
Yeah. So I always say it’s a little Malcolm Gladwellian. Right? Part of it’s just where you are in that moment in your life geographically. And my brother was the personal assistant to the governor of Louisiana. I was running a PR firm. But we had a branding division of my firm, and so we built story-based brands. And so I had built and launched a few dozen brands nationally. And my co-founder at Marucci, Kurt Ainsworth, he had started a little bat business. He had bought some wood from the Amish folks in Pennsylvania, and he had wood that was harder than Louisville Slugger’s. He had given it to a bunch of his former teammates in the big leagues. They were swinging it, even though they didn’t really … He had a little bat business, but they didn’t have a company set up. They hadn’t raised capital.
Reed Dickens (13:15):
And so he went in to ask the governor for advice. My little brother called me and said, “You need to meet this guy.” I flew to Baton Rouge, and after six hours on the white board, we decided to launch Marucci Sports. Honestly, talking about stars aligning, I always say you have to have the right … People say you have to have the right products and the right people, and that’s true. But you really have to have that right product, the right people, the right capital structure, the right business model, the right story, the right market dynamic. There’s a lot of stars that have to align. And so Kurt and I got on the white board, and what we realized was he had the relationships with the players, he had hardest wood, and owned all of it. Maple wood’s about 6 percent or 7 percent harder than ash, what Louisville Slugger used, and he bought up all of it.
Reed Dickens (13:52):
And so he had the supply and he had the players. And I knew how to raise money and build a brand. And we partnered together. And honestly, I wouldn’t, Marucci wouldn’t be here without Kurt Ainsworth, and it wouldn’t be here without me. Right? We always say, there’s a lot of people, I’ve met probably 20 people who say they know people who are co-founders of ours, which I know happens with a lot of successful brands. But if you did a DNA test, it would be Kurt and I really had complementary skills. And Kurt’s still the CEO. I always say he’s like the Kevin Plank of baseball. But we had the hardest wood, and honestly, I had a kind of ruthless guerrilla marketing tactic. I was a storyteller by trade coming from politics, and kind of the Karl Rove theory that you take your opponent’s vulnerability and you stick your finger in it, not rumors, not personal, the product or the policy.
Reed Dickens (14:38):
And Louisville Slugger’s wood was softer than ours, just like my new campaign with our putter is that we have a bigger sweet spot than Scotty Cameron. And I always take that one message and stick my finger in that one vulnerability and just repeat it a million times. And so we’d ran a campaign for two years. We hired a model and made 300 videos. We got 40 players to invest and ran a campaign saying, “How hard is your wood?” Right? And we had a lot of fun with it. But we went from players saying, “I can hit with a broomstick. Doesn’t matter what kind of wood you use,” to all of a sudden, within three years, we had 85 percent. We took 85 …
Reed Dickens (15:11):
Louisville Slugger had 80 percent of the big leagues, give or take, and we took about 85 percent of their market share in three years and almost all the All-Stars. And that happened in 36 months, so 129 years, Louisville Slugger had been the behemoth in baseball, and really had an effective monopoly. They paid Major League Baseball to be the only bat that could be sold or given out to players. They had a moat around Major League Baseball, and we really obliterated them because we had a better product and we told our story really well. And we got players. We were player founded, player owned, player operated. We were a big league cult.
Charlie Rymer (15:43):
The other products that you have, away from wooden bats in baseball, and you guys are into other products. Right? [crosstalk 00:15:53] baseball.
Reed Dickens (15:52):
Marucci now makes everything.
Charlie Rymer (15:53):
Yeah, yeah. So that to me is a big challenge. My kid used your bats and it certainly wasn’t wooden bats, but when … And I think we’re headed this way in golf when the top, the most elite, uses something like wood that’s obviously a little bit slower than all the carbon and everything that you see in some of these bats that the kids are using, that creates some special problems. I think we’re going to see it in golf. I think we’re going to see some regulation and where not everybody’s playing with the same game. But that’s a little bit different challenge when you’ve got a wooden Marucci bat and you’re trying to sell a parent a carbon, latest in technology bat that really doesn’t have anything to do with the other.
Reed Dickens (16:36):
My investors asked me, it was a fair question, “What do metal bats have to do with wood bats?” And to be honest, I have to give the credit to Albert Pujols. He actually said one day, and I’m not going to try to imitate his accent, but it was funny, he said, “Man, why don’t you make a metal bat balance like a wood bat?” And light bulbs went off, angels started singing, and I realized that we needed a connector point as a big league company. We were a big league brand. And so every metal bat made at that point was end-loaded, like Easton made end-loaded bats. Right? And they’re hard to swing. The MOI was hard to, the moment of inertia was hard to initiate the swing for kids. And so also, because of Bryce Harper, a lot of kids were swinging metal bats during the week and wood bat tournaments on the weekend. They were going back and forth, which was messing up their swings because it was difficult to swing two different swing weights, two different balances.
Reed Dickens (17:24):
And so we made a metal bat. We had an anti-vibration technology that I now brought into my shafts in golf. We had anti-vibration technology that took the sting out of the swing. We balanced it like a wood bat. And because we did that, this is something interesting that most people don’t know about Marucci, because we balanced the metal bats like a wood bat, it wasn’t just a good story that connected our big league kind of mystique, it also made the big league players feel free to test our bats for us on camera. So big leaguers before that would never swing a metal bat.
Charlie Rymer (17:51):
Touch it.
Reed Dickens (17:52):
They wouldn’t touch a metal bat. Well, all of a sudden, we balanced it like a wood bat and they started making videos. So we’d go the spring training and make videos with them hitting home runs in the third deck with our metal bats. We made some really cool videos of big leaguers swinging our metal bats, and they gave us input on design and input on … All of a sudden, we had a big league-designed metal bat, and so that’s when our brand … We took about a third of the metal bat market in our first year.
Charlie Rymer (18:14):
Well, I can tell you this. When my kid was 12 years old and he was playing Little League baseball, he hit over 50 home runs that year as a 12 year old with your bat.
Reed Dickens (18:22):
That’s awesome.
Charlie Rymer (18:22):
He wouldn’t cheat, but it was worth the investment. I spent a lot of time beyond outfields looking for home run balls, and we still have a lot of those.
Reed Dickens (18:31):
We were kind of, I’m joking when I say this, the Bob Parsons of baseball because nobody had sold a metal bat for more than 150 bucks. And when we came out with the Marucci Black, I was very creative with our names, we came out with the Marucci Black, it was 400 bucks.
Charlie Rymer (18:45):
That’s what I paid for my first one.
Reed Dickens (18:45):
And what’s funny is no one had ever paid over 150. And we proved that in travel ball, if parents think their kids are good, there’s no price sensitivity. And so the first year, it sold a few units. The second year, it was the number one selling bat of all time.
Charlie Rymer (19:01):
Well, I think I’ve still got a few of them around.
Reed Dickens (19:04):
We appreciate it.
Charlie Rymer (19:05):
Yeah. Sitting around in a storage bin somewhere. So you’ve made the jump now to golf. Tell me a little bit about LA Golf. And let’s start with some of the players that you have involved. Dustin Johnson, we’re here at the Dustin Johnson World Junior this week. And you’re the title sponsor, and we’re very grateful for your support of junior golf. But I know you have a special relationship with DJ. Let’s get into that a little bit.
Reed Dickens (19:30):
We’re so fortunate because one of the things I learned in my venture in baseball, adventure in baseball, is that the player partners were so vital to our, not just our brand, but our product development. But one thing I learned is that at Marucci we had 44 player partners, and about four of them were helpful.
Charlie Rymer (19:47):
I understand.
Reed Dickens (19:50):
I realized going into LA Golf, we bought LA Golf on GoDaddy for 10 bucks, and there’s a whole separate story on how many … I always joke that I owe everything to Bob Parsons, and that’s kind of a separate funny story. But I bought LA Golf Partners, and then I realized I wanted to partner with players. Bryson had actually reached out proactively and said, “Hey, I heard you partner with players. I want to design my own shaft.” And I said, “Let’s go.” And so Bryson, we partnered up with him. The first call with the engineers was about three hours, and I knew this was going to be a special relationship. But honestly, he came up with a design structure that demonstrably changed shafts. Every other shaft in the industry is machine made in China. Ours are built from the midsection out in Anaheim, California. It doesn’t matter if you’re an 18 handicap on a tour pro, the delivery of the club face is demonstrably more consistent, and obviously has been adding about 10 to 12 yards of carry to most people.
Reed Dickens (20:43):
Dustin, I’d known for a while through David Winkle, his agent and manager. And we had been, Dustin and I had been talking for several years. But we were on a trip overseas, and he said, “Listen, I want to try. I want to try the product.” And so we iterated back and forth on the driver shaft, and then he loved the putter shaft. He went from 130th or 125th in strokes game putting to about 25th in one year just from putting our putter shaft in play because with all these shafts, and I can’t believe how many of these kids, I think they’re poorly advised, are using steel shafts in their putters. It blows my mind because if you watch a slow motion camera, the putter head wiggles on impact, especially when you miss the sweet spot, which is eight out of 10 times. And so the putter head wiggles and it changes your putt line. It makes you lose 12 to 18 inches of roll. And kids think they misread the putt, or their caddy misread the putt, or their dad misread the putt, and they really missed the sweet spot and their head wiggles.
Reed Dickens (21:37):
So our putter shaft was really a … I think we had 12 major champions put it in play in the first year. So yeah, same playbook as Marucci, partnered with players, innovate a tool of the trade that the players use and trust, and then built a scarcity cool brand, and then also sell direct to consumers, which we were the first shaft ever sold direct to consumer. And now obviously, we just launched the LA Golf putter, which is really the most technologically advanced putter to ever come to the market. It’ll take people a little bit to adjust to the larger looking head. The guy who designed Jack Nicklaus’ 1986 putter designed this putter. It’s an all carbon head with a descending loft technology face, a sweet spot that’s 50 percent larger than Scotty Cameron’s and our anti-vibration shaft. So it’s very high tech and very expensive, thanks to Bob Parsons, a very expensive putter.
Charlie Rymer (22:24):
He certainly showed, Bob Parsons did, there’s-
Reed Dickens (22:26):
There’s no price sensitivity.
Charlie Rymer (22:26):
Super premium market out there.
Reed Dickens (22:28):
There’s 27 million millionaires in the country, and they don’t care about price.
Charlie Rymer (22:33):
So Clay Long is your designer. That zero twist putter that Mr. Nicklaus won in … By the way, I was 18 years old and I was there.
Reed Dickens (22:42):
That’s awesome.
Charlie Rymer (22:43):
That was the greatest day in golf history from my standpoint. I saw every shot he hit from his second shot into 11 until the little tap in at 18.
Reed Dickens (22:52):
That’s cool.
Charlie Rymer (22:52):
I can tell you where I was standing for every shot that he hit.
Reed Dickens (22:55):
That’s cool.
Charlie Rymer (22:55):
But there’s a funny story about Mr. Nicklaus. When Clay first gave him that putter, he was a designer at McGregor. And Nicklaus actually had a whiff with that putter, and he’s like, “I’ll never use this thing.” And then he wins a Masters with it.
Reed Dickens (23:09):
It’s funny you said that. Most people don’t know he missed several of the cuts going into the Masters.
Charlie Rymer (23:13):
He wasn’t playing well.
Reed Dickens (23:14):
He wasn’t playing well at all, and he almost took that putter out of the bag. So a lot of people say that putter sold because it won The Masters. But they actually, the total addressable market for putters that year, I don’t know what it was, but they projected they’d sell 5,000 to 10,000 of those putters, 5,000 to 10,000 units. They sold 100,000 units before he won The Masters. Then he won The Masters, they ended up selling 500,000 units of that putter.
Charlie Rymer (23:39):
And that’s only because they couldn’t make any more.
Reed Dickens (23:40):
Yeah. So anyway, bottom line is our new LA Golf putter is loaded with technology. But I always say we solved three problems people didn’t know they have. The descending loft face makes the ball roll immediately as opposed to skipping or skidding. The anti-vibration shaft takes away the wiggle out of the head, and then the larger sweet spot solves the biggest problem in putting, which is other than mental handicaps, is not missing the sweet spot.
Charlie Rymer (24:03):
The thing about the putter shafts is, I was at one point thinking that there’s really not much innovation that’s going to happen in putters. Scotty Cameron, who I love, the things that he makes are beautiful, those designs typically … Occasionally, he’ll come out with original. Their designs have been around for 20, 30, 40 years or longer, and he’s just using new materials and making things different. But the last place in the world I would’ve thought that you could’ve got any help on the technology side is in the putter shaft. But if you watch the PGA TOUR, every week, as you say, there’s hardly anyone is using-
Reed Dickens (24:39):
Steel.
Charlie Rymer (24:40):
The old school steel putter shaft.
Reed Dickens (24:42):
I can’t believe, honestly, if you look at the data now, if you look at the science, if you look at Tiger, you could run a highlight reel for two hours of Tiger acting like he got shot or devastated with the ball sitting on the edge of the cup. And he’s using a steel shaft. And I can tell you emphatically, demonstrably, and I’m not critiquing Tiger, I’m saying that he spent … He won all those Majors using a shaft that every single time you putt the ball, the head deflects fractionally. And so you think you misread the putt, or that the ball was left two inches short, and most of the time, that’s a shaft issue or a sweet spot issue. And so listen, I always like to say this. Scotty Cameron’s the king. Right?
Reed Dickens (25:23):
He’s an artist. He has I think 80 percent of the premium putter market. Right? I had a Scotty Cameron until I created my own putter. And so but I will say, our ad campaign that’s coming out soon, so don’t tell anybody, is basically saying that material sciences have evolved exponentially in the last 10 years, and Scotty Cameron didn’t. He just didn’t evolve. He’s using a dense piece of steel with a flat face. And honestly, I have a friend who bought a Scotty Cameron putter recently for $8,000, and it was just a special paint job, and it had a $4 shaft in it, a piece of steel with a flat face. So people were buying nostalgia, and they’re buying really beautiful art.
Charlie Rymer (26:03):
I’ve got a few of his hand mades, they’re beautiful.
Reed Dickens (26:06):
But the sweet spot on a putter’s not regulated like the driver or the iron. The materials aren’t regulated. You don’t have to use steel. So my point is I think Bob Parsons showed there’s no price sensitivity in golf. And I think Scotty Cameron’s failure to evolve with materials gave us a huge opportunity, so we’re really excited, as you can tell. I’m a putter salesman now.
Charlie Rymer (26:25):
To me, the whole idea in golf is efficiently delivering energy through the shaft and the putter head to the golf ball. And you keep talking about deflection. When deflection is happening, that’s where energy is bleeding off, and it’s not getting delivered to the golf ball. The materials are helping with that, and I assume that the big secret in the putter shaft, it wouldn’t be a secret, is it’s got to be more than just really cutting back on the torque.
Reed Dickens (26:53):
Correct, correct.
Charlie Rymer (26:53):
There’s got to be some other things that are involved in that.
Reed Dickens (26:55):
So we have a proprietary anti-vibration material that’s woven into our graphite or carbon, our graphite, sorry, and it absorbs negative feedback. And so you can’t make a putter shaft as stiff as ours if you … Well, let me say it like this. If you made a putter shaft, Fujikura did, Fujikura made a putter shaft as stiff as ours, but it feels like a rock. Right? So it’s not just about getting rid of all the torque. We have a proprietary material that absorbs that negative feedback so that you don’t feel that negative feedback.
Charlie Rymer (27:30):
I’ve been in a golf shaft factory, the old G. Loomis, and I played their shaft back in the day, last century. And it was really cool. I’m a fly fisherman, and I was looking for two things. I was looking for a shaft that didn’t hurt my wrist, and then I was looking for a company that would get me some really cool fly rods. And they would take us on some trips every year, myself, David Duval, Jim [inaudible 00:27:55], we would play that shaft. And really, the reason we played is so we’d get free fly rods and they’d take us fishing every year. But they took us through the plant up in Washington state, and it was really a pretty messy process at the time. They’re making fly rods and golf shafts in the same factory, and they were hand sanded by eye, and so you’d look at the shaft and they were really crooked. That was the early days of shaft manufacturing. It’s obviously changed a lot since then.
Reed Dickens (28:20):
Obviously, what’s changed since then is the material sciences and also manufacturing efficiency with artificial intelligence, and also Lean Six Sigma operations. So we have a Lean Six Sigma operation in Anaheim, California. I hired a guy from Oakley who’s an incredible production manager. And obviously, artificial intelligence has changed material sciences greatly. And then also, just the consistency, believe it or not, machine made shafts in China, like most of the major brands, if you cut open 100 of them, they’re all different. So those are actually inconsistent. If you cut open our shaft, you’ll find a very consistent product.
Reed Dickens (28:54):
I want to go back to something. You mentioned injuries, your wrist. Michelle Wie, who just joined our board, Michelle talks about this often, there were two things that conventional wisdom had said were impossible with shafts. The status quo has always said if you go stiffer, it’s going to get heavier. Right? So if you get stiffer, it gets heavier. And then number two, if you add distance, you add dispersion. And we’re really proud with our handmade product that we’ve kind of defied those two conventional pieces of wisdom because we’ve made a shaft built from the midsection, much stiffer, 200 percent stiffer in the midsection, that adds stiffness, but is lighter. So we went stiffer but lighter. And Michelle always talks about how important that is for especially these young players.
Reed Dickens (29:36):
We’re here at Dustin’s World Golf Junior Championship, and a lot of these young players, especially the female players, it’s a lot of wear and tear. They’re playing, they’re hitting golf balls eight hours a day, some of them. And it’s a lot of wear and tear on their bodies. And Michelle always talks about how that until she had our shaft, it was just a grind on her wrist and her back swinging her golf clubs, and that now that our shafts have honestly saved her body. And I wanted to go back to that point because your equipment actually can affect your health.
Charlie Rymer (30:04):
Yeah. Up until now, I’m getting excited hearing you talk about this because that was a battle that I fought. I needed a comfort factor so I could play and practice enough to make a living, but every time I tried to, in particular with the iron switch over, I gave up on the performance side. I just couldn’t find a graphite or a composite shaft that could fly the way I want it to fly and take care of my body. It was like I would have to play steel to get the flight I want, and then I was susceptible to injury. If I played graphite, I’m more comfortable. I can practice more, but on windy days, everything was up shooting on me. And it sounds like you guys have sort of solved that puzzle.
Reed Dickens (30:49):
Yeah. And I really have to give Jeff Meyer, our head engineer, is a legend. He’s worked for almost every company. And he said the thing he’s grateful for about LA Golf and about working with me is that I gave him a blank sheet of paper, and the last four CEOs he worked for wouldn’t let him try a carbon head in a putter. They wouldn’t let him try this midsection shaft, so Jeff has kind of given him free rein, and Bryson and he work together well on some of the design structures. Dustin, I would say Bryson’s one of the best technical players ever. Right? Now he’s teaching me about micro misses on the dimple, when you hit the head putting the dimple.
Reed Dickens (31:24):
And here’s the thing. That doesn’t mean he’s going to win every tournament, win every Major, but I do learn things from Bryson every single time we talk. People will ask me about working with Bryson and I’m like, “Well, say whatever you want to.” I always say if you look at disruptors, I don’t care if you’re talking about Galileo, Elon Musk, Henry Ford, if you look at disruptors, the way you know someone’s disruptive is the market eventually moves to them. Right? And if you look at Bryson, you can agree with tone, disagree with the tone, the message, the delivery, whatever. You can have an opinion on distance, a bifurcation or pros versus amateurs, there’s all these topics. But I promise you over 10 years when these kids are 30, they’re going to all be trying to hit it as far as they can. And they’d rather have a wedge … As Bryson says, “They’d rather have a wedge in their hand in the rough than a seven iron from the fairway.” And this market’s moving to this, and I think we’re making the equipment to try to meet that need.
Charlie Rymer (32:13):
Yeah. One of the things in looking at the board that you have, Bryson DeChambeau and have Dustin Johnson, that’s players on opposite ends of the spectrum. Dustin, a lot of people go, “He just plays, just hits.” That’s not true. You don’t get to where he is in the world of golf with(out) caring.
Reed Dickens (32:29):
He’s a savant. He’s a golf savant.
Charlie Rymer (32:31):
But he’s not going to dig into it in any way, shape, or form.
Reed Dickens (32:35):
But I tell you what-
Charlie Rymer (32:35):
Bryson does.
Reed Dickens (32:36):
I’ll tell you what, Wednesday morning, I’m sorry to interrupt you, Wednesday morning at The Genesis, I was out on the range with Dustin, and he sprayed a couple three woods, just not sprayed, by his standards. Right? And he kind of was letting go of the club, and he looked at Keith Sbarbaro from TaylorMade and he said, “Clip a quarter inch off of that,” and so they brought it back 15 minutes later, and he started crushing it down the middle.
Charlie Rymer (32:59):
Good to go.
Reed Dickens (33:00):
He really is the ultimate field player. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t … He knows his equipment.
Charlie Rymer (33:05):
He knows his equipment. Bryson basically built everything that he’s played in a garage.
Reed Dickens (33:10):
To Bryson, here’s what I’d say, to Bryson, everything starts with mathematics and works backwards from a math equation. And with Dustin, everything starts with a visual. He’s got a left to right window he wants the ball to go in. And sometimes he can tell you why it’s not in that window, and sometimes he can’t. But he can always tell you if his ball flight … So it starts with a visual. Bryson starts with a math problem. But they’re opposite ends of the spectrum. But for us, getting that feedback from both ends is incredibly helpful.
Charlie Rymer (33:36):
Both ends, yeah. And that’s congratulations to you because you’re generally not going to be able to put together a board, where you’re going to have like-minded people in general, and having both ends, the final product goes to the consumers is going to …
Reed Dickens (33:47):
It took us two years. It took us two years, but we now have a DJ signature series and a Bryson signature series available to the public. And that took two years because we had to build completely different design structures for Dustin versus Bryson using our same design philosophy, which was the midsection stiffness. And I’m really excited that we finally got that to the market this year.
Charlie Rymer (34:10):
One more thing I want to ask you about before we get into where folks can find your product. Spending some time with DJ today, he was talking about the fact that he changes his 60 degree wedge quite a bit, maybe only uses one for three tournaments. And he’s got a drawer that TaylorMade has, and they make those wedges for him. And it used to be you had to get in there and grind and get everything the way you want. And he goes, “Because of the technology, I trust that every one that I pull out of there is the right weight, the right shape, the right everything.” And in my day, when I was trying to find a driver and a backup driver, what I had to do was I’d get them to make eight or 10 for me, and every one of them was completely different.
Reed Dickens (34:51):
Different, yeah.
Charlie Rymer (34:52):
And what I found is, and I think is still true today, is I never would hit a driver that I was testing out more than twice because I start adjusting it to it. I want a driver that’s built for me, I don’t want to start adjusting my swing to make it fly properly.
Reed Dickens (35:10):
Interesting.
Charlie Rymer (35:10):
And what you’re doing with the consistency in your manufacturing is you’re going to be able to put shafts into players’ hands, where they know they can get a backup, or they can try a new head because your manufacturing process is much more consistent than anything else that’s out there. That’s sort of my take on it.
Reed Dickens (35:25):
I love that. And first of all, I love talking to real golfers because I always tell my kids I dress like a golfer and talk like a golfer, but I’m not a real golfer, and so it’s interesting, I love listening to you because you just hit it on the head. One of my favorite moments was at the Pebble Beach US Open 2019. Right? Bryson broke his shaft. Most of the time, that happens from micro fissures from travel bags. And no offense to Ship Sticks, but it happens when you travel. Right? And he broke his … Snapped his head off. And we had his new driver to him by the next hole, and he piped it right down the middle. And he said in the media tent afterwards, he never thought twice about it. He said, “Because I know LA Golf, every shaft’s the same.”
Reed Dickens (36:09):
And that, from when you played, you pointed out the reason why you had a backup driver, and a gamer, and all those terms came from inconsistent shafts. The reason all the terminology I think, a lot of terminology you hear from swing coaches. Slow hands, let the swing, tempo. There is tons of terminology that came from decades of shitty shafts. Right? And so inconsistent shafts.
Charlie Rymer (36:31):
Right.
Reed Dickens (36:31):
And so it really is, I don’t want to say the key, but one of the primary keys to these players having comfort level is Dustin, now Dustin, Bryson wouldn’t do. Dustin’s different. Right? He’s unique. He trust the technology and the wedge, and he’ll use [crosstalk 00:36:47].
Charlie Rymer (36:47):
He’d look at the spreadsheet. [inaudible 00:36:48] look at the ball fly.
Reed Dickens (36:48):
Bryson would never do that. Right?
Charlie Rymer (36:50):
Yeah.
Reed Dickens (36:50):
Because Bryson would know that maybe one of those heads is three grams heavier. It’s just a different approach. But Dustin’s also a real athlete and trusts his hands as much as Michael Jordan. And so I learn so much from both of them.
Charlie Rymer (37:03):
It’s changed so much. Over the years, I’ve had a chance to spend a lot of time with Mr. Nicklaus. And a 3 wood’s the hardest club to find. I think even today it’s the hardest club to find. The turf interaction’s different than a driver. And Mr. Nicklaus had the old MacGregor keyhole insert 3 wood. And I asked him one time, “How long did that club stay in the bag?” And it was 37 years was his answer.
Reed Dickens (37:26):
Wild.
Charlie Rymer (37:26):
Same club in the bag for 37 years.
Reed Dickens (37:30):
Wild. That’s funny. Dustin said something to me the other day that Jack Nicklaus said to me when I got to walk with him at Johnny Miller’s tournament 15 years ago. And I asked him the hardest shot in golf and he said, “25 to 65 yards.” And I said, “What do you do when you go there?” And he said, “I don’t.” And that’s what Dustin said. I asked Dustin. He said 45 yards from a bunker is his least favorite shot. I said, “Well, what happens when you get that?” He goes, “I don’t.”
Charlie Rymer (37:53):
Don’t hit it.
Reed Dickens (37:53):
He said, “Aren’t you good enough just to avoid a bunker?” Fair, fair point. Actually, no, I’m not good enough.
Charlie Rymer (37:59):
It’s always fun to talk to these amazing players. And one Major champion is DJ, certainly on his way to the World Golf Hall of Fame. Well, Reed Dickens, this has been an amazing career that you’ve had. We very much appreciate the work that you’re doing with LA Golf. Where can folks find your products?
Reed Dickens (38:15):
Yeah. So we sell direct to consumer on lagolf.co. But we also sell through Club Champion and a lot of big box retails. Are shafts are available, our DJ series and signature series is available in every Club Champion in America, for example. And then we have a website where you can order any shaft or our new putter.
Charlie Rymer (38:34):
Okay. So you’re into shafts, putter heads. Just spending a little bit of time with you, I’ve got to think that you’ve got other things you’re working on down the line. Can you give us a little preview on that?
Reed Dickens (38:44):
Let me finish with a famous Ari Fleischer quote from The White House. When we have something to announce, I’ll announce it.
Charlie Rymer (38:50):
And I expect that we’re going to hear some announcements coming real soon. Reed Dickens, the CEO of LA Golf, thank you for spending time with us.
Reed Dickens (38:58):
This was fun.
Charlie Rymer (38:59):
And thank you very much for sponsoring the Dustin Johnson World Junior Invitational here in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the “Golf Capital of the World.” I know the kids are having a great time out there. Today’s practice round day, DJ’s out there with them. And we appreciate your support of the event and look forward to catching up with you again soon.
Reed Dickens (39:16):
Thank you so much. This was so much fun.
Charlie Rymer (39:18):
All right, folks. Appreciate you listening to The Charlie Rymer Balls in the Air Podcast. And we’ll be back with you real soon with another great show.
