RICK SCHAD, center, a graphic designer and avid golfer, came up with the concept of a belt with a detachable ball marker and divot tool while playing golf one day. His partners, Akim Msumba, left, and Stephen Walsh, have helped him commercialize the invention.
COMPANY PROFILE
The Green Friendly Golf Company
Owners: Rick Schad, Stephen Walsh, Akim Msumba
Type of Business: Golf accessories
and apparel
Location: Providence
Employees: 4
Year Founded: 2005
Annual Sales: WND
Three entrepreneurs created a golf etiquette tool that no one can forget
Two key tenets in golf are to take care of the course, and to play as quickly as possible. On the green, that means repairing the marks that balls leave when players hit their shots while quickly marking the position of the ball so others can proceed.
But oftentimes golfers don’t have the tools to do that. One day on the golf course, Rick Schad, a Warwick graphic designer and avid golfer, touched the tip of his belt and had an idea.
When Schad got home, he started designing a golf belt with a divot tool and ball marker built into the tip. But when he was done, he put the idea on a shelf for about six years.
“I’m a designer,” Schad said. “I’m not a business person. I’m not a manufacture person. … Anyone can come up with a great idea, but without a team, this absolutely would have never happened.”
Schad found his team by chance. He met Stephen Walsh and Akim Msumba because they were clients of his small graphic design company. Schad was designing logos for one of Walsh’s consulting projects and packaging for Msumba’s startup beverage distributing company.
All three men had gone from corporate jobs to starting small businesses or consulting. Walsh raised money for hedge funds in the finance industry. Msumba was a sales manager for the pharmaceutical industry. Schad was the creative director for a packaging company.
Since the three joined forces, sharing expertise in sales, manufacturing, distributing, design and general business savvy, they’ve created a product that is being distributed in 10 countries on six continents.
“Golf is one of the toughest industries in the world to break into, because there are not many unique niches,” Schad said. “We’ve designed our own new niche in golf, which is etiquette.”
Repairing ball marks improves the game for everyone because it makes the greens smooth for putting, he said. It also can save a golf course thousands of dollars in maintenance costs. That’s why they called their business The Green Friendly Golf Company.
The “green friendly” belt experienced 180-percent growth in sales in the first quarter of 2006 compared with all of last year, when the trio incorporated the company, Msumba said.
While the company is using local vendors for marketing, printing, packaging, laser engraving, model making and public relations, the belts are being manufactured in China – tens of thousands a day. The three men are up at all hours of the day and night talking to distributors in Asia, Australia and Europe.
The advantage to using local companies for so many of the company’s needs, they said, is that Rhode Island businesses are smaller, more personalized and more flexible.
Because smaller companies don’t have the hierarchy of larger companies, they are able to customize services, such as offering flexible payment plans.
“We are all small business owners in previous lives,” Msumba said. “Most small businesses fail. … Most people think they can’t use local to be global.”
The company has already landed contracts with high-end retail stores such as Brooks Brothers and Nordstrom. The belts, priced at $70 to $100, are also sold by Datrek Miller International to 8,000 customers, including private country clubs, resorts, public golf courses and golf specialty shops.
It was a strategic marketing move to sell only to high-end retail partners. Msumba said they turned down the home shopping channel QVC and other discount retailers because they were thinking about long-term sustainability instead of saturating the market with a “gimmick” product that might fizzle within months or a year.
Schad already has eight new products in research and development, but he said the company will launch one product at a time.
It’s not surprising that Schad, whose golf handicap ranges from 2 to 6, wants each product to be designed and developed to perfection before its release.
“We’re not just a belt company,” Schad said. “We’re building a brand.”
