Unless you’re developing a fertilizer, you probably don’t expect to disrupt the golf industry from the spare room of a sewage company. But that’s where Dean Snell found himself four years ago, holed up in an office with a single computer. “In the mornings, we were walking past the trucks that pump out the port-a-johns,” he says with a laugh.
It wasn’t what Snell envisioned when he decided to start his own company. He’d been an engineer in the golf-ball business for 25 years—first with Titleist and then with TaylorMade Golf Co., where he worked with such pros as Dustin Johnson and Jason Day and was instrumental in developing the Tour Preferred line. His name is on dozens of patents, including one for the original Titleist Pro V1, the most popular ball on the tour. (Gary Woodland played with it for his U.S. Open victory in June; Brooks Koepka used the Pro V1x when he won this year’s PGA Championship.)
But Snell figured he could bring his knowledge of materials, patents, and processing to the public and “eliminate big tour contracts” that pay pros handsomely to use specific products. His premium ball would have the performance characteristics of market leaders while passing the savings back to the consumer. The base rate for a 12-pack of Snell’s new MTB-Xs is $33; a dozen Pro V1s cost $52.
Snell Golf is among a handful of companies that have disrupted the golf-ball market—valued by Golf Datatech at $420 million out of a total $5 billion golf-equipment industry—by following a direct-to-consumer model that rewards volume shoppers. Vice Golf was started by a pair of German lawyers who met while surfing. “We weren’t the typical golfers coming at this wanting to turn our favorite sport into a business,” says co-founder Ingo Düllman.
Instead, after seeing the success of Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s, and other consumer brands, they set out to give golf-ball marketing a makeover with cheeky commercials you’d expect from Old Spice or Geico.Vice sells a dozen balls for anywhere from $34 down to $11, if you buy in bulk. They come in lime green, neon red, and traditional white, or you can mix and match all three. And you can pair the brand’s logo—which rides the line between edgy and gaudy—with a picture of your own or a rival’s face. The company also sells flat-bill caps, golf bags, and waffle-knit towels and has teamed up with the NBA so basketball fans can tout their favorite team on the fairway.
