The Art of the Collab

It’s not often that James Bond and Steph Curry are uttered in the same sentence.

One is a fictional British spy who can navigate his way through any situation with inimitable grace and confidence; the other is a basketball legend and probably the greatest three-point shooter of all time.

What brought the two together? Golf grips.

On the 60th anniversary of the James Bond franchise, Golf Pride created collectible grips inspired by the famous golf scene in the Bond classic “Goldfinger.” The collectible box comes with a gold bar—the wager in the golf match where the eponymous villain’s caddie famously drops a ball down his pants leg, averting a lost-ball penalty—that houses an extra, 14th grip. (OK, it is just cardboard painted gold.)

For Curry, Golf Pride created a set to benefit his Underrated Golf Tour, which provides junior golfers with elite tournament experiences at top-ranked venues like Old Barnwell and Ridgewood Country Club, a recent U.S. Amateur Championship host, and covers their expenses to travel to the events.

These are just two among many examples in the golf world of collaborations or “collabs.” In recent years, established golf companies like Adidas, FootJoy and TaylorMade have increasingly worked with up-and-coming brands and influencers to test out ideas, launch products and expand their name to golfers who might not know them otherwise. Profit is only sometimes the motivation.

“There’s got to be a why,” says Shaun Madigan, global director of apparel at Adidas. “It’s not just your logo and our logo and let’s put it together. The consumer today has so many product offerings. You must tell them why you’re doing this. You need to establish a common ground.”

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Of course, if you’re collaborating, you’re selling something, and that begs the question: Is someone making money here?

The economics of collaborations are not straightforward. Sometimes it’s a licensing fee to use a logo. Other times both brands want to drive awareness for an event or a cause. The highest benefit is when the larger company wants to reach a new community, and the newer brand can provide that access while also introducing itself to the company’s larger buyer base.

Golf Pride said it uses its collaborations to grow the overall market for grips. “We’re not worried about our slice of the pie,” says Eric Gibson, global commercial officer for Golf Pride, which sells more than two-thirds of all golf grips. “We want the pie to get bigger. Most golfers have never regripped their clubs, and another section is only regripping four to five clubs every two and a half years. … We got into collaborations because we tried to identify interests outside of golf,” Gibson says. “I don’t get into collaborations for financial gains. I get into them for expanding the brand voice. It is conversation, not compensation.”

An early collaboration with Asher, which makes premium gloves, proved to be a learning lesson. Golf Pride created grips in four fashionable colors, and Asher made the gloves to match. Golf Pride then sold them as a complete set. Turns out, people didn’t want to buy a full set of grips in the same color as their glove.

“People want matching,” Gibson says. “They just don’t want to buy two to three gloves and 13 grips all at one time. In hindsight, we needed to be more flexible.”

The Bond collaboration was more about collectability since only 1,000 sets were produced. “Could I make 1,000 more Bond kits? Would that net me more revenue? Maybe, but we don’t need it,” Gibson says. “I’m after something larger: more golfers wanting to take part in a conversation with us and follow the conversations we’re having.”

One of the more prolific collaborators is Stephen Malbon, whose golf-lifestyle brand makes shoes and apparel. His success has prompted eye rolls from certain established brands, but it has worked.

“[Collaborating] began as a business necessity,” Malbon says. “We didn’t have the capabilities of producing stuff on our own. We did a collaboration with FootJoy. They designed and produced the shoe, and we sold it in our stores.”

Malbon Golf had a huge hit of its own at last year’s Masters when major champion Jason Day wore a Malbon Golf sweater vest so trendy (or ugly or loud, depending on your point of view) that the folks at Augusta National asked him to remove it. The white vest had “Malbon Golf Championship” emblazoned across the front in blocky black and red letters. Day politely complied and later auctioned the garment for $18,000 at a charity fundraiser in Ohio. The sweater was a sell-out hit that spring and further boosted Malbon Golf’s cache.

Earl Cooper, a co-founder of Eastside Golf, says the brand has been about collaboration from the start. Started by Cooper, who has been a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher since 2016, and Olajuwon Ajanaku, a former mini-tour pro who designed the company’s swingman logo, Eastside’s first collaboration was with Nike.

“Michael [as in Jordan] was the first person to give us a collaborative opportunity with an Air Jordan 4,” Cooper says about the shoe that has resold for upwards of $5,000. “It was rocket fuel. I’m happy to say that the rocket is still in the air.”

It came about because of a connection to Gentry Humphrey, who was the influential head of Jordan’s footwear brand. It also didn’t hurt that Eastside Golf’s founders had legitimate credentials as tournament golfers—Ajanaku and Cooper played on the same team at Morehouse College—which Jordan appreciated.

Since that auspicious start, Eastside Golf has collaborated with Beats by Dre, Mercedes-Benz, State Farm Insurance and Bridgestone, where the swingman logo landed on golf balls. “Collaborations are rooted in our brand,” Cooper says. “We come from a space of hip-hop culture that’s very relevant.”

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Eastside Golf knows it is offering big brands entre into a world of urban golf that they would not otherwise have. Cooper says the company wants to leverage its partnerships to achieve something more than just making cool things with bigger companies.

“We want to find a common ground,” he says. “For these larger brands, it isn’t the dollars, it’s the story telling.” Mercedes-Benz gave five figures to Morehouse College golf and donated a Sprinter van to the golf team.

Collaborations resulting in charitable contributions are common. Golf Pride has also made donations to the Underrated Golf Tour.

So popular is this movement to cross-pollinate with golf that even huge brands are collaborating. A case in point is the Pursuit Collection between TaylorMade and Oracle Red Bull Racing, a Formula 1 team. While the clubs were stock TaylorMade P·790 irons, Spider putters and assorted merchandise, the racing colors made the design striking.

Other collaborations look to fill a void. ECCO, the shoe company, did its first collaboration with J.Lindeberg in 2022 when the Swedish fashion brand was taking off with a younger demographic. ECCO did the heavy lifting of creating and distributing the shoes while J.Lindeberg provided design consultation.

“Did it make money? No,” says Timo Vollrath, head of global marketing for Ecco Golf. “Making money was definitely not the goal in the short term. The goal was to create awareness and hype with the younger culture of golf. Now European online retailers show us who is buying our product and, indeed, it’s getting younger and younger.”

These collaborations don’t always work as planned, particularly when the planning is long. A collaboration that has been a year or more in the making risks coming out at the same time as, or even after, a very similar one.

“We work off of an 18-month calendar,” says Madigan of Adidas. “We’ve put collaborations out there that we’ve been working on, and then the consumer says, ‘Wait a second, this other brand did the same thing three months ago.’”

That’s one reason many of these collaborations are more audience-driven than profit focused. It’s also why companies want transparency with brands that may be working with other companies or they may want to enter collaborations slowly.

Adidas’s work with Malbon Golf was a case in point. Malbon Golf had been putting its logo on Adidas products for years—akin to what country clubs do with their logos—before they did The Crosby Collection, an homage to Bing Crosby and Pebble Beach, which included a pair of modern golf shoes with a kiltie flopped over the laces.

Whatever the motive, the consensus is that for collaborations to work, they need to hinge on what the original brands represent—or else consumers will cry foul.

“We’re uniquely qualified for this moment,” Cooper says. “I know golf. At the same time, I know culture and hip-hop and NBA players. With a lot of these brands, the founder hasn’t been playing golf as long as we have, and now they’re running to this space. We’ve always been here.”

Being here first counts for a lot when a big brand moves in.