By AMY MASON DOAN
Like most novice golfers, Mary Allen took up her new hobby with the kind of zeal that retailers dream about.
Only a few months after Allen played on her first 18-hole course, she owned a full set of MacGregor clubs, a pink retro bag, TaylorMade gloves and pink Top Flite balls and tees. In her closet: 25 pairs of golf shoes.
Clothes were a different matter.
Faced with racks of boxy shirts and baggy Bermuda shorts, Allen cobbled together a basic golf wardrobe with cargo pants from Banana Republic and collared shirts from Ann Taylor.
But she said she was about as pleased with her look as she was with her early, disastrous swing.
Allen’s Tustin-based startup, SwingChick Inc., is a bid to market golf clothes to women like herself, who are serious about the sport but hate to look stodgy on the course.
Before starting SwingChick, Allen worked in business development at Northern California’s Gilian Technologies Inc., now part of Carlsbad-based Breach Security Inc., and locally for Houston-based BMC Software Inc.
In 2003, Allen started SwingChick with brother Dominic Hirota, a manufacturing specialist at Irvine-based O’Neill Clothing, which makes surfwear under license from Santa Cruz-based O’Neill Inc.
The surfwear influence is clear in SwingChick’s body-conscious clothing streaked with Hawaiian prints.
“Our customers have attitude,” Allen said. “They want to be appropriate and comfortable on the course. But they want to look like women. And they’re as competitive about fashion as they are about golf.”
Allen now is a bogey golfer who plays Green River Golf Club in Corona and Poppy Hills Golf Club in Pebble Beach.
She said she winces when she sees golfers,women or men,playing in huge pleated shorts.
“The golf swing can do some very unflattering things to the body, and tents of extra fabric don’t do it any favors,” she said.
Her biggest pet peeve: a “bun snack”,her term for a wedgie, which comes from a good follow-through.
SwingChick’s clothes are fitted and stretchy.
They’re not obscenely tight.
The company’s “BoardSkort,” a com-bo skirt and shorts in bright patterns, pays homage to surfwear.
So do its vertically seamed, zip-up “scuba shirts.”
There also are pants with a rollable Haw-aiian cuff and mock turtlenecks.
The clothes sell for $34 to $85.
Allen and her brother started the business from their mother’s Santa Ana garage with $50,000 of Allen’s own money.
In 2002, they brought some fabric and rough sketches of their first BoardSkort to Patternworks in Santa Ana, which helped them with patterns.
Tapping Hirota’s contacts from his day job at O’Neill, the duo got good rates for small sewing jobs at PDQ Sewing and The Apparel Studio in Santa Ana.
SwingChick’s first three lines are sold online, at golf emporiums such as Roger Golf Shops and at upscale boutiques including Lady Golf in Rancho Mirage.
The clothes also are at a dozen pro shops at public and private courses.
So far SwingChick has sold about 10,000 items, including small-ticket stuff such as ball markers, visors and ankle socks.
The company’s revenue is tiny at $100,000 a year. Allen’s goal is to double that in 2005.
The duo has kept the operation small, passing on a small-business loan and outside investors for now.
Allen said she still has money left from the sale of a Bay area condominium if a major marketing push is needed.
“Capitalization is always a challenge in the golf apparel market, because it can take a long time to break into the green-grass shops,” said Tony Cherbak, a retail analyst with Deloitte & Touche LLP in Costa Mesa.
Growth Niche
Allen is going after golf’s only growing segment,women. For the past few years, the overall golf market has stagnated, with too many new courses and too few new golfers.
But the market for women’s golf gear and clothes has grown in the past 10 years as the number of women playing the sport has nearly doubled, according to the Jupiter, Fla.-based National Golf Foundation.
Big labels such as Cutter & Buck Inc. (which has Annika Sorenstam as a spokeswoman), Liz Claiborne Inc. and Nike Inc. dominate sales of golf clothes.
There are a few lines with unique patterns, including Sugartown Worldwide Inc.’s Lilly Pulitzer.
And Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. makes sexy, tailored golf outfits.
But SwingChick is on its own offering bright, feminine styles for less than $100, according to retailers.
“Nobody else is making this kind of clothing,” said Erica Edwards, a buyer for 20 Worldwide Golf Enterprises Inc. stores including Roger Dunn in Santa Ana. “The surprise is that it’s selling very well on larger and older women, not just the young, skinny women. The skorts look good on size 16s.”
“I’ll take anything Mary can give me because it sells right out,” said Karen Cantrell, owner of Lady Golf in Rancho Mirage. “The pieces are cutting-edge and very well-constructed.”
Customers in Spain, France and Italy have ordered SwingChick’s clothes from Cantrell’s Web site, she said.
The appeal, according to Cantrell, is that SwingChick’s styles are “transitional”,golf shop lingo meaning they can be worn off the course, too.
Not for Everyone
The skorts are regulation length and the shirts are collared. But women probably wouldn’t want to march up to the first tee at St. Andrews decked out in the mumu-bright patterns, Allen said.
The look doesn’t go over well in some colder climates, either.
“The clothes are a great fit for our Florida and Southern California stores, but they just don’t seem to fly in the Bay area,” said Gina Anson, director of national accounts for Western Golf Properties in Santa Ana.
SwingChick has sponsored some Executive Women’s Golf Association and charity tournaments but the company has done little other marketing.
Allen contracted with an outside sales representative, with ties in Hawaii, during summer.
The company has sent free clothes to professional women golfers to get their feedback. Players such as Jennifer Rosales,known as “JRo” with her streaked hair and bright getups,have shown amateur women it’s OK to show more flair in their golf attire.
“The girls on the LPGA are infinitely approachable and work very hard for their sponsors,” Allen said. “It’s very sad that they are so overlooked by the industry. When we get big enough, I would love to sponsor some of the girls on the tour.”
For now, Allen said she’s closely watching online sales to glean trends.
“We’ll sell one item in a pro shop in Tennessee and then get a flurry of online orders from the same area,” she said. “Women will buy matching pink boardskorts when they compete in a tournament together.”
Online More Profitable
SwingChick is getting about two orders a day on the Web site, versus two per week this time last year.
Internet orders generate a 70% profit, versus about 40% at a store.
So far, SwingChick’s challenge has been planning, not financing, Allen said.
In the company’s first run of clothes, it ran out of size sixes first. In its second, size eights went first.
And Allen said she and her brother were surprised when the more subdued skort designs were slower to sell than the wilder prints.
Allen said she’s not thinking about selling the company or other ways to cash out on her investment in SwingChick.
For now, she said she’s busy designing next year’s expanded line.
But Allen admits that a name like “SwingChick by O’Neill” eventually could make sense.
If all else fails, she joked that she could fall back on an offer for the company’s Web site name.
“An acquaintance wanted to buy it for a porn site,” she said. “I think he was serious.”
