On Course: How Manors Golf Is Shaping Up to Be the Golf Brand for Young People
LONDON — Revenue for the men’s golf brand Manors Golf, which has developed a cult following with young men, sat at 300,000 British pounds in 2022 and grew to 430,000 pounds by October.
Now the brand has raised 601,733 pounds in a new round, with help from 181 investors on Crowdcube. The golfwear brand’s target was 400,000 pounds when they set out to raise money. Already, Manors counted actor Nicholas Hoult, media entrepreneur Jamie Bolding, sports media investor Andrew Croker and musician Tom McFarland, one of the frontmen of the English band Jungle, as investors.
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“We want to build a globally recognizable golf brand and that requires investment. We’re not trying to build a little lifestyle business that does decent work and everyone pats you on the back because you’ve got a cool business,” said Jojo Regan, cofounder of Manors Golf along with Luke Davies and Nick Watts.
The business is valued at 5 million pounds, and has raised more than 1 million pounds total to date.
Regan is not shy to share his ambitions — he wants Manors Golf to grow to the height of cycling lifestyle brand Rapha, which was bought by RZC Investments in 2017 for 200 million pounds.
“We’re looking to inject the capital into our marketing, content and into the general business. We finished last year with fantastic results,” said Regan, adding that the brand’s e-commerce business was up by 600 percent from 2022 to 2023.
“The goal now is to move less of our dependence away from wholesale business and more into direct-to-consumer, where we can have a better direct relationship with our customer,” he added.
Manors Golf’s wholesale business is a fruitful one with strategic relationships placed in places such as South Korea, Thailand, Germany and the U.S.
Regan wants to get his customers as involved in the business as they are with the game of golf. Crowdfunding platform Crowdcube allows for that to happen without the hassle of all the paperwork involved — individuals can invest 20,000 to 25,000 pounds.
“Those investing will be able to get equity at the same rate and the same deal as any angel investors who come in directly to the brand. We’ve onboarded VPs at L’Oréal, one of the ex-creative directors of Dr. Martens and founders of Dash Water,” Regan said.
Manors Golf’s largest source of revenue comes from the U.K. market, meanwhile 30 percent of their DTC come out of the U.S.
The brand has a big following in Asia with the retail company Lane Crawford. South Korea accounted for 13 percent of Manors Golf’s group turnover.
“We’re kind of a funny niche, because it’s golf — it’s incredibly popular in [South] Korea and Japan, but it’s growing massively in China as well,” Regan said.
Manors Golf will be partnering up with Matches later in the year and currently hosts golf activations to bring their community together.
The last ticketed event sold out and took place at Pyrford Lakes, an 18-hole golf course in Woking, a town and borough in northwest Surrey.
“It’s a great sales metric because people want to wear the product when they come to the event and we’re able to utilize every single person,” said Regan, whose mission with his team has been to create a golf brand that people wear on the golf course.
Manors Golf developed a new technical range in March 2023 that contributed to the growth of the brand.
“If Arc’teryx and Rapha had a baby that played golf, that’s who we are,” Regan added.
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