My old man used to tell me, “If you stick around long enough, kid, you’ll see stuff you never would have thought of.”
Those words rang in my head last month as I visited the Northeast Golf Show. I love local golf shows because you see lots of new ideas. Some of them are pretty good. Others, well, you just hope the inventor didn’t cash in his 401K.
This golf bag from the Salt Lake City-based Afternoon Golf, however, has me flummoxed. Seriously, I don’t know what to make of it.
As you can plainly see, it’s a golf bag. However, in a matter of a few seconds, you can completely change its look.
The Afternoon Golf bag features interchangeable skins.
Afternoon Golf bags, like Barbie dolls, have different outfits called skins. If you ever wanted a golf bag to match your mood, outfit or one of your many personalities, now’s your chance.
While I’m still not entirely sure about the whole concept, there is one inescapable conclusion.
It’s pretty doggone original. And incredibly creative. The story of how co-founders Greg Taylor and Brady Stanger came up with idea is a fascinating one, with its roots dating back to the summer between seventh and eighth grade.
Afternoon Golf: Golf Bag Barbie?
What makes Afternoon Golf bags interesting is that, like Barbie, you can dress them up in different outfits.
The bag itself starts with the part that actually holds the clubs, called the core. From there, the core has interchangeable skins, allowing you to change the club’s appearance (or outfit, if you must) depending on your mood, the occasion or if you’re just bored and want to look pretty.
In my mind, it’s Golf Bag Barbie. When I got Stanger and Taylor alone, I had to ask: Why on earth would anyone want a golf bag that can change outfits?
“I was thinking about golf bags late one night,” Taylor tells MyGolfSpy. “Brady and I would be on the course and see these faded black golf bags that were old and outdated, and it came to me: What if you could change the look of your golf bag?”
Gotta admit, it never occurred to me. But, then again, I’m not the most imaginative guy out there. Taylor, however, is pretty imaginative and once he got the bee in his bonnet, he wouldn’t let go.
“That night I drove to Walmart to find something to prototype this bag with,” he says. “That’s how our Mountain Dew prototype was made.”
Taylor was imagining a customizable bag with interchangeable outer wraps or skins. The Mountain Dew prototype was something he pieced together that night. The first skin was literally a Mountain Dew box.
The first Afternoon Golf “prototype”
“The next day I went to Brady and was like, ‘What do you think?’” he says.
“I think you’re on to something,” Brady replied.
Eighth grade and a twist of fate
“For the entirety of our friendship, even in high school, we’d always talk about our million-dollar ideas,” says Stanger.
Stanger and Taylor’s friendship goes back well over 20 years, to the summer before eighth grade. They attended different middle schools and had never met until their district opened a new school. Half of Stanger’s class and half of Taylor’s class were reassigned to the new building and the pair quickly became friends.
“We played sports together all through high school and we both studied business in college,” says Taylor. “We wanted to become real estate investors and ended up buying two houses together.”
Taylor, who made his bones in the fashion and retail industries, and Stanger, whose background is finance and software, shared a house at the time of the Mountain Dew prototype. After marinating on the idea for about six months, they worked with a couple of different design agencies who didn’t see the interchangeable skin idea in quite the same way.
“They wanted us to use zippers for the different wraps,” says Taylor. “I hate zippers. That’s where the Home Depot bucket prototype comes in.”
I told you these guys were creative. And they were frustrated with their design agencies.
“I went to Home Depot one Saturday morning,” Taylor says. “I had to find the next prototype.”
He bought some dowels and a Home Depot bucket and got to work.
“Brady came home as I was sawing that bucket in half. He just stares at me and asks, ‘What are you doing?’
“So I tell him. ‘I’m making a golf bag.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, OK.’”
The second Afternoon Golf “prototype”
Another friend showed up with her sewing machine and they made their first wrap. By Monday, they had the protype in their design agency’s office as proof of concept.
Seriously, Afternoon Golf bags have different outfits?
Well, yeah.
Which prompts us to revisit the original premise and ask the obvious question: Why the hell would anyone want different outfits for their golf bag?
“Not everyone gets it,” admits Stanger. “But plenty do. They’re like, ‘That’s so obvious. Why would we not do that?’
“You can see the possibilities going through their minds. ‘I could change it for my outfit’ or maybe it’s more utilitarian. They can switch it when it wears out or they can have a lighter skin for when they’re walking. You can see the gears turning with possibilities.”
Most of Afternoon Golf’s business has been through the company website so the regional golf show circuit was their first real face-to-face interaction with potential customers. Their booth in Foxboro, Mass., was nonstop busy, with most of the clientele women.
Coming from the fashion industry, Taylor understands female buyers better than most.
“We see a huge white space with women’s bags,” he says. “Everything I read shows more women are playing golf. We’re making sure a big part of our line is carved out with more feminine prints. It’s very intentional.”
The other half of the equation is retail and customization. A blank core with interchangeable skins is an inventory manager’s dream. Afternoon Golf sees great potential with customized skins with logos and names. They can turn an order around quickly and with low minimums because they’re just doing the wraps.
“It’s a piece of cake,” says Taylor. “The end customer gets a cool, branded bag that they could swap out with a different skin if they wanted.”
“A big retailer could carry maybe 100 cores and then have every skin design under the sun,” adds Stanger. “The wraps are compact and don’t take up much space. When you’re in retail, you know space is everything.”
Do we really need this?
As we’ve said in this space many times before, when it comes to golf the entire concept of need doesn’t really mean anything. Golf is a hobby and recreation. We don’t need any of it. We play because we want to and we like it. Anything that’s part of that entire process is there to help us enjoy it more.
And if putting a new outfit on your golf bag makes you happy, then it makes you happy.
Still, Taylor and Stanger do see some practical benefits to their Afternoon Golf bags.
“Fabric, zippers, touch points – they’re eventually going to wear out,” Taylor explains. “So instead of replacing the whole bag, just replace the outer wrap. Some people get it. Some don’t. It all depends on what type of utility they’re looking for.”
We can tell you the features in the outer wrap are very well thought out. There’s a deep water bottle pocket and a rangefinder compartment with a magnetic closure. The larger garment pocket features a mesh inner compartment with two zippered outer pockets, the larger one with a mesh inner compartment.
Then there’s the ball pocket. No way to sugarcoat it. It’s friggin’ huge. So much so that I had to ask the guys if they lose a lot of balls when they play.
“The reason it’s so big is because of the lines and the way it constructs visually,” says Taylor, the fashion guy. “It actually complements the other lines.
“It’s probably a little bigger than it needs to be but, yeah, we do lose a lot of balls when we play.”
I dig the honesty.
I get all that but what about the price?
While we know there are golfers who’ll complain about the price of a pretzel, Afternoon Golf bags will run $375 (skin included). Extra skins go for $175 each.
“We want this bag to be worthy of the price we’re asking,” says Taylor. “There’s going to be some price hesitancy, we know, especially with a brand you don’t know.
“We have seen some friction at the shows but we also see people who say, “Oh, I can get two bags for $550?”
“The most enthusiastic response has been from beginners,” adds Stanger. “People see this bag and it makes getting into golf more appealing.”
The guys are also working on a new synthetic leather skin and are hoping to have it in five colorways early this summer. That would allow you to swap back and forth between a canvas cover and a synthetic leather one in seconds because why the hell not?
At $375, I know there are other bags out there just as good, if not better, than the Afternoon Golf bag. None of them, however, has interchangeable skins.
If you want to change your outfits, you’ll have to pay a premium.
Afternoon Golf bags: Final thoughts on Golf Bag Barbie
Some companies play it safe. Others think outside the box. Then there are companies that didn’t even know there was a box. Those are usually started by guys making prototypes out of Mountain Dew boxes and Home Depot buckets.
You have to admire the guys for their creativity and making Afternoon Golf a reality.
I have no idea whether this idea of interchangeable outfits for you golf bag will actually catch on but I can say it’s a nice golf bag with well thought-out features. The process to swap skins is simple and intuitive (it’s all locking clips and magnets) and the skin options continue to grow.
I can envision the customization and inventory benefits more easily. A pro shop, for example, could stock multiple style skins with the club logo along with a bunch of cores, giving them more options with less inventory. As a consumer, I’ve never considered having different golf bags for my different moods, seasons or events for one simple reason: I never knew such a thing was possible. I have different clothes for different moods, seasons or event, but a different outfit for my bag?
Why the hell not?
All we can tell is you Afternoon Golf had one of the busier booths that day in Foxboro. I know they sold quite a few bags. As we said, Golf Bag Barbie isn’t about need. It’s about want and there’s nothing wrong with wanting different looks for your golf bag.
In the big picture, though, it’s also about fun. Golf is a game, remember, and games are supposed to be fun.
Where have I heard that before?
Discount for MyGolfSpy readers
Afternoon Golf is offering a 20-percent discount for MyGolfSpy readers. Just use the coupon code MYGOLFSPY at checkout.
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