TravisMathew Expanding Into Women’s as It Eyes $1B in Sales
Count TravisMathew as the latest brand to set its sights on the lucrative women’s business.
The Huntington Beach, Calif.-based company, which started out as a men’s golf brand 15 years ago, has been acquired by Callaway, expanded into a variety of lifestyle categories and now operates more than 30 stores. The goal, according to chief executive officer Ryan Ellis, is to grow TravisMathew into a $1 billion brand within the next five years. The entry into womenswear will help it get there.
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“The brand started in golf but the idea was always to be more than golf,” Ellis said. “It was started by a couple of professional golfers who knew nothing about clothing and they hired me and a designer 15 years ago; I had six years of experience and our designer was fresh out of college. But they had a great concept: to create performance-based product that looks more lifestyle.”
The original concept from those golfers — Travis Brasher and Travis Johnson — was to offer pieces that didn’t fade or shrink, were lightweight and comfortable and would fit the average American man, Ellis said. They opted for a more subdued palette than that offered by other brands — which Ellis described as a “color bomb that just blew up: oranges and pinks and yellows — and opted for black, white, gray and navy, which was lacking in the green-grass shops of the time.
“And there was a need to bridge the gap between that oversize American golf fit and the tighter Euro-fit,” he said. “There was nothing in the middle.”
To get their name out they signed professional golfer Bubba Watson as a brand ambassador “and things really started blowing up.” They stayed in the lane they had envisioned at the start — lifestyle product that performed and was comfortable — as a way to stand out among the myriad athleisure, athletic and lifestyle brands in the market.
As the brand grew, it moved on from simply golf apparel into better men’s sportswear. In 2010, it partnered with Nordstrom and it is now the number-one brand in the retailer’s better men’s sportswear department, Ellis said. The brand is also sold in better specialty stores around the U.S. as well as in Japan and South Korea.
TravisMathew’s sales today break down into about 24 percent in green-grass shops, 18 percent in resort stores, 15 percent in Nordstrom and other lifestyle retailers, 20 percent through e-commerce and 20 percent in its own retail stores, which will expand from 32 to 40 units by the end of the year, the CEO said. It also sells through corporate gifting channels.
At this point, Ellis said it’s hard to know whether customers are buying the line to play on the course or to wear to lunch. “When a guy goes into Nordstrom looking for something to wear to a golf outing or a great polo to wear to work, they direct him to TravisMathew. That’s the key to the brand: We have that versatility so we win in both worlds,” he said.
Ditto for the brand’s own stores. “If you walk into our retail stores, you wouldn’t think golf at all, you’d just think men’s lifestyle. So it’s important that we’re always rooted in golf but the brand has become much bigger than that.”
Big enough to attract the attention of Callaway Golf Co., which purchased TravisMathew in 2017 for $125.5 million, more than double its annual sales of around $60 million at the time. Ellis said sales this year are expected to hit $300 million and $500 million within the next few years. “We do not have a projection on when we will get to $1 billion, but we certainly believe this brand has the potential and will inevitably get there.”
So after dancing around the idea of introducing women’s for years, the decision was made to finally take the plunge. The first move was to hire a seasoned veteran to oversee the category — Lindsay Browder, who serves as director of women’s product.
Browder was design director role for Peter Millar — another brand that moved beyond its golf roots to become a lifestyle label — and launched its women’s division.
Ellis said he it was important to him that Browder “really understood the men’s side and could create a clear vision on the women’s side that was very different.”
Already, 30 percent of TravisMathew’s direct-to-consumer customers are women so “we’re almost doing a disservice in not offering product they can purchase,” he said. The mission is to fill the same void it saw in menswear, which is “elevated everyday casualwear,” Browder said. It’s not athleisure and it’s not leggings. And it’s not the “too fussy, too expensive” pieces offered by high-end fashion brands.
“With so many brands, it’s such a knee jerk reaction to get into women’s,” Browder said, “but we’ve put the pieces in place to do it correctly. We’ve hired the right designers, the right technical people, and we’ve done it in a really strategic and mindful way because we’re trying to build something that has longevity and depth.”
The launch collection will be small — 20 stock keeping units — focused on wardrobe staples in knits, layering tops and comfortable bottoms. Prices will include $39 for graphic T-shirts, $79 to $89 for knits, $99 to $119 for layers and $59 to $89 for bottoms.
Going forward, Browder said footwear and accessories will be offered along with additional apparel categories such as performance lifestyle pieces. “This is just the starting gate for us.”
It will be offered only online and in the company’s stores in the beginning, which will give TravisMathew the opportunity to gain insight into customer preferences and make tweaks as necessary before offering it to wholesale customers. “Let us learn first and do the heavy lifting and then we’ll grow with the wholesale customer,” Ellis said.
Within a few years, Ellis is projecting women’s will be 20 to 25 percent of the direct-to-consumer business. And it is expected to grow quickly after that.
“We’re going to be a $1 billion brand in the next five years and women’s should be growing very fast,” he said. “We should see 200 to 300 percent growth per year for the first four to five years. It’s one of the most exciting parts of the business.”
Other growth areas include retail, Ellis said, predicting that the company expects to eventually operate around 100 stores. Although most stores are small now — 2,000 to 2,500 square feet — some newer units are being tested in the 5,000 to 7,000 square foot range in order to accommodate the women’s offering. Most of the company’s stores are in the U.S. — mainly top malls in the Midwest, Northeast and Southwest — except for a flagship international store in Tokyo. It is also planning to open a unit in the U.K. this fall.
In addition, it will expand the categories offered such as outerwear, which will take TravisMathew beyond strictly a warm-weather brand.
But the big push is womenswear.
“The truth is, TravisMathew doesn’t need women’s to have success,” Ellis said. “We’re already growing 80 percent a year. But we feel like we have an understanding about what we want to do on women’s so it makes a ton of sense and it’s going to add a ton of value to the brand.”
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