Hey everyone - this is Peter, I'm one of the co-founders of Robin Golf. Honestly I thought this thread died after our Kickstarter, but to my surprise yesterday a friend pointed out that it's alive and well. I appreciate everyone here sharing their thoughts and feedback! Before I dive in I would just like to say that we are an American small family business that is passionate about golf. We are not venture backed or independently wealthy, we’re just a regular family that had the awesome fortune of launching a golf business during a pandemic and economic downturn lol.
I’d like to add some context about why we started Robin. I’m a relatively new/casual player myself, and after spending weeks trying to decipher which clubs to buy at Roger Dunn, then a pro shop, then 2nd Swing, I felt more confused than when I started. I didn’t know if buying a set of PXGs would make any more difference to my game than buying a set of Stratas. Plus trying to put together a full set club-by-club, which most avid golfers suggested, I became overwhelmed by choices. My sister-in-law was buying clubs with me and the choices were even worse for women - all some shade of pink or purple with names like “Lady Power.” When I asked my brother, (a former D1 collegiate golfer) what the Warby Parker of golf clubs was, he said it didn’t exist. That’s why my brother, SIL, and I started Robin.
We have one fairly simple goal - to make golf more accessible and less intimidating, especially for new or casual players. Our goal is not to provide the cheapest clubs, or the most advanced - we’re more focused on changing the experience of buying equipment. Someone recently called us "The Southwest of clubs" - if you want the cheapest you go with Spirit, if you want premium you fly first class on United, but Southwest will get you from A to B at a fair price and with great customer service.
Most of the major brands in the golf space tend to cater to avid or skill-biased golfers, and in doing so, leave a lot of other players out of the narrative. This includes some of the fastest growing demographics in the sport such as women, minorities, juniors, and millennials. This is the main reason we came to market with just one standard, non-customizable set for women, men, and kids. Our sets come with everything a casual golfer would need to start playing (clubs, bag, headcovers) all in one click. With it we offer a 90 day risk free trial with free shipping/returns to encourage adoption and to alleviate the issue of not being able to test in a pro shop/retail location (yet). We also donate a portion of every sale to Youth on Course, an organization that subsidizes rounds of golf for kids across the country. Ultimately we’re passionate about truly growing the game.
Now as many of you have discovered already, we did not design clubs from scratch. We discussed that route, but as you can imagine, it’s insanely expensive and we ultimately discovered that there’s a lot of amazing tech already available. What we did was test hundreds of models and made our own technical and aesthetic changes to create a beautiful set that we thought would help improve a casual player’s game from tee to green.
One of the most common questions I’ve seen here, or get IRL, is “why 9 clubs?” When we were doing our research, something we heard over and over again was that casual golfers rarely used 14 clubs, they actually used closer to 7. For women sometimes fewer. We landed on 9 to give some variety without being burdensome, plus the bag is lighter to carry around and to store if space is tight (many of our customers live in cities).
I think it’s safe to say that since most of the people on this thread are avid golfers, skill biased, or gear junkies that few of you will be purchasing our equipment, but we hope you can understand our mission nonetheless! So far the majority of our customers are under the age of 35 and 50% are women, which we're excited about.
I can confirm that @PlayLikeBubbaDaly does NOT work for us - he’s just a brave soul that decided to take a chance on us early on. Unfortunately, using some context clues, I believe he experienced a technical malfunction with one of the clubs and sent them back to us. Which is fine, we officially launched in March and expect to have some slip ups at this stage. For example, the black paint does come off faster than we’d anticipated and the adjustable hosel on the driver has been coming loose in transit which has caused a few of the heads to come loose on the shaft. We’re fixing these issues and expect version 3.0 of the clubs to be even better.
For those of you that made it all the way to the end of this novel, I’d love to do two things.
Send some clubs to you to try out. I could tell you how awesome our clubs are all day, but obviously I’m biased and I suspect you wouldn’t believe me anyways. Sadly since we are bootstrapping I won’t be able to send sets to everyone who asks, but I can send some individual clubs or a bag to a few of you. The first 3 people who email hello@robingolf.com we can hook up with some free sample clubs to try.
Ask you to tell your friends about us! I know many of you have made a point of hoping we’ll crash and burn, but in the end I’d like to think that most (if not all) of you would like to support small business, especially during a time of national crisis. Even if we're not right for you, maybe you know someone we are right for.
Thanks for listening!
PS. Our putter is not Zinc, come on now...