But First!

This may be surprising, but today’s newsletter is presented by Meridian.

Check them out, support their company, buy their putters. Sure, you are supporting a business that supports us, and that is great, but you are also purchasing a world class putter at a reasonable price (this is their entire business model in a nutshell).

You can check them out right here.

OK, onto the Q&A.

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Q&A: Ryan Duffey

KP: When did you fall in love with golf?

Ryan: My dad was a golfer. My grandfather was a golfer. I had a set of junior clubs, grew up playing on a par three course. I probably started playing when I was five or six years old, so I guess that's 36 years now. I took it seriously. I played golf in high school. I was never going to play college golf or pro golf or anything like that, but I'm a scratch player.

I still enjoy it. I still enjoy when I'm playing by myself, the therapeutic side of it, getting away from everything and just playing on my own. Having a son and daughter now who are old enough to play, that's been pretty darn cool.

Playing with my father and my brothers and just the family aspect of it, that's been great. I've always loved golf. I remember collecting PGA Tour cards, player cards, when I was little. I don't even know if you know what these are, but there used to be PGA Tour baseball cards, similar to baseball cards.

I don't even remember how long they existed, but I remember having those.

There used to be a tournament in Milwaukee … It was the GMO, then it was the U.S. Bank, and then eventually it ran its course and went out of business. But I remember seeing Nick Price. I remember going to Brown Deer Park and seeing Loren Roberts. It's always random guys, but I just loved it. I always loved it.

My family has always loved it. Everybody plays. We do golf trips. We travel to places, and it's like, “Where are we playing?”

It's been a part of me for as long as I can remember.

On Meeting Nike

KP: Did you work in golf before Meridian started?

Ryan: The way this all came together was, prior to Meridian, the company that I ran, we made rapid prototype parts for engineering sample purposes. We did 3D printed stuff. We did quick turnaround plastic stuff. We did quick metal work.

We worked for Harley. We did work for Moen Faucets. We did work for Kohler. We did work for all sorts of OEMs.

Along the way, I got in touch with Nike Golf. And one of our projects with them was carbon fiber drivers. I got to meet all of the Nike team. It was great. It was really fun for me. I love golf. It was way more fun than making a plumbing product.

One day, Nike just got out of the hard goods game. It was literally like, “We're no longer making clubs. We're out.” All those guys that we were working with, they literally got laid off. They called me up and they were like, “Hey, what do we owe you? Send us a statement. We'll approve all the payments. We got to be out of here by noon.”

On Getting into Golf as a Business

KP: How did that turn into a putter business?

Ryan: Fast forward a couple of years, back to the usual projects, it was around 2021 … and my business was slow.

For the first time in a long time, we had machine time, we had steel, and I had people who were looking for something to do.

In the back of my mind, I had always thought, “This thing is set up to make putters. My shop is set up to make putters.” I have stainless steel, I have CNC machines, I have automation. I can make good putters here.

It just so happened that the Nike putter designer, he was still making clubs. He was still in the game. And I told him what I was thinking.

High-quality putters made in the USA, one-piece milled, all done in our CNC machines. No welding, no assembly. He was like, “I'm in. This sounds great.”

I brought him on board in the summer of 2021, and we designed four or five putters, and that's how we essentially got started. We made four or five models, built a website, marked them for sale right around the time of the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits.

We painted some red, white, and blue. We painted some yellow. We were like, “Hey, we got putters, and we started doing a little bit of social advertising. Lo and behold, people came to the site and they bought them.

And what was even cooler was they didn't return.

Ed. note: This made me laugh.

On a Business Working … Too Well

Ryan: We moved forward a little bit to that Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving of 2021. And I was like, “Oh, hey, let's do a Black Friday sale. This will be fun. Let's mark everything down 35 percent, whatever. Who knows? I've never done a Black Friday sale.

It went nuts. On a Wednesday night at 5 p.m., we made the sale active. By Thanksgiving dinner, I realized, “We have a problem. We have sold more putters than we have in inventory. I'm not sure how we're going to make all these things.”

By Friday night, I was in panic mode. On Tuesday morning, we just started pumping out as many putters as possible. We worked overtime, we worked weekends, but we got them all out.

Our guarantee was, “Hey, you will get it by Christmas.” We got them all out.

Again, there were no returns, which was good. But that's when I realized, “Hey, we might actually have a business here.” People are buying into it. People are asking questions. People are asking for different models.

And that's where I realized this might be more than just a side project.

Why Putters?

KP: You've got machines, you could probably make any number of different things. Why did you settle on putters?

Ryan: Our manufacturing process, and this is where we were lucky, because I had the machines in place. If you want to do what we are doing, it's a significant capital investment with the automation and the machines. I already had those in place.

I look at a putter today. I look at some of the putters that are on the market that are selling from $450 or $500, and I know what the inputs are. I know how much the steel is. I know what the shaft is. I know what the grip is. I know that these are very highly priced in comparison to what the cost of the materials within them are.

There was a part of me that said, “There's a huge opportunity here to make a high-quality putter made in the USA at a price point that is reasonable.”

I don't understand how we've all just come to accept, “Well, a good putter must be 550 bucks.” More than a driver in some cases. People just seem to accept it. From my perspective, I was like, “Man, there's a whole world in here where we can do this at a reasonable price.”

Good Product, Fair Price

KP: You weren't in the equipment industry. That sometimes creates these advantages where you just see things differently. Other than the price point, what are some things that you just have looked around and are like, “That's interesting that people do that that way. Maybe it could be a little bit different.”

Ryan: Being an outsider, you get a lot of skeptics. There's a lot of people who look at you and go, Well, you're no Scotty Cameron, or you're no Bettinardi or you're no Ping. Trust me, I've gotten a lot of that.

One of the strange things was when we started, I said, “Hey, I want this to be around 250 bucks.” People were like, “You're not charging enough,” or “What's wrong? Why is it only 250? Why is it not 500?”

One of the challenges I've had is communicating that this is a good putter. It's all being done in the United States, and it can be done in the United States. And you don't have to pay … it's still a challenge.

I look around and I go, “I don't get why it's so difficult to offer a reasonable price. We're just going to start at 250. We are small enough that we can do that. I can throw your initials on the putter for 30 bucks. We can make the putter your own for very reasonable prices.” That's just the way we operate.

Earning Gold

Ed. note: Meridian has earned gold from Golf Digest over the last few years in both the mallet and blade categories.

Ryan: You can pay 250 for a putter, and we didn't sacrifice anything. For us, the [Golf Digest] Hot List stuff, that really helped us because that validated us.

You no longer have to take Ryan's word for it. This is independent testing. But that was a big deal for us because that's where they do extensive testing. You still get people who are like, “Oh, well, you must advertise [with Digest], and that's how you got it.” It's like, “No, dude, I can't afford it!”

Ed. note: Thankfully. 😏 

But that really helped us because then it was opening more doors and it was saying, “Hey, you don't just have to take Meridian's word for it.”

We just take the mindset that our goal is to provide value, quality. We want to be approachable. We want to feel like our brand is approachable. And we just try and stick to those tenets. So far, so good. We've made some huge mistakes. I'm not going to say everything we've done has been perfect. We've engaged with influencers who haven't influenced. We've made our share of bad decisions, but that's all part of the experience.

Dream Job

KP: I think people from the outside, their dream job is what you're doing, running a golf company or golf business or whatever. There's a ton of stressful things that they haven't considered that probably I haven't considered. But I'm curious about what's the most fun thing for you as you think back on those last three years?

Ryan: Getting into the golf world, honestly, we probably could have made more money to keep with what we were doing. You have to sell a lot of $250 putters to make what we were making back in the day. But just being involved with golf, for me personally, provides a sense of fulfillment that I hadn't previously had.

I used to hate going to work. I mean, even though the business was successful, there were things about it that drove me nuts. I would dread the drive to work, and it was draining.

When I think back to that Thanksgiving night, when my phone was buzzing, at first I'm like, “Dude, this is awesome. This is great.” And I was like, “Oh, man, this is a problem.” But I felt this energy that I hadn't felt in a long time. I was like, “All right, let's go make some putters. I'm going to grip them myself. I'm going to paint them myself. I'm going to get in there.” And I felt a drive internally that I hadn't felt in a while.

My mood got better. Even though I was busier, I was excited and was ready to roll up my sleeves and get in it. I've got a great team of guys all around me who are all the same way. That, to me, has been the most fulfilling. It's getting into golf. It's just fun.

It provides a level of fulfillment that I had not been experiencing. I don't mind the late hours. I don't mind the extra work.

Changed Person

KP: What was the commentary of your friends and family around that?

Ryan: I don't want to say night and day, but you're different. There's a positive energy. Not to get too weird about it, but honestly, I feel like there's just a drive. There's an enjoyment around it. You're not focused on the money, you're focused on the process, you're focused on building something.

My wife, my brothers, my parents, probably, they would tell you, “Yeah, he's totally different.” I don't know what that says about me, but I think what I learned is that doing something you love is so much more important than maybe I realized.

Actually Growing the Game

KP: What's your favorite thing to hear from people that buy the putters?

Ryan: We get a lot of feedback. When somebody tells me, “This is an unbelievable value. It's a great putter at a great price.” When people say that, it makes me feel good. I feel like people talk about growing the game, and people talk about how do you make it more accessible.

Staying Disciplined

KP: How hard has it been to stay disciplined? There's a million things. One of the things I've been shocked by in my five months of running a business is how hard it is to stay disciplined on the thing that you set out to do. I'm just curious about how you have thought about staying disciplined.

Ryan: Right now, the biggest thing in the putter world is arguably torque-less, square to square. LAB Golf has taken over the world. Everybody's going that direction.

For four or five years, I've been telling people Meridian's all about feel. Now, I think if I were to tell you, “Hey, we're going with a putter that doesn't provide really any feel,” that's hypocritical.

I don't know if it's the right move to not make a torque-less putter, but I know right now we're sticking to what makes us Meridian, which is putters that provide different feels to the player and putters that are high quality and that look clean.

It's easy to get distracted. I've gotten distracted once or twice.

We're the putter company that thinks that when Tiger says he likes to hook putts, you don't get that with a torque-less putter. We're in that camp where feel matters, and we're sticking with it.

Worm Cam

KP: Where does your design inspiration come from?

Ryan: I'll see putter designs or I'll see putter looks, and I'll go, “That'd be pretty cool if you could just tweak that.”

Even sometimes on TV, I'll see a model. We're looking at the Key West, we're looking at modifying the flanges. Instead of it being like a fang, maybe we round the edge a little bit.

You'd be surprised at how much a little change can impact the way the putter looks and the way the putter sets up. I would probably say inspiration comes from just watching other people putt. Even sometimes like those worm cams on TV, you're like, “Oh, if you just change that.”

KP: I have appreciated the obsession that you have over it because you get into some of these bigger companies, and it's unusual for the person leading the company or the founder to be looking at worm cam and thinking about what to add. I think it's more unusual than you're making it out to be, in a good way, which is very cool and part of the reason that I've enjoyed partnering with you guys.

Jimmy Buffett Inspo

KP: I guess the last question for me is just, where did the name Meridian come from? I think you might have told me, but I don't totally remember.

Ryan: I'm a big ocean guy. For me, the ocean is very therapeutic. When I stay at the water, I have ideas, my mind gets cleared.

What I was thinking of is something straight and true. There's a Jimmy Buffet song that mentions the prime meridian. I was like, “Meridian … that might be it.” Meridian is a line that goes all the way around the globe, and it's straight, it's true. I was thinking, “Oh, you can make a logo with it.”

That looks like a ship steering wheel. Then it just started going.

KP: Well, it's perfect for us because it's... Naming a putter company after a Jimmy Buffet song is a very normal sport moment.