Is There Room in the Premium Ball Market for Another Brand? This Company Thinks So

LA Golf, which entered the sport as a shaft company, is now moving into the hyper-competitive ball space.

LA Golf founder and CEO Reed Dickens promises his company’s latest venture into the ultra-competitive golf ball marketplace has more appeal and substance than just a clever slogan.

Dickens himself is responsible for LA Golf’s latest tagline of “We’ve Got Balls,” as the California-based company, whose first product in 2020 were graphite shafts with a proprietary design made from the mid-section out, launches its new golf ball line to the masses this month.

“I try to be simple when I come up with our slogans,” Dickens says. “But I always want to make sure that if I say something that's clever or funny that it’s technically correct or accurate, and that there's a usefulness to the message. It may be a little tongue-in-cheek humor, but the first question that I ask myself every time is, ‘What's the one thing I want people to know?’ And for right now, because we're a new brand and a new company, I just want people to know we have balls.”

Joking aside, in less than a three-year period LA Golf is producing a line of innovative products that include shafts, putters … and now golf balls.

“I think ultimately first and foremost we're trying to build a brand and there's no reason to build a brand if you don't service all the tools of the trade,” Dickens says. “So, when people say, ‘Why a golf ball?’ my first reaction is, ‘Why not?’ I think people would and should expect that from us.”

LA Golf's new ball is priced at the top of the market, at $69 per dozen / Courtesy LA Golf

Ball design and technology took the better part of a year, with Dickens noting that the LA Golf product line marries control and distance.

“I spent a lot of money on that patent, and we've got the burden on us to tell that story properly, but every time you go to buy a ball in a pro shop you have to choose between control and distance. So every ball right now out on the market pretty much stops spinning at apex and dives to the ground," he says. "Our technology allows the ball to spin through the apex, so it gives you a little more carry.”

Dickens points out that the LA Golf ball was not created in a vacuum. This past November, the company gave away thousands of dozens of prototype balls—"selling out" the free product in a manner of a few days—seeking feedback from consumers, bloggers and independent testers.

“I've never seen another brand do that,” he says. “And we actually made some tweaks based on that feedback, so it wasn't just a PR stunt. I really liked that idea before our product hit the stores nationwide, and it turned out to be very productive.”

LA Golf playing partner Bryson DeChambeau also stepped into the development conversation as it unfolded.

“I enjoyed this entire process because I learned so much,” Dickens says. “I put Bryson on the phone with our engineers and, you know, he had a checklist of four or five things that most engineers would say is not physically possible. That’s what I love about the relationship between our player partners and engineers. I'm obsessed with Steve Jobs. He always wanted things that engineers would say, ‘Well, you can't do that.’ And then five years later somehow he'd find engineers that can do it.

“So Bryson always has a wish list that's seemingly impossible at first, whether it's getting the center of gravity perfect or making sure the dimples don't have any sharp edges and all these things that I didn't even know anything about. So I really enjoyed the learning process.”

That team of engineers the former U.S. Open champion was engaging had a combined 100 years of experience in the golf ball space including working at every major brand, according to Dickens, himself a former White House assistant press secretary under George W. Bush, and the co-founder and former CEO of Marucci Sports, a manufacturer of premium baseball products.

“They had some really interesting ideas that the larger brands hadn't let them experiment with,” Dickens says. “I gave them a blank sheet of paper and they came back with something I really liked. And we think it's a really premium ball, and that’s what consumers should expect from LA Golf.”

LA Golf’s boutique-type of brand has entered the market at $69 per dozen, which is at the top tier in terms of pricing.

“I actually think that the other major brands will join us at that price point,” Dickens said. “It really doesn't make any sense why Titleist or Bridgestone and those brands haven't raised their prices for the last four or five years because raw materials and cost of goods are going up, and there is inflation. It doesn't really make any sense why they have all stayed at that $55 price point. I'm pretty confident everyone will probably join us there in the next year or two.”

What would Dickens consider a realistic goal out of the gate for the new golf ball?

“Well, in the first year, we want to get it in as many people's hands as possible,” he says. “Our tagline for our new putters and the ball is ‘feel for yourself.’ And I'd say that because I've never been exposed to any industry before where the experts say so many demonstrably false things about products. You've got testers and club fitters and club pros who will just emphatically say things that are just false because it's something they've been saying for years. And so I really encourage consumers to try our products for themselves.

“Everything we do at LA Golf I try to take a five-year or 10-year view. I'm not going anywhere and don't have anything better to do. “I’m having a blast, so we're trying to be really patient,” Dickens added. “I've already had thousands of customers tell us that they were blown away by the ball. So we're very encouraged by the initial feedback.”