The Bold Moves That Made SWAG Golf a Household Name

Venson had a vision for what he thought the golf industry needed, and it turned out he was right. With a background in high-end putters and collectibles, he witnessed the demand for these items firsthand, yet knew there was still one element missing: character.

“The golf industry was lacking any color, any vibrancy, any boldness,” he said. So SWAG hit the market with “super high stitch count, super high-quality headcovers. Really highly machined, well-made putters, but still with character. Something that was just not in the space.”

Adding character to golf products was a refreshing change of pace for the industry. SWAG’s designs are known for neon colors and sunglasses on everything from skulls to poker cards to cash.

Another reason there’s nothing comparable in the space is because of the attention to detail Venson demands in SWAG products. 

“I wanted to do what I felt was needed in the golf space that everybody else was not willing to do,” Venson said. “Whether it was machining putters start to finish for hours on end, or spending eight and a half hours embroidering a head cover with 175,000 stitches. Nobody was doing that and nobody wanted to do it because it was expensive and if you messed it up, you lost a lot of money.”

SWAG was made to be a limited-release drop company from the beginning, but with those standards and just four people working with the company in the early days, it’s not like they could have churned out more product even if they wanted to.

So they stuck to the script, dropping small batches of however many they could make to eagerly awaiting collectors, growing the brand and establishing an identity. 

They made the putters themselves in Chicago, while a small company near Atlanta, EP, produced their headcovers. Before long, however, Venson realized that SWAG needed to bolster its capacity to produce, and set out to acquire EP Headcovers.

“I didn't start the business to be a headcover company. It was really a putter company that made cool headcovers, but the headcovers took off,” said Venson, who said he spent six months courting EP Headcovers. “I said, ‘Hey, we've got to acquire these guys because we need to own our domestic manufacturing of head covers.’ I truly believe they had the best headcover and best manufacturing in the market.”

EP had about 18 employees in 2020 when SWAG acquired it. At the start of 2025, somewhere around 118 employees work for EP. Meanwhile, that four-man SWAG team in Chicago from 2018 has grown to more than 30 employees.

That meant SWAG could make more product, but more product isn’t necessarily the answer when your business is built on limited drops and exclusivity. Meanwhile, the limited-drop model was creating another problem.

“That’s what SWAG was designed to be, it was designed to be a drop company,” he said. “But there was just a ton of people who were showing up to the website, not being able to get product, and that makes it tough because, honestly, if you keep disappointing people, they don't come back.”

So if you’re successful selling a product in part because of the exclusive factor, how do you disappoint fewer people without diluting the exclusivity? That’s the dilemma Venson faced, and he found a pretty crafty solution.

In 2024, SWAG had a chance to go to retail at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy, but being deliberate about where and how collectors could get SWAG products, Venson paused.

“We've always been a direct-to-consumer business and I think that's part of the uniqueness of what we do,” he said. “So using our design and creativity prowess, we basically created two brand new lines, Hometown Brands and Rewind Golf.”

Hometown Brands does officially licensed NFL, MLB, and NCAA headcovers with the same approach that made SWAG successful, by adding character. Designs tap into the elements that make each team unique – like the Fly Eagles Fly edition with an eagle gripping a cheesesteak, or driver headcover that simply depicts Fenway Park’s Green Monster. 

Meanwhile, Rewind Golf puts the same personality into officially licensed movie headcovers, with collections from The Godfather, Animal House, Happy Gilmore, Ace Ventura, and The Big Lebowski already available, and headcovers from more iconic films in the works.

“Rewind Golf has been awesome,” Venson said. “People love them because movies are something a lot of people can relate to, right? You're a golfer, but there's pretty much nobody that doesn't watch some of these if not all these movies.”

Don’t forget, Venson and the original SWAG Four started the brand as a putter company that made cool headcovers, not the other way around. Even though the headcovers caught fire, the putters are just as unique, with just as much craftsmanship.

While working with Scotty Cameron and Bettinardi before he started SWAG, Venson questioned why high-end milled putters weren’t milled start to finish, and instead required hand-polishing that made it nearly impossible to create two truly identical putters for the most discerning PGA Tour players and collectors alike.

“I want to be able to recreate these time and again,” he said. “You can line up a hundred of our putters, they're going to weigh exactly the same, they're going to look exactly the same. They're going to be replicas of each other, which just really isn't the case with a lot of the milled product on the market.”

SWAG putters have captured plenty of on-course success, including five Tour wins and a major – the Women’s Open Championship – across the PGA, Korn Ferry and LPGA Tours.

Along with Hometown Brands and Rewind Golf headcovers, SWAG putters are in Dick’s Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy, and they’re also in Club Champion fitting studios. They sit next to the Scotty Cameron’s and Bettinardi’s of the space. They compete for your attention with brands that spend countless dollars on advertising and sponsorships. But unlike many competitors in the space, Venson doesn’t feel SWAG needs an aggressive marketing strategy with bold promises.

“We’ve always kind of said ‘Hey, we’re SWAG. We make the highest quality product. If you know, you know.”