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Conversations with the smartest people in the golf business to get the inside stories and strategies driving the business of golf forward. Hosted by former PGA Tour player Roberto Castro.
Jared Henzlik
[00:00:23] Roberto: Alright, let's take it from the top. Welcome back to the Course Record Show. Today we have a quick nine with Jared Henzlik. Jared, thanks for being here.
[00:00:32] Jared: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:34] Roberto: Jared, you have an interesting resume. You've really touched all corners of what I would say is the golf merchandise space. So you started as a PGA professional. You were at Polo Golf in the heyday, Augusta National, and then you got into operations for some fast-growing brands. And now kind of back to that buyer side in experiential retail at a place, you know, owned by one of the real leaders in that space, Johnny Morris of Bass Pro. You're currently the Director of Merchandising at Big Cedar Lodge Resorts. The whole deal. Am I right?
[00:01:06] Jared: Director of Retail.
[00:01:07] Roberto: Director of Retail. So I don't usually go chronologically, but I think it's going to tell a great story. After being a PGA professional, you move over to Polo Golf and what I would kind of call the back end of the Davis Love heyday. What was that brand like, the aspirational part of it? What did you learn from your time at Ralph Lauren?
[00:01:28] Jared: When I joined, I was doing merchandising and buying. Of course, to me I thought I was the guy that knew how to do it really well, but boy, I never learned so much working for Ralph Lauren. They're the masters. I was fortunate enough to work there when Ralph Lauren owned it—it was still privately owned—and I was there when they did the IPO and changed over to being publicly traded. It was just a collection of some of the best, most talented people in the industry. I learned so much about just being a merchant and retailing and merchandising. It was like getting a master's degree, quite frankly.
[00:02:03] Roberto: Yeah. If I'm going to set the stage on the golf merchandising world, tell me what I have wrong and what I have right. You have the direct-to-consumer in today's world, which is online sales. You have standalone retail—so Peter Millar has its standalone stores—and then you have what is “green grass,” right? So that's your pro shop buyer. Are those the main channels today?
[00:02:26] Jared: Yeah, that remains to be the same, right? So yeah, that's correct.
[00:02:30] Roberto: And what's different in your time at Polo Golf? Is it fundamentally the same business—going to green grass pro shops, having a product that is going to first resonate with the buyer, then resonate with the end customer, and selling through that channel? What role were you playing at Polo?
[00:02:49] Jared: Yeah, when I started, that's exactly what I did. I had five states that I covered. I was living in Minneapolis, so I would take my sample lines and travel around and visit my customers and show them the wares. They would pick products for their golf shop, for their green grass—mostly private country clubs and resorts.
[00:03:09] Roberto: Yeah.
[00:03:09] Jared: Maybe a couple of high-end daily-fee courses. But that was basically it, and it's pretty much the same way it works today.
[00:03:16] Roberto: Okay. What makes a good rep?
[00:03:21] Jared: Boy, that's a loaded question. That's something I learned—I mean, being a buyer at a golf shop, I learned what was a good rep and what was not such a good rep to me. Somebody that does what they say and says what they do, and they follow up. They're there for you, not just twice a year when they want to get an order from you, but somebody that's there in between to service, to meet people, to learn what your facility's like, so they can better give you a presentation or offer you things that make more sense for your facility.
[00:03:54] Roberto: Interesting. What about visual merchandising in pro shops? What did you start with from your time as a PGA professional, and then maybe what did you learn at Ralph Lauren about how to do that even better?
[00:04:07] Jared: So I was at a really very nice private club in St. Paul called North Oaks Golf Club, and it's a beautiful private club with beautiful fixturing. I was able to do more themed merchandising—really making things look neat in the fall and the winter, and having spring displays. Where now at Big Cedar, the guests that come in—we do such a high-turn, high-volume retail situation. I need more shoppable, clean displays. That's just more Retail 101, where I've got every size out and it's pretty easy to shop. I don't do a lot of theming just because I need things to be real simple. Guys are coming in—they'd rather hit balls. They might be slightly hung over. They just want to buy a few things, pay, and get out. So it's really a different strategy altogether.
[00:05:09] Roberto: I read somewhere—maybe in PGA Magazine—that Bandon does so much volume that they don't fold anything. They put it straight on hangers, and all of their pro shops only have four-ways with things on hangers. Is that true, or does that speak to what you were just talking about—accessibility and speed versus maybe a more elevated presentation?
[00:05:37] Jared: My recollection of being at Bandon—and I've been there a couple of times—is that there were quite a few things hanging, but I think I saw some tables too. We're similar. Hanging certainly is easier, but I know that just working with Mr. Morris and Bass Pro, they like to have tables and fold as well. It's not as easy to fold up a tech shirt—it's like stacking ice cubes—but we somehow figure it out. It is still in very neat piles that are simple to see and understand, and grab your size and go. I call it just having it be very shoppable.
[00:06:15] Roberto: Yeah.
[00:06:16] Jared: And that's what we work with at really all of our points of retail at Big Cedar.
[00:06:20] Roberto: Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about the footprint at Big Cedar. For the listeners, it's owned and operated and founded by Johnny Morris, who built out Bass Pro Shops—experiential retail 101, right? What does that look like now in the golf world? I have not been. It looks unbelievable.
[00:06:38] Jared: Yeah, it is pretty good. I would encourage you all to come out and give us a try. The best way to say it would be I have over 20 points of retail that I manage at Big Cedar. So there's a lot. We have six golf courses, four golf shops, two marinas, two gift shops, a spa, an outdoor amphitheater—it goes on and on. I oversee all of that, and I have a team of buyers that buy different items. I always kind of kid and say I like buying for golf, I like buying for the outdoor shooting academy, and I also like buying for the outdoor amphitheater. I'm not so interested in buying dishes or towels that say “lake life” or anything like that—but I have people that like to do that. It's a pretty broad property that has a lot to offer. It's an amazing place.
[00:07:26] Roberto: That's really interesting. After your start as a PGA professional and your time at Ralph Lauren, you had a stint at Augusta National. On the retail side, what makes their operation so effective? What can the rest of the industry take from there, if anything, or is it just too much of a one-off?
[00:07:46] Jared: It happened because of my time at Bobby Jones—he kind of is the Masters; he built the place. Being involved and managing that brand is how I found my way into Augusta National. When things pivoted a little bit, I was asked to come back and help set up Berckmans Place, which is their high-end corporate hospitality side. It's nothing short of a one at Augusta National. The team there is absolutely incredible. They're wonderful to work with. The brands they have access to, the fixturing, the whole thing is just perfect. It was an honor to be involved there. I really had the ability to use some of my finer skills to make things look as good as they possibly could. It was a great challenge, but one I was up for. I've done 10-plus U.S. Opens and a handful of Ryder Cups, Players Championships, and PGA Championships—and there's just nothing like the Masters. I don't know what it is, but every single person that comes in there wants to buy, and that's a lot of people.
[00:09:05] Roberto: So you go from the brand side at Ralph and Bobby Jones into a more infrastructure and operations role at some fast-growing brands. One of those was johnnie-O, where you're helping build out that operational backbone. What's the biggest challenge for a golf apparel company scaling? What's the first thing that breaks?
[00:09:27] Jared: Boy, great question. I don't know that you can say it's one thing. A lot of brands start out like Peter Millar or johnnie-O—they get some DTC business going, then they get into wholesale, which is a completely different ballgame. Then they have reps and samples, and it requires more infrastructure. I guess what breaks first might be their 3PL or shipping logistics. They need to ship DTC orders, but also pick orders for golf clubs that are anywhere from 100 to 300 units. There's a lot that goes into the back end of that. So I would say 3PL/logistics is probably the first thing that needs help. Then perhaps the system—the ERP system—that manages incoming orders and processes them. Early on, you can't always afford a big, robust system. As you scale, people start requiring EDI, barcodes, and all those things resorts and clubs ask for now, which require a more expensive system. Those are the couple of things I worked on at both companies. Once you have that, the legs get stronger under the table and you can scale better.
[00:11:10] Roberto: So your background was really on the customer side—as a buyer and a rep. You mentioned ERP and 3PL. How did you pick up what I would call the more technical, logistical, operational pieces?
[00:11:25] Jared: I think I'm pretty technical myself. When I was with Ralph Lauren, we were one of the first brands that had an order entry system where we could enter customer orders ourselves into a system with live inventory. It was incredible—and now everyone has that. After about five of my nine years at Ralph Lauren, I moved to Greensboro with my family and took a director role on the operational side. I was managing the PGA Show, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship—things I was able to be exposed to. You just learn. Thank God I had a golf background as a PGA professional, so it came easier. Then at Peter Millar, I got involved in things like tech packs, working with factories, learning how to build product. Over time, I feel like if there were nine legs under a table, I've sat at all nine. That gave me the ability to come to Big Cedar and handle the explosive growth we've seen over the last five years.
[00:12:52] Roberto: Back to Big Cedar and Johnny Morris—what have you learned from that Bass Pro ecosystem?
[00:13:05] Jared: Whether you're a dishwasher or the Director of Retail at Big Cedar, when you get hired, you go through a couple days of training—one is called “Taking Root,” and one is called “Big.” It's about teaching hospitality and “unreasonable hospitality.” It's amazing to understand from the first couple days what hospitality looks like to Mr. Morris and how we treat guests. We go out of our way to make sure guests feel great about their experience. I was always told if you supply the experience, the revenue will follow. Sometimes we go way above and beyond, and it's great when it pays off and you see that look on a guest’s face—they're blown away. It's a lesson in hospitality first. If everyone is doing that, we work as a team and create an experience where guests don’t just check us off—they want to come back with their family. It's pretty incredible.
[00:14:40] Roberto: That's cool. What does that look like on the retail side? Data and personalization are big topics. If I’m coming in for a busy few days—golf, dinners—could you curate products based on my preferences and have them ready?
[00:15:04] Jared: Yeah, a couple things. For groups over 20, we proactively reach out. We find the main contact—the “grand poobah”—and ask how we can elevate their experience. We can offer pretty much any brand, add company or group logos. Some groups even have their own logos now. We also have an e-comm site—shop.bigcedar.com—where people can request similar services. These are either guests coming in or those who visited and want more product. Lastly, we're building a “buddy’s portal,” where once you're booked, you can shop, select sizes, choose logos, and upload your own. It's not done yet, but I'm working hard on it because it will help deliver exactly what you're describing.
[00:16:33] Roberto: That's interesting. Your experience in execution and fulfillment will be valuable there. It's easy to drag and drop a logo—harder to bring it to life. Jared, you have a fascinating resume and experience. I was a kid who spent hours in the pro shop looking at apparel—honestly more than clubs. I've been fortunate to get to know the Holderness & Bourne guys and follow what they're doing. It's something I'm endlessly interested in. I'd love to continue the conversation over a beer or coffee.
[00:17:22] Jared: Well, if you come here, the carpet's bright red, we've got a place for you to stay, and we’ll give you the full tour. I’d encourage anyone who’s done a lot of the others to give us a shot. We’re in the Ozark Mountains, and as we say, come experience some good old Ozark hospitality. If you want to reach out, look me up—I’ll do whatever I can to make sure your experience is a one.
[00:17:50] Roberto: That's awesome. I'm going to get a “lake life” towel—custom order one. I'm going to make you find me that lake life towel.
[00:17:56] Jared: Yeah, I’ll find that for you. Don’t worry.
[00:18:00] Roberto: That's good stuff. This episode is brought to you by Holderness & Bourne. Check out hbgolf.com for some of the latest spring styles before it gets too hot. I've been wearing a lot of cotton—it's tough to beat a crisp white or navy cotton shirt. Check them out on the website. Also bottoms—five pockets, standard chinos—really, really good. And shorts—weather's warming up. It's almost short season. hbgolf.com.