Here at Sweetens Cove, we are 100 percent focused on making it all about fun and an experience unlike any other. At this point, the experience has made us more of a brand than a golf course, which is crazy because the golf course is brilliant. Our philosophy is, we take all our landmarks, tournaments and history and tell stories, and we tell those stories through our merchandise.
People love to play in our events because they’re different and fun, and because of all the limited-edition tourney swag they get. We kind of go overboard. We don’t have a budget, but we consider that to be our marketing and advertising for the year. Many people take pictures and post them on social media, which makes others want to buy that event swag, even if they didn’t participate. In fact, last year we did $225,000 in event swag, our largest sales category.
We tell stories and take inside jokes and turn them into merchandise. There are a lot of golf logos people recognize from places like Augusta National or Pine Valley. When someone buys something here, I want people to ask, “Why do you have a porta john on your T-shirt for a 10th anniversary logo?” to which they answer, “Oh, it’s from this place called Sweetens Cove, that's all they had – a shed and a porta john.” It’s about IYKYK (If You Know, You Know), and we want them to talk about their experience.
It’s taking everyone’s fun things in life and in golf and fusing it all together. It’s what we are. People call us unique, but this really is a golf anomaly, including the merchandise we carry. We try to push the needle in that category and have people go home excited about golf, wanting to play more and tell our story.