Golf's DTC Brands Cut Out The Shop. Now They're Rebuilding it.

Gianni Magliocco | gianni@bigswingmedia.news

A golfer orders a new set of irons directly from a brand without a traditional dealer network. The clubs are built to spec, shipped to his door and never pass through a golf shop. That is the direct-to-consumer model in a nutshell.

For much of the industry, that is a very different transaction from the one it was built to measure and monetize.

Direct-to-consumer golf brands are no longer simply selling cheaper clubs online. Companies such as Sub 70 and Takomo now offer custom-build options, fitting tools, demo or trial programs and direct customer support, recreating parts of the infrastructure that once made traditional retail indispensable.

That creates a three-way tension.

DTC brands are trying to own the golfer relationship from first click to final sale. Established OEMs see the attraction of that model but still depend heavily on retailers to move volume. And retailers increasingly find themselves competing against brands that can bypass the store entirely.

A parallel equipment market is growing alongside traditional retail. The harder question is how large it has become, and whether industry data can capture it.

The Margin the Model Removes

The appeal of direct-to-consumer is simple: remove the retailer, and more of the selling price remains to be split between the brand and the golfer.

Jason Hiland, Sub 70’s founder and chief executive, describes the savings in structural terms rather than financial ones. “We don’t have sales reps,” he said, and “the old system is like a 1950s distribution model. We just want to be in a different, more modern lane.”

He would not put a figure on what that saves, calling those internal numbers, and he was clear the comparison is inference rather than measurement: having never worked at a TaylorMade, he would “have to imagine” his chain is shorter.

Sub 70’s direct-to-consumer page says most major companies sell through a dealer network that “marks that product up 40 to 50 percent” before the club reaches the golfer. On a $600 driver, that implies the shop paid roughly $400 to $430 and kept $170 to $200 before staff, fittings, rent, inventory and markdowns. Measured the way retailers measure it, that is a gross margin of 29 to 33 percent. Published summaries of Circana’s 2025 membership study for the Association of Golf Merchandisers, covering fiscal 2024, put the average gross margin at member shops at 35.8 percent. That figure covers all merchandise rather than drivers and skews toward private clubs, but it puts Sub 70’s estimate in broadly the same range.

A direct brand does not simply pocket the retailer’s share. By removing the shop, it takes on customer acquisition, fitting support, demonstrations, shipping, returns, warranties and service. It gains control: it can pass some of that margin to the golfer, keep more of it, or spend it rebuilding what retail used to provide. DTC does not eliminate the cost of selling a golf club. It relocates it.

The Blind Spot

The difficult part of assessing direct-to-consumer golf is working out how much of it the industry can actually see.

Golf Datatech’s monthly retail tracking draws on a panel of point-of-sale systems across on-course shops, off-course specialty retailers and e-commerce channels. That makes it an important measure of what is moving through established golf retail. But a club bought directly from a manufacturer does not necessarily pass through any of those systems.

The channel is not invisible. Golf Datatech, now a Circana company, surveys golfers directly about where they buy, and its 2025 Serious Golfer study lists purchasing channels including custom fit specialists, online golf retailers and “direct to consumer (from OEM).”

That last category is the one that matters, and it is ambiguous. Direct from an OEM could mean a driver bought on TaylorMade’s website or a set of Sub 70 irons. Those are very different businesses, and the distinction decides how much of the direct channel the numbers actually describe.

Circana did not respond to questions about whether manufacturer-direct sales from DTC-native brands are reflected in its monthly brand and category share reporting, or whether unobserved transactions are modeled.

If a meaningful share of DTC sales falls outside the core monthly retail data, the published numbers may not be wrong. Instead, they may describe the measured retail market rather than the entire equipment market.

For an industry accustomed to quoting market share to the decimal point, that is a meaningful blind spot. That is also why no authoritative public figure appears to isolate how much golf equipment DTC-native brands sell.

The Middleman Returns

Ironically, as direct-to-consumer brands have grown, some have started rebuilding the very infrastructure their model was designed to remove.

Sub 70 now offers fittings at The Seventy in Sycamore, Illinois, which the company says is open by appointment only. It also runs a network of fitting-cart partners, while golfers farther away can use the company’s demo program for $20.

The company says it builds all clubs to order in Sycamore, while its trade program currently routes customers through Golf Stix Value Guide rather than being handled entirely in-house.

Hiland is explicit that the fitting network costs Sub 70 margin, because the fitters have to make money too. “We’ve definitely discounted the product down enough so the fitters make a profit,” he said. “We definitely take a little bit of a haircut for sure to let those guys work with our product.”

That is the retailer’s share reappearing inside a model built to remove it. Sub 70’s own direct-to-consumer page says flatly that “there are no ‘dealer’ markups.” Hiland describes the fitting partners as non-traditional retail rather than dealers, but a third party is taking a margin either way. The demo program works the same way. “No, we lose money on it,” Hiland said. “It’s a net loser from that standpoint.”

Returns are where the model meets the golfer most directly. Sub 70’s direct-to-consumer page promises a “100% money back guarantee.” Its published return policy gives a 30-day window to start a return, states that “all returns are subject to a 10% restocking fee,” and makes the customer responsible for shipping the clubs back to Sycamore. Refunds are issued minus the fee; on a $600 club, that is $60 to change your mind, plus the freight.

Hiland described it differently, saying the company refunds in full inside 30 days and applies the fee after that. The published policy makes no such distinction and offers no route to return a club once the window closes. He was clear the written terms are a floor: “We have to have rules,” he said, but “if someone’s willing to work with us, we are more than happy to do everything we can to make sure the product is right.” The policy page likewise encourages customers to call before starting a return.

Both of those can be true at once. But the written terms are what a golfer reads before buying, and a published 10 percent fee differs from one waived on request.

Hiland rejects the idea that any of this makes Sub 70 a retailer. He says the company has turned down more conventional opportunities and will not be “in 80 different locations,” and he draws the line at the big-box floor. “I think it would become blurred if we were in PGA Superstore or something like that,” he said. “If the clubs were just in there, it would be blurred.” At a Sub 70 fitting partner, “you can’t just go buy a golf club off the rack, you have to go get fit for it.”

The question is how much retail a direct brand can rebuild before the economics that made direct selling attractive begin to disappear.

Why the Incumbents Can’t Go All the Way

Established manufacturers have already adopted parts of the DTC model. TaylorMade sells customized drivers through its own website. Callaway does the same, alongside its own rewards and trade-in programs.

The problem is not whether they can sell direct. The question is how much business they can move there without damaging the distribution network that made them large in the first place.

Callaway’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, shows how significant those relationships remain. Its five largest golf equipment customers accounted for approximately 24 percent of consolidated golf equipment sales, against 26 percent in 2024. The company warns that consolidation can give larger retailers increased leverage, and that if one “substantially reduces their purchases of our products, we may be unable to find a sufficient number of other retail outlets for our products to sustain the same level of sales.”

Those retailers do more than process transactions. They hold inventory, provide fitting, give launches physical visibility and let golfers compare competing products in the same room. PGA TOUR Superstore’s Fit & Go program, for example, fits and assembles selected drivers the same day.

That creates the incumbent’s dilemma. Every sale moved to an OEM’s own website can deliver better economics and a more direct customer relationship. Push too far, however, and the manufacturer is competing more aggressively with businesses it still needs to sell its products.

Sub 70 had no legacy distribution channel to protect when it went direct.

The incumbents do.

What Direct Still Can’t Do

The direct model solves one problem particularly well: price. It does not automatically solve trust.

Golf remains unusually dependent on validation from elite players, and Takomo has broken through by a different route. Three new owners emerged in the space of five days in January 2025. Grant Horvat, a YouTube creator with close to a million subscribers, announced on Jan. 4 that he was “officially an owner of Takomo Golf.” Five days later Golf Monthly reported that PGA TOUR winner Wesley Bryan, who plays Takomo irons in competition, and his brother George had joined him as shareholders. Takomo says the Bryans have since collaborated on its wedge development.

That is a different currency. Traditional equipment companies have long built credibility through tour contracts and widespread retail visibility. Takomo is building some of the same trust through ownership, giving creators and players a direct financial stake in the brand they promote. The order is revealing: Horvat, with the larger digital audience, came first, and the Bryans followed five days later with both creator reach and a PGA TOUR win behind them.

The resource gap is real but unquantifiable. Callaway spent $65.5 million on company-wide research and development in 2025, and Acushnet $76.5 million. Private DTC companies do not publicly disclose directly comparable R&D figures.

Resale is another place the data thins out. 2nd Swing currently stocks used Sub 70 equipment, so direct brands are not shut out of the secondary market, but no benchmark shows how they hold value as a group against the major OEMs.

Then there is the most concrete friction. Under Sub 70’s written policy, changing your mind means shipping the club back at your own cost and losing 10 percent of the purchase price.

Buying direct can cost less. Changing your mind costs more.

Who’s Exposed

The immediate threat from direct-to-consumer may not be to TaylorMade, Callaway or Titleist. It may be to the retailers sitting between them and the golfer.

The largest manufacturers can play both channels, with the recognition and resources DTC brands are still building.

The strongest retailers have their own defenses. 2nd Swing combines new and used inventory with fittings, trade-ins and club building. Acushnet’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, describes retail partners as “a critical connection to dedicated golfers.”

The more exposed retailer is the one in the middle: carrying inventory and absorbing the costs of a physical store without adding enough expertise, convenience or service to justify the margin between manufacturer and golfer.

Direct selling does not need to replace the best fitter or the biggest retailer. It only has to persuade enough golfers that the intermediary is optional.

If part of the shift happens outside the retail data used to judge the market, businesses losing those sales may only grasp the change when it hits their own tills.

The unanswered question is no longer whether a direct golf-equipment market exists.

It is how large it already is.