Hatch Golf
As a consumer in the world of golf, there are different accessories and tools around every corner. Walk into your local golf shop and you’ll get lost in all of the options. Factor in online-only companies and forget about it, there are so many options it’ll make your head spin. But as you sift through the weeds of the golf world, every once in awhile you will stumble upon something special. Enter Hatch Golf Co out of Brighton, Michigan. Makers of some of the most unique, awesome head covers and accessories you’ll find on the market. Not only that, but a fantastic collector community has built up around the brand. A quick search on Facebook for Hatch Golf will lead the way.
Here at DRH we love supporting small businesses, and Hatch Golf Co. is one of them! They even do all of the designing and manufacturing of their head covers in-house!
(Advanced shoutout to friends and collectors for providing the photos in this post and sharing your collections!)
Early Days of Blue Birdie Golf
Prior to becoming Hatch Golf Co. as they’re known today, founder Sean Farrell started Blue Birdie Golf back in 2017. The original idea behind the brand was that Sean wanted a way to feel a connection to his family while out on the links. Initially, Sean would draw a little blue jay on his golf balls as a reminder of his family. Why a blue jay? Well, Nat Geo lesson here for you – blue jays are actually known as one of the most social birds in our ecosystem, with extremely complex social networks, and more importantly, tight family bonds. Throw a little golf pun into the mix, and Blue Birdie golf was born!
Becoming Hatch
While Blue Birdie found success in the marketplace, their team saw room to grow the brand. One major opportunity was found in bringing all of the headcover manufacturing in house. All Blue Birdie headcover manufacturing was outsourced to various suppliers/manufacturers. The Blue Birdie team decided to bring all manufacturing inside their factory in Brighton, Michigan giving them total control over designing and lead times. With this new change in business model, a new brand was hatched.
Now, as Hatch Golf, they make some of the coolest headcovers and accessories in the market. From exotic materials (sometimes real, sometimes faux) like ostrich, gator, or even the skin of a football, to quality ball markers or apparel, Hatch Golf has something for everyone. Rumor has it they may even have a full custom cover offering in the works!
The best part of everything Hatch puts out? They make an extremely quality product, with customer support that shows how much they stand behind their product. With such cool accessories, I had to find out more.
“Sit Down” With Hatch Golf
To find out more about Hatch, we wanted to hear directly from the “bird’s” mouth, so we spoke to Hatch Golf founder Sean Farrell to learn more about their journey.
Sean: I think there are multiple ways that have helped us stand out in the industry. The first being that most knew the story of Blue Birdie, and knew that I sent out my designs to be manufactured by someone else. While I did this for a few years, there was a catalyst that eventually made me take on the manufacturing role. I believe this journey of experimentation helped us connect with our customers in new ways and people got involved in the process. Being able to control 99% of the process has also helped prototype ideas and make sure they turn out exactly how I want.
Sean: Well with Blue Birdie, my growth was limited due to the long lead times of working with different manufacturers. Since starting Hatch, I can now design something on the screen and see it manufactured nearly on the same day. When starting Hatch, my biggest hurdle was finding people proficient in all the different areas of this type of manufacturing. There’s a lot of steps that go into each part of the process. Figuring that out from scratch with no prior knowledge was difficult.
Sean: No, we used to send out the designs to get manufactured by somewhere else. Because of long lead times, I eventually decided to buy all the equipment and take on the role myself. I did that in the middle of 2021.
Sean: I’ve always loved golf, ever since I was little. I’ve always loved design. Eventually those two passions combined and Hatch was born. I think seeing people use the covers on the course and dress up their bags is the most rewarding part of starting Hatch.
Sean: There were a few reasons. One of the main reasons was that I didn’t own the .com for Blue Birdie. I also didn’t like the fact that there were so many golf companies with the name “Birdie” in it so I wanted to differentiate there as well. Hatch name was born out of Blue Birdie’s tagline which was “freshly hatched golf goods” – and since we essentially hatch new products each week I thought it was fitting. And it’s short.
Sean: My favorite cover we’ve made since we started is probably the Bad Egg Salad Sandwich we did for the Master’s release this past year (seen below). We have some pretty awesome releases planned to end the year. One may involve a themed cover from a famous Christmas movie.
Final Thoughts – Hatch Golf
When I discovered Hatch Golf, the cool designs of the headcovers drew me in, but Hatch has grown to be much more than that. They have grown to have a fairly large collector following along with a large secondary market and Facebook Community as well. Sean even actively participates in the group, and some of their collection photos are pictured in this post! Based on their most recent releases on the site, I can’t wait to see what they have in store for the future. But be warned, you are going to need to have some fast fingers to hit their limited drops!
