What’s the playbook for the perfect Sunday Funday?
Golf? A must. Beach hangs with friends while eyeing the day’s NFL action? Absolutely, especially if you’re in Southern California.
Watching Kelly Slater find his wave next to the Huntington Beach pier?
Epic.
Capping the day with a sunset show from Donavon Frankenreiter?
Yes, THAT Donavon Frankenreiter.
Just icing on the cake.
TravisMathew, the golf apparel and lifestyle brand inspired by the California coast, knows a thing or two about this kind of Sunday Funday. In a lot of ways, the brand is the unofficial apparel brand of exactly this kind of Sunday Funday, embraced by golfers and surfers all over for merging versatility with everyday style.
This is exactly why TravisMathew linked up with the World Surf League to host the Life on Tour Challenge in Huntington Beach, slated to air at 11 p.m. ET on October 17 on ESPN2 after the U.S. Open of Surfing.
Part surf showcase, part golf outing, the event was a who’s who of two sports with their own distinct cultures.
The vibes of the day?
Just right.
Nowhere was that more apparent than the VIP guestlist for the day: Kelly Slater, Josh Kerr, Kanoa Igarashi, Strider Wasilewski, Mick Fanning, Courtney Conlogue, Griffin Colapinto, Anastasia Ashley, and more. Teaming up with the surf squad at the Huntington Golf Club? Celebrities like Rob Riggle, Mauricio Umansky, Shep Rose, Alexandra O’Laughlin, Luke Rockhold, Jax Taylor, and Instagram golf legend, Manolo Vega.
TravisMathew, which calls Huntington Beach home, is uniquely positioned right at the confluence of both those cultures. The brand leans hard into a work hard, play hard West Coast vibe.
In some ways, the day was a bit of a toast to the launch of the company’s new Eco Collection.
Crafted from more sustainable materials, the Eco Collection by TravisMathew features fabric blends using at least 98% organic cotton and at least 62% recycled polyester created from plastic bottles. The quality leans into the coastal golf prints and patterns that you’ve come to expect of TravisMathew styles.
The menswear collection includes board shorts, golf course-ready polos, tees, shorts, and hats.
The brand isn’t just designing sustainable lifestyle apparel as a brag; they’re using it to raise money for a tremendous cause: The protection and enjoyment of the world’s ocean, waves, and beaches for all.
From September 20, 2021 to December 15, 2021 TravisMathew will donate 100% of profits from the Eco Collection sales online and in TravisMathew retail stores, with a minimum donation of $100,000, to Surfrider Foundation, dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans and beaches for generations to come.
TravisMathew was acquired by Callaway in 2017.
Since the acquisition, the brand has teamed up with high-profile athletes like Jimmy Garoppolo and PGA Tour golfer Jon Rahm while rolling out everyday menswear classics: Cuater by TravisMathew’s “The Daily”, for example, is the ultimate goes-with-everything shoe.
Before the golf event teed off, I got a chance to talk to TravisMathew CEO Ryan Ellis about his vision for the company’s future.
Let’s talk shoes… How is Cuater by TravisMathew a game-changer?
Ryan Ellis, TravisMathew CEO: I think the big thing with the shoe is being technical. I think we’ve always just had the look and we’ve never focused on the technical. I think with Cuater, it gave us an opportunity to say ‘Hey, this brand stands for more than just lifestyle, this is a true performance brand, there’s a lot going on, a lot of detail in there. How do we show that and showcase that?’ Our customer is looking at it as a technical brand.
So TravisMathew is growing up?
I think the way we do business is a lot more sophisticated now.
What do you feel like your biggest differentiator is? How does the brand stand out?
It’s funny because the biggest differentiator is somewhat not that different – just keeping it clean.
You know all these big brands where the logos are huge – sometimes it becomes unwearable. You look at our Daily shoe, which has performed incredibly. There are running shoes out there, there are casual shoes out there, but The Daily totally blurs those lines. It’s technical, but it looks good with pants. This sounds silly, but all these shoes look great with shorts but you can’t wear them with pants.
You could wear our shoe to dinner. It looks really good and clean. And so it’s those understated simple details and useful technology. There’s a lot of stuff in menswear that’s useless.
For us, it’s simple: “I don’t want that big logo. I don’t want that color pop. I just want it clean.”
What’s it like working with Jimmy Garoppolo and other pro athletes as TravisMathew ambassadors?
Jimmy was a life-long fan of TravisMathew and that’s why we signed him. We were talking to him for two years because we saw him wearing our clothes. We were like ‘No, stop buying it, let’s sign you up.’ It’s great that you do a little social post here or there, but let’s sign you up and do a sponsorship deal for real.
That’s the guy I wanna take care of and work with – the guy who loves what we do.
For us, we have all these crazy, organic relationships. We’re friends with so many of our ambassadors. We just want an inviting environment for them so they’re like, ‘This is not the brand that takes themselves too seriously. This is a brand that’s mellow, has fun, and also embraces my competitive side.’
We’re so crazy about the product, if you watched a product meeting with us, it’s like every little detail, we will go through 10 rounds of prototypes, we go through thousands of fabrications to get one. I personally wear-test every fabric we’ve ever made or consider making.
What does your wear-test involve, if you don’t mind?
It depends on what I’m doing or what it’s intended for. If it’s a long-sleeve knit, I’ll wear it when it’s colder outside. A new polo? I’m probably golfing in it, probably going to wear it all day.
It really consists of like five washes. How does it hold up? Do the threads or stitching snag? Does it shrink? Shrinkage needs to be under 3% for us, otherwise, we pre-wash everything.
It’s just like relentless pursuit of the best fabrics – not just from a feeling, but from a durability standpoint too.
What gets you the most excited for the future? What do you want your legacy to be at TravisMathew?
My focus right now is to make the company bigger, to scale, which is both part brand and process. Make the company better by thinking about sustainability, thinking about diversity, thinking about inclusion. And then offering opportunity to our employees – whether that’s them growing within our company or whether that’s them having great opportunity outside of our company because we’re doing so well.
To me, that’s legacy. We want to be better, we want to grow our employees, and we want to be bigger.
What do three to five years look like? It looks like a billion-dollar company.
We were a $30 million company four years ago, so that’s in our sights. We’re competitive as hell and we’re going to get there.
We’re three, four years out on product ideas and things like that, and so we can see where that’s going.
You don’t get this chance again. So when you’re in it, it’s like we’re putting everything we have into it.
SHOP the eco collection AT TRAVISMATHEW
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The BroBible team writes about gear that we think you want. Occasionally, we write about items that are a part of one of our affiliate partnerships and we will get a percentage of the revenue from sales.