In the Studio with Jesse Ortiz

HAYWARD, CA – A second-generation Basque and native San Franciscan, there is something determined but also impetuous about Jesse Ortiz, Chief Designer of Bobby Jones Golf Company. One day recently, as he was seen racing about his new Design Studio in Hayward, California, Ortiz seemed to focus on several things at once: He meticulously checked an outgoing shipment of his hot-selling Bobby Jones by Jesse Ortiz Hybrid; he took a moment to inspect a new, prototype club face (“Top secret, but I’ll give you hint: Magnesium,” he whispered with arched eyebrows); in between all this, he even took a phone call from one of his player-fans who has somehow tracked him down.

“I was explaining the ‘Triangle of Stability,’ to him” says Ortiz after hanging up. “When people like that take the time to talk to me about my designs, I take the time explain their benefits.”

The number of “people like that” – longtime Ortiz loyalists – is growing. Many know him as the craftsman who learned the trade at his father’s knee; his father being Lou, founder of the once-family-owned Orlimar Golf Company in San Francisco. Some of the world’s best players – Ken Venturi, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Julie Inkster – played clubs designed and crafted by Orlimar.

But most of Jesse’s player-fans, famous or not, go back to the late-1990s, when he created the explosively popular Tri-Metal™ fairway wood. An estimated two million golfers put the Oritz-designed Tri-Metal™ clubs in their bags. With the clubs’ success, this niche manufacturer grew too big, too fast, and the Ortiz’s were forced to sell. This time around, in his relentlessly impetuous manner, Ortiz vows to take the Bobby Jones Golf Company – and his decidedly different approach to golf club design – to its rightful place as a distinguished, long-lived manufacturer of quality clubs.

“I’ve been the R&D department for a lot of different golf club companies over the last 10 years,” says Ortiz of his ahead-of-the-curve design thinking that has spawned a host of imitations. “We’re convinced that there’s a healthy market for golf clubs whose prototypes are hand-crafted, have a very traditional, clean look and feel, with the latest technology and aren’t tricked-up as the latest gimmick. I think we have a real shot at being a force in the business.”

To do this, Ortiz has formed several new partnerships, the most important of which is with savvy yet enigmatic entrepreneur Walter J. Rosenthal, founder and CEO of Bobby Jones Golf. The relationship – like many a business alliance – has been one of vastly different perspectives. Rosenthal, a man who has guided several businesses – ranging from The Budget Group to DeCartier – from the brush of ruin to financial health, believes in fundamentals such as intrinsic value; while Ortiz maintains that golf is different… very different.

Perfect Timing

When Lou Ortiz co-founded Orlimar Golf in 1960 from a garage on Harrison Street in San Francisco, the game was different. He was the craftsman for many of the game’s biggest stars. He socialized with golf greats who visited his factory to chat about designs that worked for them. “I watched my father melt all kinds of social barriers,” remembers Jesse.

Jesse came into his own decades later as he began exploring advanced machinery and metal-wood designs. In 1998 – after three decades of working beside his father – Jesse unveiled the Tri-Metal™. It became the hottest-selling fairway wood in the U.S., growing the family business to over $100 million in just 18 months. The price of success was steep, though, and in 2003, Jesse was forced to sell the family’s remaining stake in the company. This was a disappointment for more than just Ortiz. Without trying, he had created a nationwide fan base: golfers so satisfied with swinging an Ortiz creation that the idea of hitting anything else was like using a putter off the tee.

“It’s not often that golfers are able to discern and define real, noticeable differences between their clubs,” said PGA Champions Tour standout John Jacobs, a long-time supporter of Ortiz. “But Jesse has the ability to create clubs that golfers identify with – whether it’s the design, the feel or the results – and, in turn, they relate personally to him.”

Fortunately, Jesse’s disciples wouldn’t have to wait long, because at the same time Ortiz exited from Orlimar, in Malibu, then-semi-retired Rosenthal was ready for his life’s next big step. “Not having enough money to buy the Dodgers, I started looking at the golf industry,” he recalled to the Los Angeles Times in 2005.

An acute observer of the game, Rosenthal spotted a booming equipment segment, and sure enough, today’s hybrids and woods encompass over one-quarter of the entire metal-wood category – including drivers – at an annual worth of over $250 million. Coincidentally, through friends at Riviera Country Club, he learned that the family of legendary golfer Bobby Jones was interviewing candidates for the naming rights to a new line of golf clubs after terminating its agreement with Callaway Golf.

Ortiz’ ears must have been ringing, because he had just opened the doors to The Ortiz Design Studio and began developing a line of meticulously crafted clubs. He knew how rough the golf industry could be; but with the right partner and brand he could triumph (once more). He is “relentless.”

With the blessing of the Bobby Jones family (a group known as The Jonesheirs) and Hartmarx Corporation (NYSE: HMX, owners of the Bobby Jones clothing apparel line), Rosenthal founded The Bobby Jones Golf Company. He flew to San Francisco, spent a couple days with Ortiz, and the two agreed to start the business.

“The name Bobby Jones is synonymous with timeless quality, and the name Jesse Ortiz is synonymous with design craftsmanship and technological excellence,” says Bob Jones IV, grandson of Bobby Jones. “My family and I are proud that Walter Rosenthal has brought these two great names together.”

Odyssey, Uphaul

From what was – as Rosenthal described – an “incubation enterprise” until late 2006, Bobby Jones Golf Company has emerged from a cloud of humble uncertainty. After several years of carefully studying his desired industry position, Rosenthal now knows the fate of his company lies in the ability of his hand-selected craftsman to continue defining the standard of excellence for golf’s metal-wood marketplace.

The industry is taking notice of this new symbiosis, which seems to be creating a perfect storm of sorts: an emerging market sector, inspired craftsmanship and golf’s most legendary name. The results of this union are paying off as word continues to spread that Ortiz is back and ready for combat in one of sport’s toughest industries.

And as Ortiz fine-tunes his technology from the company’s Northern California workshop, Rosenthal is assembling an army of partners and investors from his office in coastal Southern California. The geographic divide – while at times inconvenient – has harmonized the company’s two factions. A new team of third-party consultants – which includes world renowned golf instructor Jim McLean, golf historian Peter Kessler, famed golf attorney Dick Ryan and 1964 U.S. Open Champion Ken Venturi and his investment banker son, Matt – is bridging the gap. Even Jones IV, who has often maintained some distance from Jonesheir licensees, remains active in the success of the business.

But, demonstrating the quandaries that can afflict this character-driven enterprise, too much quality actually stymied progress. During product development, for example, in the first of several classic yet effective Rosenthal versus Ortiz showdowns, the two differed over whether to push Ortiz’ fairway wood or hybrid to the forefront of the company’s marketing campaign. Ortiz favored his more traditional fairway wood, perhaps emotionally spurred by his past successes; while Rosenthal – always thinking business – wanted to target the underserved hybrid market. This tension bred a solution: They decided to package the clubs into an innovative series, now known as the Bobby Jones by Jesse Ortiz line.

“To me, Jesse Ortiz’ clubs go far beyond their innovative technological features – even their look is revolutionary,” claims McLean. “Jesse is the link to traditional persimmon woods, and now that he’s entered the 21st-century, we’re seeing him merge the industry’s two 20th-century technologies.”

After receiving an avalanche of favorable media reviews upon releasing its clubs in 2006, the company launched a nationally televised direct-response television campaign in February 2007. The first eight weeks alone recorded record-setting sales. Since then Bobby Jones Golf has moved into its new, double-sized headquarters, which houses a new state-of-the-art work studio for the design-obsessed Ortiz.

And only recently has the firm arrived in the complete sense.

“From Jim McLean’s passion for fundamentals to Peter Kessler’s audience of core golfers and Bob Jones’ connection to tradition, we are building a force within the golf equipment industry,” Rosenthal declared. “And fortunately, there’s only one master of the metal-wood, the likes of a ‘Tom Ford’ with Gucci. And he’s also on our side: Jesse Ortiz.”

From Underdog to Under the Spotlight

Ortiz’s re-ascension flies in the face of industry trends. Retailers, for instance, increasingly favor larger manufacturers backed by hefty advertising budgets, making it tough for niche companies to survive. But the Bobby Jones Golf Company, as it turns out, may be just defiant enough to challenge this and other trends.

Under Rosenthal, Bobby Jones Golf has become a business team of powerful professionals, employing unexpected methods of marketing and distribution. To match Ortiz’s cult of personality, it’s all part of a personalized business model: create golf clubs crafted by an individual that are targeted to a specific, “discerning” market and sold to players who feel fulfilled by Ortiz’s innovations.

The unorthodox model appears to be working. In the first quarter of 2007, largely based on success of the infomercial, Bobby Jones Golf reported a dramatic increase in sales – mostly in hybrids and fairway woods. The Wall Street Journal featured the company’s approach in a recent article, “There is something Jesse Ortiz learned the first time he designed a ground-breaking golf club: If you build a better fairway wood, the world won’t necessarily beat a path to your door. Make an infomercial about that club and play it often enough on the Golf Channel, well, that is a different story.”

Perhaps most significantly, the industry has now turned to this inscrutable startup for guidance. For example, Ortiz’ club-design colleagues – minds like Titleist’s Scotty Cameron, Nike’s Bob Stites and Callaway’s Roger Cleveland – are becoming centerpieces of their respective company’s outreach to both professional and recreational golfers.

Retailers are responding.

“It’s funny how it works in this industry,” says Ken Morton Jr. of Haggin Oaks Golf, a leading California retailer based in Sacramento. “You can go from irrelevant to influential almost overnight. In the case of Jesse Ortiz and Bobby Jones Golf, many companies are now finding it useful to promote their designers, as consumers become concerned with both the aesthetics and the make-up of their clubs. The Bobby Jones Golf Company identified this approach long before anyone else, and it seems to be taking hold.”

Still, Rosenthal and Ortiz – already both personally and professionally light years beyond their start just three years ago – are looking ahead. Recent research and development outings to China, cross-country visits to friends on the PGA Tour, and a consuming schedule inside the workshop keep the duo perpetually searching for golf’s next great idea.

Darting about his “laboratory” and wearing as many hats as possible, Ortiz remains resolute in focus, this time knowing that slow and steady will win the race. By the time The Bobby Jones Golf Company unveils Ortiz’ new golf clubs in fall 2007, nearly three years will have passed since the company’s last product release. Ortiz’ prolific utilization of a new material and several new club designs should prove to the “loyalists” that the wait has been worth it.