The speaker, the CEO of a golf headcover company, explains the history of why drivers started coming with headcovers. She details the shift from wooden clubs to clubs with graphite shafts, shares her personal story of fearing this change would ruin her business, and reveals how it ultimately created a new market for her unique, personalized headcovers due to issues with theft and a desire for personalization.
Post caption
Drivers didn’t always come with headcovers, here’s what changed. The first wooden drivers weren’t sold with headcovers. But golfers bought them to accessorize their bag. Then graphite (carbon) shafts came out. Manufacturers starting including headcovers with their clubs to protect the carbon shafts. They were weaker than the steel shafts of the time and the irons would beat them up. But over time as carbon technology improved shafts got stronger. Today club manufacturers still ship headcovers with their drivers. But now they’re used to protect the club head and for marketing.
Transcript
Drivers didn't always come with headcovers. Here's what changed. Hi. I'm Jane, and I've been making animal headcovers for forty seven years. When drivers first came out, they weren't sold with headcovers, but people would buy them to protect the wooden face of the club. And then drivers started to come out with graphite shafts, and the manufacturers sold them with head covers. The purpose of the head cover was to protect the graphite shaft from the other irons in the bag damaging the graphite shafts. I was making head covers at this time, and when this happened, I freaked out. I thought if head covers come on the bag, who's gonna buy my head covers? So I was really worried about it until the buyers used to call me and say, hey. We need your head covers because people are stealing clubs. They can see what's underneath it, or they don't like the quality of the head covers, or it doesn't show that they're unique because everybody has the same driver cover. So I went from freaking out to relieved to actually delighted.
