Rolo is a French bulldog, Boston-terroir mix. It’s Chase Dobbie’s dog.

He also is, technically, the chief executive officer of Rolo Polo – a new golf clothing brand at Golf Town which features funky designs, hip hats, and a vibe all its own.

“We named the company after my dog,” says Dobbie, with a laugh. “He’s the logo, and we made the name in a day. ‘Rolo Polo’ just flowed nicely.”

Dobbie and the two other co-founders of Rolo are actually the founders of a digital marketing and social media agency in Toronto called Func Media. At the time of founding Rolo the group was trying to make a name for itself in the highly competitive agency world, so they created a brand with all the resources they had at their disposal as a media agency as a case study for potential clients.

Dobbie says they tapped into all the marketing efforts, tactics, and research that they would do for clients but did it for their own brand. The brand ended up getting a ton of quick, and good, traction. It was releasing items and selling out in 30 minutes, he says.

“We couldn’t keep stock,” he says. “We wanted to be a little edgier because we didn’t have to report to corporate or HR because it was just us. We pushed the envelope a bit more, but we wanted to be right on that edge to try to create an impact.”

WORKING BACKWARDS TO GO FORWARDS

Usually, a company comes up with a product and then they market it to the masses, however, given Dobbie’s experience in marketing, they worked backwards. He played baseball in Michigan and his co-founder played baseball at Brown, an Ivy League school in the U.S. as well. They both golf quite a bit and Dobbie says they saw brands like Bad Birdie start making flashier shirts than what the sport had been used to seeing.

“I saw the audience and I was looking at it from a marketer perspective and realized they were doing pretty well,” says Dobbie. “Really the biggest expense, or one of them, is for a company to hire a marketing firm. We already had a lot of resources to amplify what we were doing so we just had to figure out the process with how to get shirts.”

GOOD MATERIALS, GREAT SHIRTS

Dobbie says he was always into fashion and the first supplier he ended up contacting is the one that they’re still using to this day. With how involved his agency is with internet marketing, it wasn’t a big hurdle to track down people or products as samples.

With minimal experience in sourcing materials, he and the co-founders sent the supplier examples of shirts and brands they liked themselves and asked the supplier to improve on some of those efforts.

The team spent a lot of time on the product to make sure it feels and fits right. Dobbie says the team prides itself on how the shirts are made.

“We told the suppliers how we wanted the cut and… it wasn’t a crazy-big process for us to find products,” he says. “We’ve built up a relationship and had a good way of getting products we wanted through them. It was kind of random how it worked but any company deals with having a little luck on their side to get the right product, and sometimes the stars align for no reason.”

ENGAGING WITH REGULAR GOLFERS

Online Rolo doesn’t use social media influencers or brand ambassadors that may have hundreds of thousands of followers. They would rather utilize real golfers who are interacting with real people.

“We want to use golfers that are in the community and genuinely like our product. We want to get feedback from the ground level because… we’re not catering to the 1-percent pro player or the social celebrity. It’s to the everyday person that golfs how we all golf,” says Dobbie. “We have a good time on the weekend, and it doesn’t matter if we shoot 100 or 90 because it’s more about getting out with a group and having some laughs.”

The shirts are fun, bold, and totally different – and being available in Golf Town is a dream-come-true scenario for the guys.

Dobbie says when he was travelling to B.C. recently for work, he was in a Golf Town store and saw the product available for sale. And, he says, a customer bought one of his shirts right in front of him (he gave her a Tim Hortons gift card as a thank-you).

“She was confused who I was and why she was getting it,” Dobbie says with a laugh, “but it was a cool moment to see someone actually buying it. Or when we’re golfing, and we see someone on the course wearing something that was potentially just sitting in your garage at one point!”