The first Nicklaus™ sets from Stix will be available in January.
Stix Golf
As golf equipment manufacturers say, Gabe Coyne isn’t what you’d call a gearhead.
He never was one either rat string.
Raised in Seattle, he only took up golf after being cut from his high school baseball team. The first sticks he owned were a second-hand set his mother bought at a church rummage sale.
“And I played the same jacket clubs for years,” says Coyne.
During college, where he studied graphic and web design, Coyne stopped playing golf altogether, an abstinence he stuck to through his 20s, when he married, had four children and left his mark on a series of successful startups. He was in his 30s and living in Chicago before he dusted off his sticks again.
Knocking it up with friends and colleagues at the local commune, Coyne rekindled his casual – but joyous – connection with the game. He wasn’t harsh about it, but he wanted to get better. He decided it was time for an equipment upgrade, if only he could find clubs he liked.
“I didn’t want a cheap starter set, but I also wasn’t ready to spend a lot of money buying golf clubs a la carte,” Coyne says. “The market seemed to cater to beginners or avid gamers, with a big gap in between.”
Many of his playing partners felt the same.
The entrepreneur in Coyne saw an opportunity: golf clubs aimed at the middle of Goldilocks. At the end of 2019, Stix Golf was born, producing sleek looking, high quality clubs sold direct to consumers at a modest price. Coyne and his co-founders had tapped into a sweet spot in the market that was even bigger than they imagined.
Stix Golf
In the more than four years since its founding, Stix has carved out a respected place in the industry with its “less is more” approach, marrying sleek, minimalist designs with maximum engineering prowess: easy to eyes, easy to hit and easy to. the portfolio. In 2022, Stix won an international product design award – the Red Dot Award – and the innovations have not stopped. The company’s offerings have expanded into three different series, including a newly launched women’s line.
And now comes another notable breakthrough: a club collaboration with Nicklaus Brands called Nicklaus™ sets by Stix. The two brands announced their partnership this week, highlighting their complementary goals.
“Stix has quickly turned heads in the golf industry by producing exceptional products that not only meet our high performance standards, but also offer fair prices, helping to make golf more accessible to more people,” Andy O ‘Brien, president of Nicklaus Brandssaid in a statement. “Stix’s loyal customer base has a youthful and energetic demographic, both men and women with various disabilities. It is important that Nicklaus’ legacy reaches this audience and meets the needs of this growing demographic of young players entering the game.”
Meanwhile, for Stix, the collaboration gives the Nicklaus name the credibility it has long enjoyed.
“For all our success, we’re still a young brand,” Coyne said. “You join forces with the revered Nicklaus™ global brand and people realize, Oh, I’ve heard of Stix. But I didn’t realize they were THIS legal.”
The first Nicklaus™ sets from Stix are now in the design and engineering phase and will debut at the 2025 PGA Show in January. They will be available to the public in April, just in time for the spring golf season.
And there’s more to come, as the two brands plan to collaborate on a variety of golf products in the coming years.
