Rhone Makes Bold Swing Into Womenswear With LPGA Partnership

What does a decade old men’s performance lifestyle brand seeking to expand into womenswear do to gain instant credibility in the market? They sign a deal to become the on-course apparel partner of the LPGA Tour and Epson Tour as well as the official staff uniform provider of both tours.

Golf wasn’t sewn into the DNA of brand Rhone from the get-go. But over time more and more players gravitated to their pants and polos and the game began seeping into messaging and marketing materials. The first official Rhone golf collection only launched last year.

“Most investors will tell you just hyperfocus on one area: only do golf, only do work, or only do active. The reason why we are doing is golf is because we love golf but we also work and we workout. The way that we are built is to appeal to the guy who wants to have it all,” Rhone CEO and cofounder Nate Checketts said.

While it’s still hard to peg, due to the versatility of their clothing, Emma Crepeau, Rhone’s chief growth officer, estimates that golf accounts for around 20% of sales.

“The user is such a dominant part of our product collection and they love it because they wear it to work and then wear it straight to the golf course,” she said.

Golf played an outsized role in Checketts formative years. He spent a countless summers hanging out at his grandparents’ house on a golf course in Midway, Utah. While the arrangement often left him bored out his gourd, he channeled that restless energy into a lucrative grade-schooler side hustle.

“I noticed golfers kept hitting balls into the lake and then would leave them. As at ten-year-old with a swimsuit, I thought that was ridiculous,” Checketts said.

At first he simply would volunteer to dive in and fetch each errantly hit golf ball, but an entrepreneurially minded passerby gave him the idea to instead collect them all and sell them back to golfers coming through.

“As soon as he said that I thought it was brilliant. I started diving into all the lakes, collecting the golf balls and my grandparents had no idea what was going on.”

While the enterprise soon attracted the ire of the ranger, as long as he sold the balls in his grandparents’ backyard and off of golf course property, he wasn’t violating the rules. He soon enlisted his little sister, put her in a big bow holding a sign, added lemonade to the mix, and business doubled.

“That was how I bought my first Nintendo.”

Fast forward to present day and Checketts’ disruptive shenanigans now include running the London Marathon in a button-down Rhone commuter shirt, one of their bestsellers, to stress test its resilience. Putting clothes through the wringer will continue to be par for the course for Rhone when they release a womenswear capsule collection in May, expand it rapidly throughout the year, and then debut a full on women’s collection in Spring 2025. Pivoting into a market segment they believe will equal their men’s line in four years wasn’t just a decision they made out of the blue.

“It’s been on our mind for a long time. From the beginning we’ve employed really talented women on our team and we wanted to make product that they could wear and they were excited about and we’ve had customers and wholesale accounts begging as to make it,” Checketts said.

Five years ago they tip-toed in womenswear launching a tight capsule collection on International Women’s Day. It was a sell out and the plan was to repeat it the following year but then Covid happened and the notion was put on hold. But in the ensuing years, multiple female executives including Rhone’s first CFO came onboard.

“They came to me and said we should do this and I said ‘we’re only doing this if we can do it better than anyone else.’ Over the last two years we have been developing product and it has come alive and we are very excited to share it with the world,” Checketts said.

The brand has several considerable wholesale accounts, with a presence in Equinox gyms, Nordstrom and many specialty shops. Currently they have fifteen flagship retail stores and will have seventeen open by year end. Rhone isnt’ exactly starting from scratch when it comes to cultivating an audience for womenswear. A sizeable percentage of their existing customer base have been women who were buying clothes for the men in their life.

“When we look at the statistics, it’s about 25-30% and around half of those customers have bought in the last year. There is also a high percentage of females coming in saying ‘when are you going to make womenswear,’”Crepeau said. Subsequent focus group testing and surveys with this cohort factored heavily into the design of the collection.

“They are waiting for it and we are very much involving them in the process of developing that product so that it suits that audience,” she added.

In addition to the LPGA sponsorship, Rhone will also be working with the Girls Golf program and their athlete development fund dialing into everything from nutrition to mental fitness, a focus area of the brand.

“It’s not just about the product. That’s huge but it’s about joining our communities and supporting one another”, Crepeau explained.

While Rhone’s recently announced partnership is with the LPGA Tour itself, the plan is do dress multiple touring pros with those specific names set to be announced alongside the launch in May.

“This is a category that brands have overlooked and not paid attention to and it’s a shame because they are tremendous athletes, they are getting real viewership and they deserve to be compensated, taken care of and outfitted in the best product,” Checketts adds.

They may not have arrived at the decision to make a huge push into womenswear had private equity firm L Catterton still had a stake in the company. After raising a couple initial rounds of capital in the early years of operations, the consumer-focused heavy hitter came in and was a significant Rhone shareholder for five years.

“They were a great partner but part of what changed for us is when we started the brand, we thought ‘let’s build this up, sell it to a great company and ride off into the sunset’ and what we realized is ‘we love this,’ why would we sell this?”

Two years back Rhone worked with their private equity partner to sell their shares back to management and a consortium of select investors via a special purpose vehicle fund. That outside investor group includes several prominent sports team owners including Blackstone’s David Blitzer—a partner in the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils and several soccer franchises, Charlotte Hornets co-owner Gabe Plotkin and Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young.