New looks from A. Putnam's Spring collection
What is the gameplan when you want to start a golf brand but need some guidance getting a concept off the ground? For Ali Putnam, a mother of five working in the supply chain management field and pondering a career transition, taking an online course on the subject of how to go about pursuing her dream gig proved invaluable.
She enrolled in a six-month online program called ‘Launch My Conscious Line’ to get schooled on everything from brand conception and sourcing suppliers to reaching the end game of getting product to market and ringing up sales.
“What that taught me was how to start an apparel line all on my own. You don't have to be somebody that's really good at graphic design, technical design, fabric sourcing or anything like that and it also teaches you how to do it on a dime,” Putnam said.
“So, when I did go to a production company, I was well armed with the vocabulary and the questions you need to ask to get to building a relationship and negotiate,” she added. Even now, with just shy of 50 retail accounts including tony pro shops like Congressional and Dallas Country Club, along with a handful of PGA Superstore locations, Putnam still references resources from the program and keeps in touch with former classmates, two of which also went on to start golf apparel brands—Aiea Golf and Alfa Athletics.
“We all lean on each other as we navigate just the bumps in the road,” Putnam said. “I am beyond grateful to have the opportunity to create a brand that brings women a minimalistic, timeless sense of style to a sport that has incredible tradition. I love creating a more functional take on these classic pieces to allow them to perform for golfers, mothers and business women,” Putnam explained.
A Dream Deferred
Ali Putnam spent summers during her formative years at her family’s vacation property in Northern Italy. Besotted by the elegance and refinement of the country’s top of the leaderboard style game, she aspired to a career working in the fashion industry. She made her own outfit to wear for a grade seven presentation to her entire school on Gianni Versace.
“It is kind of funny because Versace is a very loud brand and not my aesthetic now. But as a young girl, Versace and Gucci are those ones that are just in your face as you’re there. With Gucci there is something timeless and beautiful about their stuff that's always stuck with me,” Putnam said, adding that Max Mara is an Italian brand that she still swoons over.
A pair of looks from A. Putnam's Spring line
You can see the influence of Mara’s modern and minimalistic capsule wardrobes—the idea of building a style profile around well-made timeless pieces—in A. Putnam’s looks.
A skilled lacrosse player with an haute couture jones, when the time came to choose a college, Putnam picked Syracuse. But when she wasn’t running around the field for the Orange, rather than craft looks fit for the catwalk, she instead studied ceramics. A high school art teacher felt she was a preternatural talent and spurred her to give it a shot. It wasn’t long before the allure of shaping clay lost its luster. Putnam would pivot to pursue corporate interests and changed her major to business.
“I graduated Syracuse with a dual major in entrepreneurship and supply chain management. So, I got far removed from my passions in art and fashion,” Putnam said.
Post-graduation, her first few jobs were in retail including a stint at a Sears warehouse, wearing steel-toed boots, driving forklifts and learning the nitty gritty of operations. Next, it was off to DSW working in fulfillment and third-party logistics, coinciding with the launch of their e-commerce site.
After getting married she moved into industrial manufacturing, still on the supply chain and logistics side, and spent a dozen years in the field. Her childhood fashion dreams remained on the back burner but she did reconnect with her roots in the sporting life thanks to having five boys—currently aged 3 to 10—who play every ball and stick game under the sun.
While working from home and ferrying her kids to their various extracurriculars, including golf tournaments, her next career chapter dawned on her after joining a country club. They had very traditional rules from an attire perspective which she appreciated but what was available in the existing market left her wanting.
“My choices from a golf clothing standpoint were either really preppy, which isn't my style, maybe getting a little sexier and then super pattern heavy which felt like a golf uniform that didn’t fit me, my style or the versatility I needed being a busy mom,” Putnam said.
That’s when the wheels started turning. Seeking guidance, she turned to her father, Dett Hunter, a seasoned entrepreneur who also served for 28 years as the Regional Managing Partner of the Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana region for Arthur Andersen. He worked her through a series of life questions to get at what really drove her. She came away form that meeting convinced it was high time to pursue her deferred dream full throttle and she enrolled in the aforementioned course.
Lessons Learned
One of the biggest lessons Putnam has learned from a year in the business is understanding when to bring in-house parts of the business that she had outsourced.
“Out of pocket I spent a lot the first year but every dollar was spent building relationships and learning how to do this,” but the experience would bear cost-saving fruit.
Web operations and merchandise management was initially outsourced, but an early fan of the brand, Alexa Dvorak, who was reposting photos of A. Putnam clothing on Instagram, later came aboard as the VP Operations, to take over those reigns.
“It’s amazing the network you can build just on social media. She was running a handle called @pleasureofsport and early on I was geeking out over it—‘who is posting my stuff!’ I actually thought she might be starting her own clothing brand so I pried a little bit,” Putnam recounted.
The golf world is small and it turned out that Dvorak had worked on web design and the back end for several notable golf brands and that her significant other was a founder and owner of SuperSpeed Golf. They immediately hit it off and that night Dvorak mocked up a Shopify website that was night and day more beautiful and functional than what Putnam had paid a company thousands of dollars to produce.
Putnam is currently revving up for its second PGA Show, the industry’s annual trade show to-do in Orlando. There, they’ll debut their new Spring looks that rock a classic minimalist vibe down the fairway and schmooze with buyers looking to freshen up their pro shop offerings.
“You really can do more with less. You should be able to flex those garments and style them in so many different ways,” Putnam said.
Putnam’s goal for 2024 is to hit that magic 100 retail accounts mark while continuing to gain traction on the corporate side. The timeless and versatile sensibilities of their looks seem to resonate with professional women on the go, helping to land deals to outfit employees at AT&T
