I am not a fan of commercial hand sanitizers. (Probably doesn’t surprise anyone!) This may sound strange but I don’t use antibacterial soap or strong cleaners at home because I actually believe having a little bacteria around is a good thing. I’m glad that I started making my own personal care products years ago, especially...
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You’ve seen their products, but you’ve probably never heard of the brand. They’ve worked with some of best players in the world. Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Martin Kaymer and other major champions trust them to carry and protect their clubs. No, we’re not talking about caddies. We’re talking about golf bags.
Specifically, we’re talking about Vessel Golf Bags.
While not nearly as well-known as the likes of OGIO, Sun Mountain, or any of the OEMs who put their names on golf bags, Vessel has carved out a niche on tour and is now looking to expand its consumer-facing golf business.
You may not know the name now – and who can blame you? From all angles, Jordan Spieth’s bag features the AT&T logo. Tiger has his Monster Energy bag. The list of Vessel players dwarfs the number of Vessel logos.
Across the worldwide tours, sponsoring brands work directly with Vessel to ensure that the colors, logos, and stitching meet their brand standards. They’re paying for exposure with the hope that PGA Tour staff bags will help build brand awareness. When a pro is in contention late on a Sunday afternoon, Vessel’s bags get plenty of TV time. It’s no secret that sponsors pay for visibility, but what isn’t as well known is that Vessel is a critical part of that exchange.
Although Vessel doesn’t pay players, over 100 PGA and LPGA Tour players trust Vessel. The company has produced bags for the Solheim Cup, the Olympics and the UL International Crown. Additionally, Vessel has partnered and collaborated with other luxury performance brands like PXG, G/FORE, and Miura to produce their branded golf bag offerings.
Even if you haven’t noticed them, Vessel’s footprints in the golf industry are large, but while its bags are instrumental in raising awareness for other brands, the company acknowledges it has some work to do to raise awareness of its brand among everyday golfers.
So how does Vessel plan to raise brand awareness? For starters, to help get the word out, Vessel was a sponsor of the Genesis Open at Riviera Country Club. In addition to the bags on the course, Vessel’s presence included a table inside in the sponsor tents, and Vessel also provided gifts for golfers who participated in the Wednesday Pro-Am.
This past January also marked the five-year-old Vessel’s first appearance at the PGA Merchandise Show where Vessel was featured on the Golf Channel during a Morning Drive Segment. The company is also running traditional advertisements in Women’s Golf Journal.
As with most brands today, one of the key avenues to Vessel’s growth can be found in its social media efforts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
In following the brand across those platforms, you should get an immediate sense of Vessel’s reach on tour. We already mentioned Tiger, Spieth, and Kaymer, but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Luke List, Gary Woodland, Michelle Wie and even celebrities like Steph Curry and Michael Phelps all carry Vessel bags.
It’s all part of a fresh effort to help familiarize golfers with the Vessel brand and hopefully insert itself into the consumer bag conversation alongside OGIO, Sun Mountain, and Bag Boy.
The Carlsbad-based company prides itself on offering the best in quality and innovation. Every aspect of their bags is 100% customizable. Panels, straps, and zippers, too. If you can see it, you can customize it. Vessel currently offers seven golf bag styles, eight materials, and twenty-three colorways. The combination allows Vessel’s customers to create a unique bag that highlights their style or, as we see on TV every weekend, brand affiliation.
Many other brands offer some level of customization, but they are often limited to embroidery, and most don’t offer much when it comes to selecting materials and fabrics or in providing total customization.
Vessel’s Premium Microsuede Synthetic Leather, for example, is one differentiating factor, as its easy to clean, durable (meant to withstand a beating from the course), it doesn’t fade, and it has scratch, tear and abrasion resistance.
While it’s easy to get lost in the number of options, Vessel’s website makes building a custom, one-of-a-kind bag, simple.
“With our website, we built it so that you can build a bag within minutes. Pick your primary, secondary, or accent colors and you have your dream bag made up. We have designers on-site if you need help with the design of the bag, but if you think you’ve got it, you can go from start to finish with the order.” – Stephanie Beyer, Marketing Manager at Vessel
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Custom stand bags start at $380, while staff bags start at $650. For those of you that play most of your golf in a cart, you might be interested in their custom cart bags, which start at $450. Some of the key features of Vessel golf bags include a range finder pocket, their patented rotator stand, and premium microfiber leather. All bags are built with Vessel’s exacting attention to detail and craftsmanship.
Just a friendly heads-up; custom bags take upwards of 55 business days to ship, but custom orders can be expedited to ship in 2 weeks for an additional cost.
Finally, we would be remiss not to mention that Vessel also offers off-the-rack bags akin to what you’d find in most any other bag manufacturer’s lineup. Pricing for stock bags, while still on the premium end, is more in-line with the competitive set.
What truly separates Vessel from other bag manufacturers is its philanthropic efforts. With every bag purchased, Vessel gives a school backpack to a child in need. Pretty neat, huh? To date, Vessel customers have helped provide 26,740 backpacks.
Every bag is stitched with the message above and a unique ID number that correspondents to the number of backpacks donated across the globe.
“It’s one for one. Unique to the golf industry, we’re one of the few brands to give back. For every bag purchased, we give a school backpack to a child in need.” – Stephanie Beyer, Marketing Manager at Vessel
But why school backpacks?
Around the globe, millions of children are unable to attend school simply because their families are too poor to provide basic school supplies. Vessel works closely with several organizations that are helping deliver backpacks to children in need. Through this philanthropic effort, they are making a difference, and they have their customers to thank.
The team at Vessel recently created bags for the MyGolfSpy staff, which were featured at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando. We designed them, and Vessel made them. Let's just say that we have no plans of returning them.
Do you want to put your design skills to the test and create your own golf bag? To learn more about Vessel and their full product offering, visit their website: Vesselbags.com.
Consider today’s podcast your invitation to “be unlimited”! What does that mean?! I was curious too when I met Dr. Mark Atkinson, internationally-renowned integrative medicine physician, at a conference last year. His philosophy struck me as something all moms could use, especially since we are all searching for ways to unlock our full potential (while...
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Have a vegetable hater in the house? Then you need to try roasted carrot coulis. Seriously. If there ever was a recipe that shows off all the glory of healthy veggies (besides a salad), it’s this one. A quick rough chop of sweet carrots, savory red bell peppers, and spicy sweet sliced onion — roasted...
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Being a mom is hard work. Really hard work!! I love my children, but that doesn’t make it easy. As moms our help and support is in constant demand … but you can’t give from an empty cup. (Unless the cup is filled with wine … I kid, I kid!) I’ve learned from experience that...
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Click here to read 20 Lucky Shamrock Crafts for Kids to Make this St. Patrick’s Day on Hands On As We Grow
Make fun shamrock crafts for kids to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!
St. Patrick’s day is full of fun and laughter for adults, lots of green beer, right? St. Patrick’s day is one of the two times a year my small town has a parade. We take it as a sign of spring and it makes us all happy to get outside and enjoy the fresh air.
After such a hard and very cold winter, I can’t help but wait and wait for the day that spring will come. I feel like it will be a really lucky day.
What better way to prepare for that lucky day than with some shamrock crafts for the kids to make?!
P.S. So many of these shamrock crafts for kids to make are from the Hands On As We Grow archives. Some ideas other hands on moms who submit their craftiness. Lots of hands on moms submit their crafty ideas, as well as fun activities, here on Hands On As We Grow.
Plus some are just from my favorite blogs that I couldn’t leave out!
Shamrocks means spring is getting close! There’s so many fun spring crafts for kids to make this time of year!
At any point during 2017, the status on Miura's Facebook page could have listed its status as "In transition."
Miura's calling card had always been forged blades and players' cavity-backs along with high-performance wedges. This helped it to establish a cult-like following with better players, but at times, Miura seemed reticent to deviate from this script, due in part to the exceptionally loyal fan base.
But change was inevitable and frankly, necessary for Miura to retain relevance as other OEM's (Epon, PXG, amongst others) pushed performance boundaries while blurring once rigid category definitions.
The small family business started by Katsuhiro Miura in 1957, acquired a new investor in Howard Milstein and named Hoyt McGarity, CEO of True Spec Golf, as president of its North American operations.
Now as 2018 begins to unfold, consumers are starting to see some tangible evidence of where Miura might be headed and how its reorganization will impact the final product.
This year Miura is primed for three equipment releases, the first being the MC-501 irons ($260/each MAP), which are available 3-PW for right-handed players only. This is Miura's first entirely new iron design (since the 1957 CB series) and aims to prove itself worthy of the self-proclaimed title "The Modern Blade."
Say's McGarity, “Although blade models typically target a specific skill set, Shinei wanted this new model to appeal beyond just the low-handicap player.”
Traditional blade irons offer golfers maximum shot-shaping control by centering mass behind impact coupled with a relatively high CG. With that, the typical opportunity cost of workability is forgiveness. The MC-501 will never be mistaken for a game-improvement club, but engineers have taken several steps to maintain the traditional elements of a muscleback iron while boosting performance on off-center strikes.
With the MC-501, engineers sculpted channels into the muscle of the club, carving out 20 grams of weight, which is repositioned in the sole. The result the longest total blade length of any Miura blade model (which is still quite compact by industry standards) and a lower CG which generally leads to higher launch with lower spin.
The company line seems to suggest this is a cavityback iron in muscleback clothing. I'd say it is more a muscleback and a half. The MC-501 lacks the forgiveness one would expect from a perimeter-weighted cavityback iron on heel/toe misses as well as shots struck high on the face (noticed this particularly in the rough). However, if your miss is generally limited to thin shots, the additional repositioned weight makes an appreciable difference.
In my individual testing, it didn't take long to figure out the MC-501's personality. It's effectively a marginally more forgiving muscleback iron and isn't for the player who struggles to find the center of the face. The Y-grind (Y denotes the grinds creator, Yoshitaka Miura) softens and blunts the leading edge to promote cleaner turf interaction, especially for those with a steeper angle of attack. Because perimeter weighting is virtually nonexistent, manipulating ball flight and trajectory is quite enjoyable, but caveat emptor, the guts of the MC-501 are still that of a muscleback. Slight alternations in face angle and swing plane will produce pronounced changes in ball flight.
Simply, the MC-501 is an iron which will respond best to players who like to work the ball but could benefit from a bit more launch and/or whose primary miss is thin.
I think there's a tendency for the golfing public to get too far out over their skis with irons like the MC-501. Because forgiveness is emphasized and touted as a selling point, some will take this to mean it's a viable option for the majority of golfers. It's not. It's still a niche product, best suited for accomplished players or competitive amateurs.
This is an iron with divisive curb appeal. Some Miura traditionalists won't like it because it doesn't look like the MB-001 or Baby Blade - or any number of classic blade style irons. Others will note the deli-sliced thin topline and still quite compact footprint and see, for lack of a better descriptor, the "X" styled cavity as dynamic and different enough to stand out in a good way. The copper-nickel satin finish is pure, and each head is still forged at Miura's factory in Himeji, Japan from soft S25C carbon steel.
Regardless, it doesn't look entirely like MB's from Miura's past, but it's not supposed to.
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The MC-501 reminds me of an iron which is well over a decade old – Mizuno's MP-32. The purpose of both is relatively similar (muscleback aesthetics and cavityback performance achieved largely by repositioning weight from the cavity to the sole) even if the exact engineering is not. What the MP-32 did for Mizuno was to attract a set of golfers who didn't have the game for the MP-33s or MP-67s but wanted to bag clubs which looked (mostly) like them. Similarly, the MC-501 could pull in a contingent with the game to comfortably play a club like Miura's CB-57 or PP-9003, but want something which, at face value, looks like a muscleback.
Change is as uncomfortable as it is unavoidable. Katsuhiro Miura's two sons (Shinei and Yoshitaka) will continue to play a more significant role in product design and because Miura wants to attract a wider swath of golfers, future releases (this year included) will almost certainly look different than previous ones. Some will laud a more modern and inclusive approach, while others will criticize and decry the moves as evidence Miura is moving an uncomfortable distance from its roots.
It's a challenging position for Miura. There's a tenuous balance to be struck which honors its heritage and history while taking measured steps forward to address existing gaps – namely equipment to draw in higher handicap golfers.
This is the beginning of Miura's redefinition. Do you like what you see?
