Earl Cooper and Olajuwon Ajanaku have been breaking the mold for decades now.
The founders of Eastside Golf met at Morehouse College where they both received scholarships and played on the golf team. After graduation, Ajanaku turned pro and Cooper took a job as a PGA professional and golf teacher. Despite some success, Ajanaku was having a hard time making ends meet and decided to leave the professional ranks and use his degree in accounting to land a job in corporate finance.
Even so, he said he had a hard time giving up the dream, and got in touch with Cooper, who was the first Black pro at the Detroit Golf Club and the Wilmington Country Club. Together, they created Eastside Golf, a “fashion brand rooted in golf but started in lifestyle,” as Cooper describes it.
Olajuwon Ajanaku and Earl Cooper
courtesy of Eastside Golf
As Black men, they’ve brought diversity and inclusivity to the world of golf and attracted people of color and beyond with an assortment that straddles performance and lifestyle. Their logo is the Swingman, an illustration Ajanaku created of himself in jeans and a sweatshirt wearing a gold chain that he was going to put on his bag and clothes during his playing days. It was Cooper who said he should put it on a T-shirt.
Today, that logo is helping the brand gain fans, create conversation and develop a community. As they write on their website: “It represents the golfer who steps onto a course and feels out of place, the one breaking stereotypes, and the one determined to play their way.”
Since its founding in 2019, Eastside Golf has been worn by NBA players Chris Paul and Jayson Tatum, NFL greats Patrick Mahomes and Victor Cruz, musician DJ Khaled and President Barack Obama, among others. The brand has partnered with Mercedes-Benz, Citi, and the NBA. The brand also debuted a six-part docuseries on Hulu and collaborated with Nike to create exclusive sneakers for the Jordan Brand. The company declined to provide a volume figure.
And now, it will be opening its first U.S. store in the Detroit airport this summer. There’s also a store in Shibuya Toyko, operated in partnership with High Draw.
Both men have roots in the city. Cooper was born in Flint, Mich., and his job at the Detroit Golf Club was a turning point in his life. “Detroit, and the state of Michigan, will always have a special place in my heart,” he said. And for Ajanaku, he’d lived in Detroit for seven years during his time in finance and it was in his apartment there on June 1, 2019, that he started Eastside Golf. “Detroit has profound meaning to us,” he said.
The store, which will be around 250-300 square feet, will be operated under license to Paradies Lagardere, an airport concessionaire that also has the license for the PGA Tour Shops. The relationship started when the PGA store added Eastside Golf and “we were outselling all the other brands that were in there, and they had some pretty notable brands like Puma, Nike and Adidas,” Cooper said. Paradies approached the duo and asked if they’d like their own store. “And we clearly said, ‘hell, yeah,’” he said with a laugh.
He said the decision to open at an airport is “just another example of the non-traditional route we’ve gone to bring golf to the masses. There are so many commuters every day and this gives them the opportunity to buy, touch and see the product.”
The store is expected to open at the end of June or beginning of July.
They stressed that people don’t have to play golf to wear the brand or wear it on a golf course. They likened it to Ralph Lauren’s logo of a polo pony that appeals to a wide swath of people who have never been on a horse or picked up a polo mallet.
Their goal is to eventually add other brick-and-mortar locations although no other sites have been selected at this point.
Beyond their own e-commerce site, Eastside Golf is also building a solid wholesale business. They admitted that in the beginning, they didn’t have the infrastructure necessary to sell to large retailers, but now that they’ve got a dedicated office and showroom, hired a team and have become EDI compliant, “we’re open for business,” Cooper said. Among their customers is the PGA Superstore and Nordstrom, which they boasted had an 80 percent sell-through for holiday in the two stores where the brand was sold: New York City and Los Angeles. For spring, Eastside Golf will be offered in 10 Nordstrom doors.
“And we just hit Golf Galaxy and House of Sports,” he said.
As assortment of styles from Eastside Golf.
Courtesy of Eastside Golf
Specialty stores have also been a “bedrock” of the company since its early days. But instead of green grass stores, they’ve been embraced by lifestyle streetwear retailers such as Extra Butter, Wish, Bodega, Fat Joe’s and Sneaker Politics.
But interestingly, they said, these stores carry the same pieces as those found at the Liberty National golf course pro shop. “So you’ve got 70-year-old white men wearing the same pieces as the young shoe collector kids,” Ajanaku said. “It’s an elite sport at its core, but when you add diversity into it, it can be cooler and more approachable to many more people.”
Among Eastside’s top-selling items are its T-shirts, crewnecks and hats. Polos are beginning to make strides as well.
Although many of the lifestyle pieces are just that, Eastside Golf also offers performance attributes in its assortment such as the Snap Placket polo that is breathable and fast-drying. The brand also offers tech shorts and hoodies in a variety of fabrics that can be worn on the course as well.
Looking ahead, Eastside Golf hopes to continue to draw more people from all walks of life to the sport of golf. According to the PGA Superstore, over the past five years, participation in the game among people of color is up 46 percent, just outpacing the growth among juniors at 45 percent and women at 40 percent.
“We knew that golf had kind of hit a plateau when it came to white men knowing about the game,” Cooper said. “The growth is among minorities. But the beautiful thing about it is, is it’s not like the other folks are leaving. We’re all existing and new folks are just discovering it.”
Ditto for females. Last year, Mercedes-Benz partnered with Eastside Golf around The Masters on a women’s collection and now they offer a collection specifically targeted to females. “To grow the game, we need more voices,” Cooper said.
Speaking of The Masters, the company will once again partner with Mercedes on a community day in Augusta, Ga., at a local course where there will be music, food and lessons. The Morehouse College golf team has been invited and this year, the team will also be hosted by the brand at The Masters so they can experience the “Super Bowl of golf” up close.
For those who can’t get a ticket for The Masters, Eastside Golf has created a green collection, inspired by the tournament, that will be sold exclusively at the PGA Superstore.
