The Friday Letter
I’m making this up as I go.
A new Friday letter about building Pin Hunters, the problem with beautiful towels, and the dog behind our first T-shirt.
Hi. For those of you who don't know me, I’m Matthew Paul, founder of Pin Hunters Golf Co. I started Pin Hunters in college about four years ago, graduated 14 months ago, and have been doing it full-time ever since.
Aside from an internship at a 10-person company, I’ve never had a corporate job. I’ve never sat inside a large company and watched how decisions move, how departments divide the work, or how a polished operation is supposed to look from the inside.
That is not automatically an advantage. Sometimes it means discovering a perfectly ordinary lesson the expensive way. But it also means I have fewer inherited answers. When we decide how to design a product, work with a customer, or solve a problem, the answer has to make sense to us now—not simply be how the last company did it.
That has given me a slightly unusual view of building a business. This letter is where I want to share it: what we are making, what I am learning, the people and places I get to see through golf, and anything else that seems worth passing along.
The first year after graduation was largely about building the foundation. The next six months feel like the point when that work starts turning into things people can actually see. There are good projects in the pipeline. I want to keep you close to them as they happen.
I’ve got a problem…
People keep telling me our custom towels are too beautiful to use.
It sounds like a compliment, and I’m choosing to take it as one. But it has created a strange situation: some people are keeping two towels on their bag—ours for display, and a second towel that is actually allowed near mud and dirty grooves.
I’m not sure how I feel about making a golf towel people are afraid to use as a golf towel. Our design process is built around capturing more than a logo. The good towels pick up a course, an event, or a brand well enough that they feel like they belong to it. Apparently, sometimes we overshoot. Oh well... :)
Our first shirt had to be Colby.
Our dog Colby was our unofficial warehouse dog before we had anything resembling a warehouse.
He was around while we packed orders. He rode along to the UPS Store. When we tried to set up a product shoot, he had a habit of finding the towels and lying directly on top of them—which was unhelpful in the moment and, looking back, a pretty fair summary of his role in the company.
He did not care what we sold or how many orders went out. He just wanted to be wherever we were. We loved having him there.
Colby passed away a while back, and we miss him every day. He is a big part of the Pin Hunters story. So when we decided to make our first piece of clothing, it felt right that it should be about him.
The Colby Tee has an American flag on the front for America’s 250th anniversary, and the best warehouse dog we ever had on the back. We are not making much money on it, and I do not know how long we will keep it. We made it because it felt right.
I hope there is one person out there who enjoys it half as much as I do.
If you made it this far, genuinely, thank you! It means the world to me that people are interested in what I have to say. If there is something inside golf or small business you think I should write about, hit reply.
— Matthew