Sub 70 Golf Clubs – Interview With Jay Armour

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Sub 70 Golf is a company founded on a genuine love of golf, and a wish to share that love with others who feel the same. While other companies talk advertising budgets, profit margins, and five club launches per calendar year, Sub 70 is quietly providing the highest quality clubs at the lowest possible price, and creating a community of golfers that love the game and identify with the message.

Below is a Q&A interview with Jay Armour, Director of Marketing at Sub 70. Jay shares more about their company, products and passion.

Can you share a brief history Company history including Jason Hiland’s (CEO) background.

In 2015 we noticed a “direct to consumer” or “factory direct” trend that was picking up in other industries. High quality clothing, watches, razors, glasses and even mattresses were being sold directly to the customer and with massive cost savings. After being in the business for 20+ years Jason knew the cost of building high end golf equipment and thought that the same sales model could work for golf clubs. Golf club pricing continued to rise while the equipment itself is heavily regulated and has largely been standardized. There is absolutely no shortage of great golf equipment out there which means you also shouldn’t have to pay $1,500+ for a set of irons, $150+ for a single wedge or $400+ for a driver. Our goal at Sub 70 will always be to provide high quality, custom built equipment at a far lower price point and with much better customer service.

Jason enrolled at UW Oshkosh after spending his first 20 years or so in northern Illinois. He graduated from Oshkosh in 1995 and immediately started his first golf equipment company, Diamond Tour Golf, which primarily sold golf club components…shafts, grips, ferrules, heads, club building supplies, etc. He always had a great passion for golf and had worked in the industry growing up, but he knew that he wanted to be his own boss. Sub 70 is a passionate project after decades of time working in the industry and really becoming an expert on the golf club business.

How did the name Sub 70 come about?

We spent a lot of time and effort coming up with a name for the company. We considered other options but ultimately felt that the name and logo resonated well with golfers and would make it relatively easy to recall. The term Sub 70 is a nod to breaking 70 on the golf course…quite the achievement and a fantastic goal for any passionate golfer. We think it reflects well on our commitment to high quality equipment and a better customer experience for anyone that gives our products a try.

Brief description of Sub 70’s current product line?

We offer a full line of products from driver to putter. Right now we have five putter models (several more on the way), two new wedge lines will debut before the end of 2020, six models of irons available (739, 699, 699 Pro, 639 CB, 639 MB and 639 MB Plus), our 939X hybrids with a Pro version being developed, two models of utility/driving irons, three fairway wood models and our new driver should be available in early 2021. Many of our irons and wedges are available in satin, black or raw finishes as well.

Can you share any upcoming product launches?

We will have two new models of irons available in the near future…our 649 Tour irons and our TAIII irons. We are really excited for both. We spent the last year or so working with several professional golfers on both models and think they will be great options for the higher caliber player. Working with Tommy Armour III on the development of the TAIII irons has been an absolute blast and we are honored to be partnered with him on that release.

What are your club’s competitive advantage?

We truly feel that there are a ton of great golf club manufacturers out there these days. It’s very rare for any product to be a “dud” at this point. We simply think that our products can compete with anything else on the market and often at ½ the cost. We also want to offer a better buying and customer support experience for the golfer. Offering a demo program, a full 60 day guarantee, and making ourselves as available as possible for calls, emails, texts or social media messages is critical. We genuinely want Sub 70 customers to see a benefit from their equipment purchase and feel 100% confident that we have their backs going forward. We hope that our customers will enjoy golf more and have funds to spend elsewhere while also getting better equipment for their game.

How does someone get fit for your clubs?

We do offer no cost, no obligation fittings at our facility in Sycamore, IL. If the individual can’t get to our facility then we recommend they get fit locally and any clubs can be built to the specs provided by their local fitter. We also offer a demo program so that anyone interested can try the clubs for a couple of weeks. That program has a $20 net cost which just covers the round trip shipping and handling. We are working on fitting carts and hope to get those out to some regional facilities. Hopefully more golfers will have a local fitting facility within an hour or two so that they can try our equipment locally. That program should start rolling out in early 2021.

Talk about the high end components that make up your clubs including shafts, grips, heads, etc.

We have great relationships with all of the best shaft and grip manufacturers. These partnerships allow us to offer stock, no upcharge options from both KBS and True Temper on the shaft side. We also have some great Project X graphite shafts for hybrids, fairway woods and drivers. There are plenty of upgrade options as well including shafts from Fujikura, Aldila, UST, Graphite Design and more. We offer grips from Golf Pride, Winn, Lamkin, SuperStroke, No1, Pure and more. We have access to shafts and grips from any manufacturer out there so we always recommend that a customer contact us if they don’t see what they are looking for in the drop down menus on our website.

How important it is to have the club assembled in America?

We think it is a huge advantage. Nothing is prebuilt at Sub 70. We receive the shafts, grips and heads at our facility in Sycamore, IL and build each club as it is ordered. This allows us to conduct additional quality control and make sure the specs are correct for each individual club. We think it is a far better process than buying from a major manufacturer where clubs may be prebuilt and do not go through another review process before being shipped to the customer.

Finally, where can golfers find more info about your club or to arrange a fitting?

There is more information on our demo program and fittings on our website at Sub70.com Our customer support team can be contacted at 877-267-7093 or customer.support@golfsub70.com.

Brian Weis

Publisher of GolfGuide.com.

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