How RareShot Golf Is Bringing the Pokémon Craze to Golf - Brandon Fischer Interview

WEBVTT 1 - > Jesse Stakes: Hey everybody, welcome to Making Sense of It All with Jesse Stakes. 2 - > Jesse Stakes: I am very pleased to bring you Brandon Fisher. Brandon Fisher is the owner and creator of Rare Shot Golf. Brandon, thank you so much for joining me.

3 - > Brandon Fischer: Thank you so much for having me, Jesse. I'm very excited for the conversation today. 4 - > Jesse Stakes: So… 5 - > Jesse Stakes: I got introduced to you through a mutual acquaintance, Gary Callis Jr, shout out to you, thank you very much. And he, like, when I saw your brand, you know, one of the things that I thought was really cool is it's kind of like an intersection between, like, kind of golf culture, collectibles, design.

6 - > Jesse Stakes: Innovation within an industry, it kind of, you know, it really caught my attention. 7 - > Jesse Stakes: And so I was pleased, I was really happy that you just… that you agreed to come on the show, and agreed to, you know, talk about what you're doing, and so thank you, first, before we even get started, I appreciate your time. 8 - > Brandon Fischer: And Jesse, likewise, and thank you so much, Gary, for making the connection. Gary's been a great guy supporting us from early on.

We actually just sent him out some samples, as well as you, and excited for him to get his hands on them and start testing them out. Thank you so much for having me, I, 9 - > Brandon Fischer: I'm very excited to, talk about what we're doing here, and I've listened to some of your other shows, so I'm very excited, and I appreciate the opportunity. 10 - > Jesse Stakes: Alright, so, let's jump right into it. So, 3,000 foot level, what is Rare Shot Golf?

11 - > Brandon Fischer: So, Rershot is a new kind of golf product, so essentially what we're doing is turning golf balls into something collectible without sacrificing quality. So, essentially, we're working with one of the biggest golf ball manufacturers in the world. I can't get too specific on exactly who they make balls for as well. 12 - > Brandon Fischer: But I'll keep it short in saying that some of the best performing golf balls in the market are getting made right next to Rare Shots, so… 13 - > Brandon Fischer: Quality was the first concern of ours, making sure we made an extremely high-quality golf ball that performs as good, if not better, than what golfers are already using, and then combining that with the mechanics I grew up on, and many Gen Z and Millennials did as well, of collecting.

So, opening a pack of cards and not knowing what you're gonna get. You know, most of the time, you don't get that super rare, crazy thing you're looking for. 14 - > Brandon Fischer: But the beauty about what we're doing here at Rare Shot is no matter what, you're getting a great quality golf ball to go and play with on the course, and you might get lucky and pull something where only 100 golf balls were printed of a certain design of over 100,000, and if you ever get a chance to look at any of our balls, you'll see that they're 15 - > Brandon Fischer: Way different than anything else on the market, so we're trying to bring something super different and refreshing and exciting to a otherwise pretty stale market at the moment.

16 - > Jesse Stakes: So I'd argue that it's not just… it's not just Gen Z or, you know, other… other… I mean, it's Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen… Gen whatever. I mean, since the advent of baseball cards, you know, or other collectibles, people have been collecting things all the time, so I think that… I think you cross those generational 17 - > Jesse Stakes: barriers, like, no matter what. I think that… I think that this product is for everyone who's interested. I don't think there's an age band to it.

18 - > Brandon Fischer: And I agree, Jesse, and the beauty about what we're doing here at Rareshot, compared to a pack of sports cards, or Pokemon, or even recently, you've heard the craze about Laboo Boos, is that there's the baseline utility there. 19 - > Jesse Stakes: Go down. 20 - > Brandon Fischer: When they go and play golf, they need a pack of golf balls, so you're making that same purchase, but as an added benefit, you're getting that excitement of opening up a pack and not knowing what you're gonna find inside.

21 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt. So, what was the moment that you realized that golf balls could be more than equipment? Like, when was it that you realized they could be a collectible as well? 22 - > Brandon Fischer: So, it's a very funny story.

I grew up in, you know, my early middle school, where, you know. 23 - > Brandon Fischer: the popularity, almost, of kids in school were based on what shoes you're wearing, what clothes, what Pokemon cards you have. So, from a very young age, I've always been obsessed with these manufactured scarcity products. 24 - > Brandon Fischer: That being said, as I moved into high school, I turned it into a business, I became a reseller, I was hosting tables at events, I had a very large eBay with 2,000 positive reviews selling collectibles.

I generated over 20,000 followers on social media, promoting and selling these products. And then once I got into college, I realized. 25 - > Brandon Fischer: it's not as cool or not as trendy when you get into that older age to, you know, be the Pokemon card guy or the Jordan Shoe guy. 26 - > Jesse Stakes: I don't know, ask Logan Paul about that.

I mean, he's pretty popular, and he talks about it all the time. 27 - > Brandon Fischer: And that definitely is shifting at the same time. It is becoming more socially acceptable, but as I got into college personally, I started to shift away from it, and really got into my internships, and wanted to be a high-performing salesman, so I kind of strayed away from it. Long story short, I graduated out of college, and it was right before my brother's wedding when my sister-in-law was showing me her Sonny's Angels collection, so if you haven't heard of them, it's a 28 - > Brandon Fischer: essentially, it's like a Labubu, it's a 2-inch PVC plastic figurine, and you open up a package, and you don't know what you're gonna find, and she's explaining it to me, and she's like, you know, most of the time, you're not gonna find anything special, and that's what her wall was full of, but she's like.

29 - > Brandon Fischer: there's these super rare ones you could find, and they're selling for, like, $900 on eBay, and that's kind of where the light bulb went off for me. I was like, you know, how could I apply these same mechanics for a adult hobby? So then I started thinking about it, and then at that time period, myself included, and a lot of my best friends who I grew up with, you know, buying, selling, and trading these collectibles to had suddenly become obsessed with golf.

30 - > Brandon Fischer: It was what everyone was talking about, and at least in my circle. 31 - > Brandon Fischer: we had a lot more of the casual golfers, and so that's kind of where the idea came from. You know, I was like, why couldn't we do this for golf balls? So I went home, started working on a pitch deck, I made some of these designs, and I started sharing them out to everyone, and the response that I got was great, these are so cool.

And then, you know, the next 6 months following was just developing out the idea. Originally, it's gonna be all crazy-looking golf balls, and then I thought about it more. 32 - > Brandon Fischer: And, that's how we landed on our common designs, which are gonna make up the majority of the balls you'll find, and… 33 - > Brandon Fischer: It's a long-winded way of saying that the inspiration came from seeing that, you know, even adults are still into these products, they're bringing that thrill of the hunt into their adult lives, but there isn't really that many products tailored to their adult hobbies.

34 - > Jesse Stakes: No, I think it's awesome. I mean, like, I got it immediately when I saw it, and when it was first explained to me, it didn't take me much. I got it. I understood it completely.

I think it's fantastic. You mentioned that about being a playable product, and I think that that's really a huge key to this whole thing. 35 - > Jesse Stakes: you've got… I think your tagline for your company is built to perform, designed to collect, right? 36 - > Brandon Fischer: Correct, and that stems from when people take a look at these balls, and if you share some pictures around to some people.

37 - > Brandon Fischer: A lot of people might, make the assertion or think off the top of their head that this might be a novelty product, and something that's very important to us, and where the value comes from, at least in my opinion, is that these balls are playable, they're just as good as what you're already using, if not better, because we want golfers, even if they don't find that ultra-rare ball that everyone's looking for, to still have a great set of golf balls to go and play with, so that's where the 38 - > Brandon Fischer: built to perform comes first.

You know, we want to get that idea across, and then, of course, design to collect is the overarching theme that builds the brand. 39 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah, well, and I think that this needs to be impressed. You're paying basically the same price that you would for a box of golf balls. It's not like you're paying… you're not paying more for the chance to collect it, you're paying the same price, correct?

40 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, and so we're aiming for a target of $45 per dozen, and if you took a look around at your premium 3-layer urethane golf balls, you know, the… one of our competitors made in the same factory charges $55 a dozen for a very similar design and similar materials, and we're doing all of that printing work on top. So, we're making sure that our product's affordable. 41 - > Brandon Fischer: Very similar to what golfers are already paying, and then, like I said, all of that added excitement and benefit add on top as a, additional, you know, cherry on top.

42 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt, there's a huge potential secondary market with it. 43 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, and, you know, It, it, it is… 44 - > Brandon Fischer: you in the financial world, you know this better than anyone, it is crazy to look at what collectibles have become in the last few years. We just saw Logan Paul's personal card sell for $16.5 million.

I believe the Pokemon secondary market alone, so this isn't Pokemon selling to consumers, this is me buying a Pokemon card and selling it to you, Jesse. That market's valued at $13 billion. 45 - > Brandon Fischer: a year is going back and forth, just people selling Pokemon cards to each other. 46 - > Jesse Stakes: Please repeat that.

Please repeat that, because I think it bears repeating. 47 - > Brandon Fischer: $13 billion a year, peer-to-peer exchange of just Pokemon cards. This isn't factoring in sports cards, this isn't factoring in the Supreme clothing and the Jordan shoes, where, you know, a hoodie selling for $1,500, and there was 20,000 of those hoodies made. It is a… 48 - > Brandon Fischer: its own financial market existing without most people even knowing about it.

It is crazy stuff. 49 - > Jesse Stakes: 100%. I mean, and you're… I mean, there's… there's digital assets that are trading for, you know, multiples of what they cost people when they originally bought them, and they're not even… I mean, I hate to say it, they're not even real. I mean, they're things you can't even touch that people are assigning a value 50 - > Jesse Stakes: higher than face value to these things.

So, I mean, the collectible market is on fire right now. 51 - > Jesse Stakes: You know, I'm gonna ask this, and you kind of answered it already, but I think it's, you know, it's important. It's the… what is the gap that you saw in the golf market that convinced you that this wasn't just a good idea, but this is a real business? This is something that you can make money doing?

52 - > Brandon Fischer: So, I would say to that is that what stood out to us is that the golf ball market is massive, but the consumer… from a consumer standpoint perspective, it's extremely stagnant. 53 - > Brandon Fischer: That being said, we noticed some of these more colorful balls become more popular. You know, some of my buddies in particular started using bright orange balls just because they could see them a little bit better. 54 - > Brandon Fischer: Largely, though, every ball looks the same.

There are some cool things happening at brands like Callaway and a few others, where they're putting some micro designs on the balls, and people are really starting to like them. 55 - > Brandon Fischer: That being said, the gap that I saw, especially, is that the 18- to 32-year-old Gen Z and Millennials are now the largest segment of golfers here in the U.S, over 6.5 million of them strong.

56 - > Brandon Fischer: Yet there wasn't a product made for what we know they love, you know, the thrill of the hunt and collecting. And that's, like you just said, these markets are exploding because these… 57 - > Brandon Fischer: used to be kids grew up obsessed with these products, and now they're in adulthood, and they're making big boy money, and they're putting it into their passions, the things that they have loved, and as we've seen with Pokemon cards, since 2001, they have outbeat the S&P 500 with over 3,800% return.

So, if you were loyal to your initial Pokemon cards, or bought them throughout the years, you're sitting on a pretty good investment. 58 - > Jesse Stakes: It's insane to hear that out loud, but it's… you're 100% right. 59 - > Jesse Stakes: So, talk to me a little bit about, 60 - > Jesse Stakes: I'll edit this piece. So, 61 - > Jesse Stakes: I'd like to segue into product innovation and design philosophy, kind of where you've been with that.

Like, one of the things that I… on your social media, on your Instagram, you had posted that you were out trying samples in Myrtle Beach. 62 - > Jesse Stakes: And yet you were blown away by the performance of the golf balls that you were using. So, talk to me a little bit about your performance benchmarks and what matters most to you with the golf ball. 63 - > Brandon Fischer: So, I'll tell you, Jesse, coming up with this idea, once I got the pitch deck together, and I had a general idea of how we could turn this vision into a reality, the first bridge that I had to cross was figuring out how to manufacture these, and you might think it's pretty straightforward, you know, find a good golf ball manufacturer who can print these designs and package them up for you, and you can start selling them, but I literally spent 64 - > Brandon Fischer: 3-4 months, non-stop, every day, reaching out to every golf ball manufacturer you could think of.

I tried China, I tried India, I tried Vietnam, any country you could think of, every single golf ball manufacturer I reached out to. 65 - > Brandon Fischer: All had the same answer, where we can… we can make a green golf ball and put some specs on it, or we can do an orange golf ball and do a swirl, but it can only be on this, 66 - > Brandon Fischer: This pole of the ball, and it wouldn't be able to be these full-color interactive designs like the designs you've seen from us.

67 - > Brandon Fischer: So, it was a huge barrier of entry, trying to figure out how are we going to print on these golf balls. So, it has literally been over a year process of finding the manufacturer who can actually do the printing for us, and it was a huge concern, because we had some samples come from China and Vietnam, where they tried to do the printing, and there would always either be a white gap, or they would come and the design would already be peeling off before it even got 68 - > Brandon Fischer: to us, so it was a huge worry of mine constantly.

I would stay up in bed all night thinking about it, worrying about it as I'm talking to investors or people, potential partnerships, and we would get samples in, and like I said, they'd peel, and I wouldn't want to hand them out, so it was a huge concern of mine, where it's like, we have these mock-ups and these golf ball designs that we love and we think are really cool. 69 - > Brandon Fischer: But it was a huge worry that these designs weren't gonna hold up to play. Long story short, we found a printing partner here in the US, believe it or not, that is capable of doing the designs.

70 - > Brandon Fischer: Printed them to us, sent them to us, and they were scratching off with your fingernail, but he said, don't worry about that, we'll put this protective urethane sealant layer on it, and it'll protect the ball. 71 - > Brandon Fischer: Still worried for a few months in between sample batches, but we got this most recent batch in, and he wasn't making anything up. We played rare shot golf balls the entire trip, we played over 8 rounds of golf all day with him, and the pattern held up 72 - > Brandon Fischer: way better than I ever could have dreamed of.

Even on the full-colored balls, with 10 different colors going every other direction, there was minimal wear, no different than you'd see with any other golf ball on the market, so… 73 - > Brandon Fischer: That was my biggest worry. Like I said previously in the podcast, the golf ball industry is a lot smaller than you'd think it is. There's only really… 74 - > Brandon Fischer: a couple of large golf ball manufacturers who make a UCGA-approved, high-quality golf ball. So that being said, I don't want to get into who's… who else is.

75 - > Jesse Stakes: You don't need to. 76 - > Brandon Fischer: Same factory, but… 77 - > Brandon Fischer: That being said, we've seen our balls shot through the machines, we've tested the spin rates, performance of our base quality golf ball hasn't been a concern, because we made sure to work with the best of the best manufacturer we could. It ended up costing us more than we expected, but we would rather spend a little bit more to give golfers the best possible quality we could, and now that we got the printing piece figured out, we're 78 - > Brandon Fischer: We're pretty much set to go when it comes to manufacturing them.

79 - > Jesse Stakes: Well, and I'm sure the more you do, your price point is gonna drop as well. As the popularity increases, it actually benefits you from a manufacturing standpoint. 80 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, and one thing that I've always said to the RearShot team and people we're working with is, we don't want to be greedy, we're not trying to, you know, milk every dollar out of people that we can. My goal is to give golfers a great product with that fun and excitement, and not try to bleed every dollar out of their pocket possible.

You know, we had some people say, you know, you could charge $55 or $60 a dozen because you're doing all that other stuff, but 81 - > Brandon Fischer: You know, we… we're making a comfortable of enough margin where… with that price point we're shooting for now, so that's our goal, just to make the best possible product that we can, and give it to a… give it at a price that golfers are comfortable with. 82 - > Jesse Stakes: So, the first thing that pops in my head is, like, if you pull one of these rare… one of the rare balls.

83 - > Jesse Stakes: And let's say you hit it, you know, let's say you hit it off the tee, and it hits the cart path, or it hits a tree, or, you know, something, you know, like… like you said, a normal golf ball's gonna scratch. Normal ball, so there's going to be a blemish on it from that, as it should be. It's a… it's urethane. 84 - > Jesse Stakes: So, if that happens on these, like, on something, does it… does it dig into the design?

I'm just curious, like, or does it… is the design protected, and you're just gonna… it's almost like kind of a scratch in a clear coat, like on a car. 85 - > Brandon Fischer: Yeah, so the… you… you nailed it. So it's essentially… 86 - > Brandon Fischer: if you were to hit a… any… any brand you could think of right now, and it hits… if it hits concrete on, you know, its logo, if it were to scratch any other balls logo, it would probably scratch into the design. But we have a clear coat that goes over the design, so you would have to scratch completely through that, you know, very thin piece of, 87 - > Brandon Fischer: of outer sealant urethane layer.

That being said, from us playing them all day in Myrtle Beach, it was very minimal wear. It's no different than any other golf ball you're using. That being said, when you're playing with one of the balls that you can see on my screen here that are full color, and you hit pavement, you might, or honestly, you might not, depends how hard it hits, and if it's scraping for a long duration of time. You'll see when you get your samples in, 88 - > Brandon Fischer: It's quite impressive how well they hold up.

89 - > Jesse Stakes: So, just for the audience, and so they can hear it, can you walk us through what does it look like from the design? Like, you created design of a golf ball, and then all the way through that manufacturing and putting a final sleeve together. What does that whole process look like? 90 - > Brandon Fischer: It's a quite intensive process.

It's as easy or as hard as we want to make it when it comes to concepting the design, so we have a team of 91 - > Brandon Fischer: absolute killers when it comes to product design and being in the golf world, so we like to feed off of each other. When someone comes up with a cool design, they'll think about it when they're going to bed one night, send it to our group chat, and then we have a very talented graphic designer who kind of takes those thoughts, or… 92 - > Brandon Fischer: You can even use AI, say, I want to make a golf ball that looks like this, and it'll spit on an image, and then our graphic designer actually breaks down that image and turns it into a flat pattern that we can then print onto the golf ball.

So, that being said, the manufacturing process works after, you know, you make your packaging, you make your golf ball designs. We place that order from overseas at our factory. 93 - > Brandon Fischer: comes over to the U.S.

to our printing factory, where it gets printed, put into the boxes, and, that final 94 - > Brandon Fischer: What would you call it, 95 - > Brandon Fischer: urethane or saran wrap goes over it, and then it's a finished product, but it's essentially hitting 3 points, us coming up with the designs and packaging and all that graphic design work, going overseas to actually get the ball itself made in the dimensions that we want it to do, the compression, the spin rate, all of that good stuff, and then it gets sent to be finished at our printing manufacturer.

96 - > Jesse Stakes: I think about my golf spy and them doing their testing every year on multiple different, you know, brands of golf balls. You know, as far as the quality control piece of it, how do you maintain that? Is that something that's maintained by your partners at the factory, or is that something that you guys control? What does that look like?

97 - > Brandon Fischer: So, we don't have so much say in terms of the balls themselves overseas, but that being said, like I mentioned, it's… that factory doesn't mess up. Otherwise, a lot of these billion-dollar golf ball brands would be sinking tomorrow because we're using the same guys as them, so the ball isn't really much of the concern. 98 - > Brandon Fischer: once they come to the U.S.

to be printed, I'll actually be present in the factory overseeing the balls coming out of the printing process, and 99 - > Brandon Fischer: they're very good at what they do already. I'm sure they don't need my oversight, but I want to be there and make sure that everything that we're putting out there, that we're confident with, and that we're happy. That being said, very similar to cards, and I'm sure you know about the grading, like a grade 7, 8, depending on how the printing and cutting of the cards goes.

100 - > Brandon Fischer: not every ball is gonna be 100% perfect. There will be some that are a little bit, off-centered compared to the most perfect ball, and I think that's a good piece of it. I'm actually happy that's how it works, so we… maybe, potentially, Rashad golf balls will be graded someday, which is super exciting to think about. 101 - > Jesse Stakes: Well, and Blems are usually worth a little bit more a lot of the times.

When you talk about the car, you know, the card industry, if it's a true… if it's a true factory blem, a lot of the times, they're actually… they end up creating a more scarce product, because you don't have a lot of them, and they end up actually commanding more on the secondary market. 102 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, yeah. Some of the misprints, and the miscut car itself are a big premium, believe it or not. It's… 103 - > Brandon Fischer: Typically, how the market goes is a certain population of each grade of a card, so let's say a grade 10 Charizard, there's only 3,000 of them in existence.

A grade 10 Charizard in a different model, if there's 10,000, the price typically reflects that, and there's only 104 - > Brandon Fischer: you know, maybe 10 or 20 miscuts in existence. So, if you're a collector and you're all into scarcity, the less of a card, the better. Those miscuts and misprints are actually a good thing, like you said. 105 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt.

So, so talk to me a little bit about, you know, kind of the scarcity and the rarity piece of this. You've got kind of common balls, uncommon balls, rare, and then high-tiered type of collectibles. Can you break it down for my audience? 106 - > Brandon Fischer: Yeah, absolutely.

So, starting off with our common design, so that's gonna be your typical white golf ball with some colored speckles. 107 - > Brandon Fischer: There's 5 different variations, which are all different color palettes, and we tried to at least have one that would include everyone's favorite color, so we got most colors covered in our common designs. It's a white speckled ball. 108 - > Brandon Fischer: Every single pack is going to contain them.

It's around 85% of the balls we produce are those typical, common, speckled designs. 109 - > Brandon Fischer: Moving up into our uncommon rarity tier, you have about a 1 in 4 3-pack sleeves to… chance to find one of those, so every time you open a sleeve, you have a 1 in 4 chance, so that means every 12-pack, you're expected to find one of our uncommon designs, which is about 50-50 color. You know, they look very out there and are attention-grabbing, so… 110 - > Brandon Fischer: You'll always find something decently cool, and there's 5 designs of those as well, so if you're looking to find any specific design, it's 5 times that 4, so it's about 1 in 20, 3-packs, you'll find those.

111 - > Brandon Fischer: When you get up into our rare category, it's about 1 in 8 packs you'll find one of our 5 rare designs. So if you want to find any specific rare design, you're looking at, like, a 1 in 72 chance every 3-pack, so you can do the math to find that by 12, how many boxes would you have to open to find a specific design? And then our Ultra Rares, there's only 3 Ultra Rares for our first release, and the odds of finding one of those in a 112 - > Brandon Fischer: pack is 1 in 72.

113 - > Brandon Fischer: So, if you wanted to find any specific, one of those three, you're looking at about 1 in 200 packs to find one of those, and we modeled this pretty closely to Pokemon, who is the gold standard of creating that, collectability and thrill of the hunt. So we tried to be very close, and also make sure that, you know, you open a pack, you're gonna find at least something cool, but not overwhelmingly, where every 114 - > Brandon Fischer: ball looks super wacky and out of this world.

We wanted to have 115 - > Brandon Fischer: The common base… baseball be something that you wouldn't, 116 - > Brandon Fischer: you wouldn't be too turned off by if you're a more traditional golfer, and then once you find one of those crazy ones, it's gonna surprise you. You'd be like, oh, what is this, you know? 117 - > Jesse Stakes: Right. So… so one of the questions that I kind of thought about was, how do you… how do you keep that… that thrill of the hunt authentic, and make sure that that scarcity stays, 118 - > Jesse Stakes: stays real, essentially.

Like, how do you make sure that, like, that your… that your team, or that nobody prints, you know, goes out, and if we say that this is 1 in 70, you know, 1 in 72 boxes, or whatever it is, like, how do you not just go out the back and print 2,000 more of them just to sell on eBay yourself? 119 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, and this was a big point of contention for us as well. We actually did find a printing partner overseas who… overseas who did a similar quality, print job, but… 120 - > Brandon Fischer: based on where they were, we didn't trust them, because we've seen it with Jordan shoes and with Pokemon cards.

You know, the factory ends at 10pm, and they start up the printers again, and they're printing all night, and that's how we get, you know, a shoe that there's only supposed to be a thousand of them, and there's 10,000 of them out there. That being said, that's why I'll be at the factory when all the printing is being done, and then on top of that, and 121 - > Brandon Fischer: This is where my experience being a reseller the last 15 years comes into play. 122 - > Brandon Fischer: I understand what collectors are looking for, and what upsets collectors.

Like, if you have a specific Charizard card from 2008, and it's worth 3 grand, and it's your prize possession, and Pokemon decides to reprint it this year. 123 - > Brandon Fischer: your value of your card just dropped 80%, and you're having a bad day. That's why I'm gonna make sure, as CEO and the one overseeing all of this, that we'll never do any reprints. We'll be very particular and have a lot of oversight when it comes to all the packaging and the randomness of the designs, and making sure all those things that worries collectors about new products.

124 - > Brandon Fischer: that it is extremely taken care of, and even all of our samples that we print, we make sure to document exactly how many of each of those samples were print, and then on our Rare Shot website, we plan on adding an archive, which will show every single sample that's ever been made, and the exact number, and every single ball from production. So if you find a design, and it'll be on our app as well, you could take a picture of a ball you find. 125 - > Brandon Fischer: And it'd bring you to the Rear Shot Archive and show you that exact ball and how many of them were printed.

126 - > Jesse Stakes: That's awesome. I feel like you guys are on top of it. I mean, you really have thought of a lot of, like, a lot of things that are happening with this. 127 - > Brandon Fischer: Yeah, like I said, I got off college, and I was getting into sales, and I love selling, but it wasn't something I was, 128 - > Brandon Fischer: you know, passionate about.

Golf is something I'm extremely passionate about, and same with collectibles, so it's combining all those years of experience to making, in my opinion, the most perfect and best collectible product I can with all those years behind me. 129 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt. Do you have any fear, like, about, like, the larger manufacturers, like, as far as the Titleists, the Callaways, the TaylorMades, feeling like there's, like, a head-to-head competition, or feeling like, hey, we can, you know, if they're… if they decide they see a little success with this, and they say we can do this better?

Or do you… do you feel like you're… you're… 130 - > Jesse Stakes: Niche enough, or you have a unique enough product to where you can stand, you know, you can stand in one side of the market while they're fulfilling their obligations to the other side of the market. 131 - > Brandon Fischer: So… 132 - > Brandon Fischer: Obviously, this is a big concern, and we're currently in a fundraising round right now, and a lot of investors we talk to, that's their first question, and yes, it is concerning.

That being said, I'm not overly worried about it myself. First off, a big brand like Callaway or Titleist is built on legacy, and it would be a big risk for them to step out and do something outside of what their customers are used to, and that legacy they've 133 - > Brandon Fischer: Built for themselves. 134 - > Brandon Fischer: The other element of it is the printing of the designs. Like I told you, it's an extremely complicated process, which, out of months and months of work and talking to everyone in the industry I could, no one could point me in the direction to figure out how to have these balls printed, so either 135 - > Brandon Fischer: They would have to massively disrupt their supply chain and how they manufacture their golf balls to make it work, and they have a lot more overhead, and it's a lot more risky for them to make a big change like that, or they would have to invest 136 - > Brandon Fischer: you know, a lot of millions of dollars into making a similar printing technique, and that's why, for us, it's about being first to market, and our goal here is to start production within the next month or two, so it'd be really hard to follow on after us.

That being said. 137 - > Brandon Fischer: take a look at Pokemon. Pokemon launched in 1996, and had massive success, and they had… 138 - > Brandon Fischer: droves of people following behind them, trying to do the same thing that don't represent a percent of what Pokemon is, and it's… it's about being… that legitimate… legitimacy of doing it from the start, doing it right, not just having some overly paid CEO come in and say, create a collectible golf ball, being actually in the industry the last 15 years, hands-on, and understanding these products better than 139 - > Brandon Fischer: I think most, and applying it the best we can, and creating a product that is great, and sure, Callaway could come out with something similar afterwards, but they would just be, a copycat at that point.

So, long story… 140 - > Jesse Stakes: That's right. 141 - > Brandon Fischer: It's a worry, but I'm not overly worried about it. 142 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt. So, people are interested, they listen to this, like, where are you going to be available?

Once you guys bring this to market, where is it going to be available for people to buy? 143 - > Brandon Fischer: So, starting out, we're… 144 - > Brandon Fischer: primarily focusing on direct-to-consumer sales through our website. That being said, we do have some pre-orders from local golf course pro shops, and we have had interest from retailers, but the issue with that is, starting out as small as we are, like I said earlier, our margins aren't super high. We're not making a ton per box sold.

145 - > Brandon Fischer: So if we wanted to start selling to retailers, and they want to make a good margin as well, we would have to boost our price up. So I would rather sell it direct to the consumer, so we could give them the best price possible, and like you said, Jesse, once we're able to get some success, get through a few releases, and have the money to produce more, our price will come down, and that will allow us to start to break into retail more. So, starting out, you can find us on our website, but… 146 - > Brandon Fischer: Later on, you know, we'll definitely expand in the pro shops, as well as some of the big golf retailers.

147 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah, I can remember being a kid sitting there in card shops, opening boxes of baseball cards, and it's like, I can picture somebody, like, sitting at the counter at a golf shop, sitting there flipping through their, you know, like, opening each sleeve of golf balls and dumping them out to see what they get. 148 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, and I envision that as well. 149 - > Brandon Fischer: It's funny, we've had really good success with approaching golf course pro shops who we have relationships with, and it's either one or two answers.

It's, I see it right away, like you have, Jesse, we want it, sign us up for as many boxes as we can get, or the whole complete other side is, you know, 55-year-old pros just been stuck in his ways for a long time, and he's like, no way we'd ever touch these things, so it's very interesting to see. I think as things 150 - > Brandon Fischer: develop, and we start hitting the market and do as well as I think we will, you know, those opportunities will expand, and we will be getting in the pro shops as soon as possible, that is for sure.

151 - > Jesse Stakes: What's the… what's the most surprising piece of feedback that you've gotten from somebody? Like, I know you've said you've had different… different people give you feedback, but what is the most surprising thing that you've heard from anybody? 152 - > Brandon Fischer: I would say the most surprising for me is, like I was just mentioning to you, you know, sometimes the older crowd has a very negative response to the RearShot product, but what has been really surprising is some of the older guys, like, seeing it right away and loving it.

Like, having more passionate… more passion about it than even, you know, people my age, and that's just been really surprising, and like you said at the start of the podcast here. 153 - > Brandon Fischer: It's not… sure, the Gen Z and Millennials might be the bulk of the consumers, but, you know, it's really a product for everyone. If you think the designs are cool and you know it's a great quality ball, it is a product that anyone can buy and enjoy. 154 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah, absolutely.

I would imagine that social media is gonna be a big driver for this, where… as you're promoting it. It's gonna be… that's gonna be a big spot where people are gonna be able to kind of see what each other gets, kind of have a community where they're tagging you guys on it, and… 155 - > Jesse Stakes: And that way, everyone can kind of see the cool, cool, unique designs that are going to be pulled out of different packs. 156 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, and that's a good point as well, Jesse, and something that differentiates us is that a lot of traditional golf ball products do your traditional, you know, sponsoring a pro, or spending a ton of money to be at these big tournaments, or so on and so forth, and a different approach that we're taking is we want to 157 - > Brandon Fischer: use those marketing dollars on social media influencers, the most and highest converting, demographic… 158 - > Brandon Fischer: Medium for our demographic, so… 159 - > Brandon Fischer: We want to give back to these people who work hard making great content all the time, and give them a super cool product that they can show off to their fans, and you know, RearShot is sort of built for virality on social media.

You're flipping through Instagram, used to seeing white golf balls all the time. Once you see one of these crazy Rear Shot balls, it'll definitely grab your attention. 160 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt. Well, and that's where golf is growing right now.

I mean, it's proven that YouTube golf and social media is what's driving the sport right now from a consumer standpoint, as far as what people are watching the most of, what people are consuming, especially in that age range that you're discussing. 161 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, and I can't say too much, but we have a collaboration in the talks with one of the bigger golf YouTubers out there that I'm super excited about once we are ready to launch in the market. 162 - > Jesse Stakes: Well, we will… we will look… look forward to it with bated breath for when you're ready to announce it.

163 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely. 164 - > Jesse Stakes: So what do you see as the future? Just as far as your, you know, kind of your shot 5 years from now, or 10 years from now, whatever you… you pick it, but, I mean, what do you see Rare Shot becoming? 165 - > Brandon Fischer: The vision for me, like I said, I grew up with these sort of pro- a lot of these collectible brands inspired me, right?

So, Pokemon, when it comes to opening the packs and not knowing what you're gonna get, and then I'd say, long-term, the vision for me is to be, like, the Supreme of golf. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Supreme, but they make a lot of different products, and I kind of want that to be what Rare Shot evolves into. 166 - > Brandon Fischer: more so of a lifestyle brand. We're starting with the golf balls, but definitely we want to get some merch out there.

We want to start making some clubs, if that makes sense to us as well. Through all these talks with all these different manufacturers. We've realized that the golf club products are a lot higher margin of a product that you might expect it to be, so I would love to go out there and do the same thing that we're doing with the golf balls. 167 - > Brandon Fischer: but to 4 golf clubs and give them to consumers at a very affordable price at that same quality point, like we're doing here with Rare Shot.

168 - > Jesse Stakes: That's fantastic. Before we wrap this up, I wanted to ask you 3 questions, just as far as, you know, just things about yourself that people can learn from, from just kind of your experiences. Is that alright with you? 169 - > Brandon Fischer: Yeah, absolutely.

170 - > Jesse Stakes: So, one lesson that you… that you would have liked to have learned, that you wish you knew earlier, starting Rare Shot. 171 - > Brandon Fischer: that persistence is key, and bumps in the road, don't damage you. They only damage you as much as you let them damage you. It's really… anything in terms of starting a startup or a new business is about persistence.

There are so many times I could've… I can think about where I wanted to quit or almost did, and, you know, rare shot wouldn't exist if I did, so… 172 - > Brandon Fischer: A lesson I wish I knew from the start is to not stress about being rejected from time to time, and just, you know, stay on that line and keep going. 173 - > Jesse Stakes: That's awesome. 174 - > Jesse Stakes: What advice would you give to creators trying to build something into a new traditional… into a traditional market like golf?

175 - > Brandon Fischer: I would say… 176 - > Brandon Fischer: Try not to replicate what other people are doing. Try to put your own personality out there. There are billions of people on this planet, and everyone likes something different. Just because one guy with 3 million followers is doing good doesn't mean you have to replicate what he does.

Bring your own personality into it, and I'm sure there will be a group of people out there who would love to watch. 177 - > Jesse Stakes: I like it. I always tell people, be a pink car with purple wheels in a world full of white cars. 178 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely.

That's what my teachers in high school always used to tell me. You're driving the red car, that's why we keep thinking it's you. 179 - > Jesse Stakes: That's right. So, and then, last thing, and I know we kind of talked about this before, but if my listeners hear one thing out of this whole podcast, what do you think that they should take away from your story?

180 - > Brandon Fischer: I would say, be open to golf changing. There are… there's this huge group of younger golfers coming into the market that aren't your traditional, 181 - > Brandon Fischer: golf persona, and it's not a bad thing. You know, golf is shifting, it's bringing a lot of the economy into the sport, just because casual players want to play a certain way, and it might not be what you love. 182 - > Brandon Fischer: I wouldn't oppose it, it's a really good thing for the golf community, and just because you like 183 - > Brandon Fischer: golf being a certain way and, like, playing a certain way doesn't mean you have to change or reflect those values on other people.

Let the… welcome in these new people to golf, and allow it to, you know, keep growing the economy of the golf world, build us new courses, and… and make it a more inclusive sport for everybody. 184 - > Jesse Stakes: I love it. I love it. The golf… the sport of golf is always saying it wants to grow, they want to grow the game, and that's how you grow the game.

You grow it through introducing it to new audiences, to people who haven't been a part of it throughout their whole lives, or people who are just getting introduced to it as they're young. 185 - > Jesse Stakes: And you make it fun. You make it something that they want to do, not something that they have to conform to. 186 - > Brandon Fischer: Absolutely, absolutely.

187 - > Jesse Stakes: Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation. If people have as well, and they would like to learn more about Rare Shot, and two ways. Whether they want to know about the brand, and they want to just learn about getting involved with it from a consumer standpoint. 188 - > Jesse Stakes: Or, as you mentioned, you have investments that are coming in right now.

You guys are raising money, and people are becoming a part of this. And if people listen to this, and they think that it's something that they would have interest in from an investment standpoint as well, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you? 189 - > Brandon Fischer: So, I would say, in terms of wanting to learn more about the company and the progress we're making day-to-day, check out our LinkedIn account, which is Rare Shot Golf. Very simple, Rare Shot Golf, and then if you want to see more of the product and people hitting the balls, I'd say go to our Instagram account, rareshot.

us. 190 - > Brandon Fischer: And then if you're more so interested in the investment sort of things, 191 - > Brandon Fischer: either our LinkedIn account, Rearshot Golf, or I would say reach out to me directly on LinkedIn at Brandon Fisher, and then Fisher spelled F-I-S-C-H-E-R. 192 - > Jesse Stakes: Awesome. We will make sure that we have links at the bottom of this video when it comes out, and everywhere that we put the podcast.

Brandon, I commend you, I think it's a fantastic idea, I think it's an awesome brand that you're getting started with, and I look forward to us continuing our conversations, and hopefully this is just the start of something fun. 193 - > Brandon Fischer: Likewise, Jesse. I, hope someday we'll be able to hit the links together. 194 - > Jesse Stakes: Absolutely.

We'll catch you down the road. 195 - > Brandon Fischer: Alright, thank you so much, Jesse.