Fairways • Winter 2010
Encouraging Success for SUMI-G

by Kurt Kragthorpe

Ever have one of those frustrating days on the golf course when nothing goes right with your game, and even pulling the head cover onto your driver seems difficult?

Marius Kvinge had one of those days, and he did something about it – starting with the head cover.

That’s the simplified yet reasonably thorough explanation behind the evolution of the Sumi-G signature product, a solid, hinged head cover that’s designed to take the tugging and pulling out of the driving experience.

It is a classic case of an invention that makes you wonder why nobody ever thought of it sooner. And then Kvinge tells how it was five years in the making, with some 50 prototypes and $100,000 invested, and it all becomes another reminder of what it takes to succeed as an inventor and entrepreneur.

At one point during the story, Kvinge acknowledged, “Reasonable people would have packed it in.”

He could smile when he said that, knowing that while Sumi-G’s story has not achieved a completely happy ending just yet, the signs are very encouraging.

Based in a converted duplex in downtown Salt Lake City, Sumi-G was voted the “best new golf company of 2009.” You’d almost expect some kind of wry one-liner to accompany that award, considering the economic climate of that year, but there’s something to be said for launching under those conditions, as opposed to sailing along in previous times and being shocked by the downturn.

Kvinge and his wife, Laura, who spent the week helping pitch the products, cited an aura of optimism pervading the floor at the recent PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando. Maybe they were just judging by the constant traffic at their booth, a “fantastic response,” according to Kvinge.

This is the latest upswing of a business career he describes as “kind of a crazy ride.” Kvinge, 44, grew up in Oslo, Norway, and attended the University of Utah, where he met Laura. He moved back to Norway, where she followed, and the couple returned to Salt Lake City in 1993.

She works full-time in public relations, skills that now are proving helpful in promoting his company. To get to this point, Kvinge operated a construction company, then was in the freight-forwarding business, then worked in international sales for Ogio, then marketed his own golf accessory to Callaway and then developed the head cover that could become a life-changing advancement for him – and other golfers.

Laura Kvinge remembers coming home to the funny smell of baked molding clay, plastic and rubber. That was in the days when her husband was developing a curved divot tool with a rubber handle that once was dismissed as “too radical.” It must have caught on, considering how Callaway commissioned him to make 1.2 million of them.

That project was his response to being laid off from Ogio, the first in his series of “having to take a leap of faith twice,” he said.

Next: the head cover, which at times became as puzzling and frustrating as the motivation for the product itself. The goal was simple: make something that’s easy to take on and off the modern big-headed drivers, as opposed to leaving the cover in the cart basket all day and having the clubheads rattle around. The inventor’s personal habit is laying the cover on the ground while driving, then easily scooping it back onto the head in one motion. It’s all part of the routine that every golfer values.

The challenge was creating a cover to fit different shapes of drivers, a process that was “a lot longer and a lot more difficult than I expected,” Kvinge said.

His wife uses the phrase “sanity check” to describe how they kept assuring themselves that he was really on to something, not just being blindly encouraged by friends.

Finally, the patented development all came together, resulting in a product whose conception he now labels “a blessing and nightmare at the same time,” looking back.

After initially pursuing licensing agreements with big companies, Kvinge chose to launch his own company. So, what’s behind the name?

“Sumi-E” refers to an Asian art culture, of black ink painting with elegant, clean lines. The “G” is for golf, as you may have guessed.

The concept is simple, functional, aesthetic products for golf purists. The catalogue features head covers for drivers, fairway woods and hybrids; men’s and women’s belts, with interchangeable buckles and attachable ball markers; and distinctive accessories including hats, bags for various uses, divot tools, money clips, brushes and scorecard wallets.

Kvinge is a Bonneville Golf Course regular and a faithful Uinta Golf shopper (and in turn, he’s thankful that Uinta has supported him as a local retailer). So while Sumi-G’s products are described as “high-end,” he wants to keep pricing reasonable. In 2009, making in-roads as a “Web” store (sumi-g.com) with hardly any advertising enabled Sumi-G to get some footing. Its current marketing push is toward the “green-grass” segment, pursuing deals with country clubs and private facilities that want tailored products. That’s important to the business, because the embroidering of logos on the headcovers, for example, must be done during production.

Consolidating production into one manufacturer in China has reduced some headaches, after several trips to Asia and the discovery of Skype as a critical communication tool in an effort to get samples and product lines just right.

Sumi-G now has distributors in Europe, Asia, South Africa and Australia. Having initially received a pitch about the product for his golf blog, Tony Korologos of Salt Lake City was sufficiently impressed to become the company’s national sales manager.

The reviews have been very favorable in various golf publications and on-line sites, and Kvinge is confident the company will keep growing in the coming years.

“Eventually, we’ll penetrate most of the market,” he said.

And clearly, he’s persistent enough to make that happen.

Kurt Kragthorpe is a Salt Lake Tribune sportswriter and frequent contributor to Fairways.