Back to the Future

Under the new parent Pins and Aces, Edel Golf is reconnecting with its roots and seeking growth

By Jim Bebbington

Photos by Michael Ciaglo

The co-founder of Pins and Aces, the Colorado-based golf apparel company, was talking with an old family friend, Doug Coors, one day in 2024 when Coors made him an offer.

“I can’t even tell you how it actually came up,” Pins and Aces co-founder Nick Mertz said. “We were just talking one day, I think we were playing golf, and Doug said, Hey, any interest in buying the business?”

The business was Edel Golf Clubs. Coors had purchased the business from its founder, David Edel, and other investors in 2020 and moved its headquarters here to Denver in hopes of spurring a growing business.

But the golf club industry is notoriously fickle and difficult, and after focusing the product line on sets of customizeable irons Coors by 2024 was ready to get out. “You guys have the expertise to kind of grow and scale this to the next level,” Mertz remembers Coors explaining to him. “So we looked at it and made a deal.”

Mertz and his brother-in-law, Jon Major, had launched their Pins and Aces brand in 2018 and saw its popularity skyrocket along with the growth of post-pandemic golf. But by 2024 they were ready to grow again, and entering the golf club manufacturing space would certainly be one way to do it.

“I always said I never wanted to make shoes, clubs, or balls,” Mertz said. “I never wanted to do that. And then here we are.”

Mertz and his team visited the operation’s performance center in March and were in awe. There were club fitters building clubs, and more than a dozen Korean golf-influencers had been brought in that day to shoot content to keep the brand’s name out front. He also saw a line of beautiful apparel bags, gloves and other items that the Korean branch of the family had developed and sold exclusively to the Korean market. “I mean, it’s unbelievable,” he said.

David Edel had founded the company in the late 1990s and created a niche brand that started out with fitted putters and then became known for its wedges. In 2015 Bryson Dechambeau won the U.S. Amateur playing single-length irons that Edel had crafted for him.

ADDING EDEL TO THE PINS AND ACES FAMILY

Pins and Aces operations continue to grow. After purchasing an office and warehouse building in Arvada in 2023, they stuffed it to the roof with inventory to fulfill their online sales and embroidery business. Then they added a second 7,000-square-foot warehouse here in Denver, and then brought in-house staff from Edel after they acquired the business and shuttered its Colorado Boulevard location.

Edel’s manufacturing is centered in Austin, Texas, where David Edel originated it. Now the company’s Arvada building is up for sale as Pins is seeking a new, larger home to bring the Colorado operations back under one roof.

Last November – not even a year after bringing Edel on – Pins bought another company, Sweet Rollz, which manufactures putter grips. So, with irons, wedges, putters and grips now in the line-up they are working to re-establish the identity of Edel’s quality.

When Pins acquired Edel, its line of SMS and SMS Pro irons – with adjustable circular weights on the back – were the primary product. For the first few months, Mertz said the job was to understand what they had purchased.

Mertz visited the Austin Edel manufacturing site, talked with the staff- including Nico Edel, son of founder David – and tried to envision a path for growth.

“The first year of acquisition, we want to stabilize the business,” he said. “We want to come in and understand it, not have any knee-jerk reactions and fire a bunch of people, change the way things are operating. (We want to) get into the business, understand it, stabilize it, and then have a plan for growth. You know, it’s a long-term play for us to do that.”

One thing that became apparent immediately is that the customer for golf clubs which cost $190 each and up and folks who want golf polos with loud pop-cultural patterns are somewhat… different.

“Truthfully speaking, the customer who purchases Pins and Aces is someone who wants to party, a weekend golfer, have a fun time,” Mertz said. “You know, we’re kind of playing on the edge a little bit with some of our products. And then there’s Edel – a long legacy, long history. Bryson Dechambeau won the U.S. Amateur with all clubs. Those single-length irons. I mean, that’s where it started.”

But as Mertz first visited the Austin Edel location, he saw the walls lined with gorgeous putters of the brands past. David Edel began the company by making putters – they were among the first zero-torque putters on the market.

“These are unbelievable,” Mertz said. “They’re beautiful putters …. I’m like, but we’re a putter brand first. It’d be like if Nike stopped making shoes.”

Among the first decisions they made was to bring putting manufacturing back into the core Edel lineup. They have monthly drops which go on sale through the edelgolf.com website and can go for $1,000 each.

“We make a very high-end artisan putter,” Mertz said. “Not everyone’s gonna buy that, but they see that and say, wow, made in the USA, handmade. These guys, they know what they’re doing. The Edel name, they know what they’re doing. And so by having that, you’re not going to make millions of dollars selling thousand dollar putters. It’s a very, very small market. But it adds validity and legitimacy to the brand that, okay, if these guys can make this, how good are their irons and wedges and other things?”

The wedges have remained popular and have recently undergone a redesign – with a single weight available in the back that can be changed based on how the player feels.

There are well-funded competitors out there fighting to retain market share against the Edel’s of the world. Mertz said they are unlikely to enter into the driver or fairway wood competition as the technology needed to stand out with those clubs is beyond the company’s resources.

Because of that, then, they are unlikely to get a PGA Tour player to play their irons. Most PGA Tour gear contracts are for 13 clubs – irons, wedges and woods. Without woods, they can’t crack that market, Mertz said.

Which is why they’re banking on their revived putter operations to get their foot in the Tour door.

“The margins (of victory) are thin, and so any little advantage they can get (they’ll take),” Mertz said. “And then you see this one player is putting good with a club, and then more and more players start using this. If we can get kind of a breakthrough … can we get a guy to use an Edel putter and then it starts taking off. That’s kind of like our moonshot of getting Edel to where we need to be. And so you can get a player who’s got a 13 club deal like Ricky (Fowler), and he’s going to swap out his putter. He’s not going to be brand loyal. He’s going to use what’s best. And that’s what a lot of guys do. Or Brooks, who’s got a totally mixed bag.”

Going forward, Edel is planning on biannual upgrades of its club designs, Mertz said, and will continue to try to get their putters into the bags of LPGA and PGA players.

Nico Edel, David Edel’s son, lives in Denver and works for the company still as its chief fitter. He learned to walk as a child holding onto a putter; it’s in his blood. He’s proud to be pushing the brand forward.

“The putter I play in my bag, I machined (it) from start to finish,” he said. “And I just spent time watching my dad design products and asking him questions like, why are you doing this? Why are you trying that out? And so just watching him and learning his philosophies and theories and just trying to expand on those now and still maintain the core values and things that we’ve done.”

The acquisition has already changed the customer base for both Edel and Pins and Aces. Many Pins customers have been exposed to Edel products, and some have bought the clubs. Edel buyers have now become more aware of Pins and Aces.

“It helped us elevate with some of our new products, like our Player Preferred line, more high-end stuff,” Mertz said. “That’s kind of more of an overlap with Edel. So that was a reason to make that purchase – it just kind of elevates the brand in general and gets into a market that we weren’t in at all previously.”