Equipment
Golf Industry’s Dynamic Brands
Feels Right at Home in Virginia
by LISA D. MICKEY
38
Leighton Klevana, CEO of Dynamic Brands, says a product redesign of the Burton bag brand will take place
this summer.
But from those odd bedfellows sprung
opportunity when Spalding bought Ben
Hogan in 1997.
Klevana and a business partner spun off
Bag Boy as a standalone brand and went to
work redesigning the product line, turning
the carts into streamlined, lightweight
products with contemporary graphics.
The transformation worked and Bag Boy
emerged as an industry category leader.
Parent company Dynamic Brands was
established in 2004, following the 2003
purchase of Baby Jogger. Klevana acquired
the bankrupt active-lifestyle stroller brand
at auction, but as a non-golf brand, he was
forced to essentially form a holding company.
Dynamic Brands bolstered Baby Jogger,
which recorded $80 million-plus in sales
over a nine-year period before it was sold.
And while Baby Jogger was growing,
so was the company’s portfolio of golf
brands. From 2014 through 2017, Dynamic
Brands acquired other companies to
build its strength in the industry’s golf
accessory business.
Now, such brands as Burton and
Datrek, and category leaders Devant Sport
Towels and “I Gotcha” ball retrievers are
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 8
positioned alongside Bag Boy to offer such
golf specialty items as walking carts, golf
bags, travel covers, gear bags, golf towels,
bag tags and various other items under the
company’s umbrella.
Those Dynamic Brands products are sold
everywhere from country club pro shops
and local golf retail stores to the large-chain
sporting goods retailers. Devant towels,
for example, are officially produced for the
Ryder Cup, the U.S. Open, U.S. Women’s
Open and the PGA Championship.
Established in 1908, Burton, one of
the company’s top products, has a long
history that has faded in recent years
with the introduction of more lightweight
golf bags. Dynamic Brands hopes to
reinvigorate the brand’s unique heritage
with a product line redesign this summer,
with a relaunch set for autumn.
“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on new-
product development, innovation and
ways of separating ourselves to provide
the golfer with a functionally superior
product,” Klevana added.
And with certainty, those efforts are
taking place on drawing boards far, far from
the hills of California.
vsga.org
RICHMOND IS A LONG WAY from golf-
manufacturing mecca Carlsbad, Calif., but
one Virginia-based company has firmly
and successfully established itself and its
products in the Old Dominion.
And as far as its CEO and Richmond
native Leighton Klevana is concerned,
Dynamic Brands is here to stay with 50
employees in both Virginia and North
Carolina, serving customers around
the world.
“We take great pride in our brands
while building on their reputations with
innovation,” said Klevana, who became
interested in golf as a teenager while
watching cousin Robert Wrenn win on
the PGA Tour.
“ We also take pride in providing
unmatched customer service within the
golf industry,” he added. “We’ve made a
lot of long-term customers because we’re
here supporting our brands and providing
the customer service they expect.”
After graduating from Vanderbilt
University, Klevana headed to Georgia
State University for his master’s degree
in sports management, his career path
focused on event management.
He worked as an intern with three
different professional golf tours, but soon
found he disliked the post-tournament
letdown after tours moved to the next venue.
Klevana, a VSGA member at The Country
Club of Virginia, learned that running
tournaments didn’t energize him as much
as developing new products. He accepted
another internship in Atlanta with Mizuno
Golf and later landed his first job back home
in Richmond as product manager with the
Ben Hogan Company.
Hogan and the Bag Boy brand were
then under the same corporate umbrella,
but the contrast between the two brands
was glaring.
“Hogan was a revered, high-end, green-
grass, hard-goods product line and Bag
Boy, at that time, was an old, heavy,
utilitarian-type die-cast pull cart that
weighed about 25 pounds,” Klevana said.