Summit Golf Brands (SGB) announced a partnership between the company and Michael Barry. The partnership, effective immediately, will have Barry and his team of seven sales professionals represent all of the SGB’s brands (Fairway & Greene, Zero Restriction, B Draddy and EP New York) to leading clubs, resorts and corporations in Australia and New Zealand.
Opening up these markets is timely given the 2019 Presidents Cup will be held this December at Royal Melbourne where Zero Restriction has been named the Preferred Outerwear Provider of Team USA captained by Tiger Woods. The US Team, their caddies, wives and girlfriends will be wearing custom designed Zero Restriction layering and outerwear pieces during the competition.
Barry owns and operates A2Z Golf, a 1,400 square meter warehouse and showroom facility in Melbourne with 24 embroidery heads and a customer service team. Additionally, clients in Australia and New Zealand will also have access to the full assortment of SGB’s industry leading, and in some cases proprietary decoration methods including “no-backing” embroidery, R4, Crested Patch, 3D Twill and Heat Transfer.
Like Summit Golf Brands that traces its roots back 25 years, Barry has a long heritage in the game of golf. He began as a PGA apprentice in 1981 and was a touring professional from 1984 to 1996. During that time, he won the Victorian PGA Championship as well as the Western Australia PGA Championship. He then went on to be a PGA Club Professional at Portsea Golf Club in Victoria, Australia. Capitalizing on his experience in the industry and strong relationships made through golf, he began A2Z Golf in 2006 focusing on headwear. The addition of Summit Golf Brands provides Barry with a full range of high-end golf apparel offerings to service the needs of his more than 450 accounts.
With the addition of Australia and New Zealand, Summit Golf Brands products are now sold in over 25 countries across 4 continents to more than 3,000 accounts. In addition to Zero Restriction’s selection by the US Presidents Cup Team (in 2015 as well as 2019), they have also been the Official Outerwear Provider for the US Solheim Cup team since 2015 and will continue in that role for the 2021 Solheim Cup to be held at Inverness Golf Club. Furthermore, in 2019, Summit Golf Brands products were sold in the merchandise tents at major sporting events including the US Open (golf), US Open (tennis), Open Championship at Royal Portrush and various PGA Tour events across the United States. SGB currently has over 30 Brand Ambassadors across the various PGA sanctioned tours who have amassed 136 professional victories among them.
SGB’s President and CEO Chad Delp said of the new partnership, “Opening up Australia and New Zealand has been a key part of our international growth plans for some time but having the right partner was critical. We know that Michael, who is so well known and respected in that part of the world, is the exact right partner for SGB and we are proud to have him and his team representing our brands. The timing of all of this coinciding with our involvement in the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne is particularly fortuitous and we look forward to meeting a lot of our new clients in December.”
Barry added, “I wanted to find an apparel partner who could provide a complete range of both men’s and women’s apparel that had the best product available. There was only one choice, Summit Golf Brands.”
