Jane Spicer started her golf club headcover business at age 10: Made in Arizona

Jane Spicer is an entrepreneur who started her own company, Daphne's Headcovers, as a 10-year-old kid.

Originally beginning as stuffed animals, the plush toys turned into puppets and then into headcovers for golf clubs. This turned out to be a twist of fate that would stick with Spicer for the rest of her career. Daphne’s Headcovers became synonymous with one famous golfer who liked the tiger stuffed animal headcover for his clubs.

After Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters, Daphne’s Headcovers really took off. The stuffed tiger even became a character in a series of Nike commercials. Spicer told The Show her cover Frank the Tiger is still their most popular headcover today.

Full conversation

JANE SPICER: Well, there weren't any animal headcovers. They hadn't been invented, so I took some of the puppets and turned them into headcovers. I went to the Goodwill and bought a patent leather hatbox because I thought golf was fancy, so I should have a fancy sample box. And then I went to—I talked my way into the Arizona Biltmore and gave my first sales pitch, and the pro there, Pete Roblot, was incredibly kind. And he said, "I'm going to tell you three things: One, it's the worst sales pitch I've ever heard; two, I like your headcovers; and three, I'll place an order, and I'll give you some tips on who else to see." And Daphne's Headcovers was born.

LAUREN GILGER: That's unreal. How old were you?

JANE SPICER: I was just 16.

LAUREN GILGER: 16 in that guy's office. That's amazing.

JANE SPICER: It was cool, yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. OK, so it's grown exponentially since then, and there has been some kind of big moments over the years. But I have to ask first, did you like golf? Did you know golf? Did you play golf at the time?

JANE SPICER: I didn't play golf at all. I didn't know it. The only thing we'd use golf courses for was if we were hiking and we found an injured bunny, we'd nurse them back to health and let them go on—I probably shouldn't admit that—we'd let them go on the golf courses because we figured they'd have plenty of food once they were healthy again. But I had never golfed.

LAUREN GILGER: So you found yourself in the golf world. Did you ever at that time, when you're that young and starting a business like this, did you ever imagine it would be your career for the rest of your life?

JANE SPICER: I didn't. I mean, I knew I'd be an entrepreneur. I'm not very good at being told what to do, but I didn't know that this was necessarily it. I pictured something more glamorous in a studio in San Francisco and kind of posh—not covered with fur and, you know, schlepping things across the country and selling puppets at street fairs. So I didn't know that this was going to be it.

LAUREN GILGER: But it was. And that had a lot to do, it sounds like, with Tiger Woods. Obviously, synonymous now with what you do, but that wasn't always the case. Tell us the moment that everything kind of changed. Can you tell us that story?

JANE SPICER: Oh, sure. I mean, we were growing, and we were a little global, but we were, you know, a small company. And I started hearing rumblings about a young golfer who was winning and doing really well, and he was carrying our headcover. And just kind of hearing bits and pieces of it, but I was so busy, you know—it was a small shop—that I didn't pay much attention until we got a phone call one day. Somebody called up and said, "I want to buy 30,000 tigers." And, you know, I did what you did. I kind of laughed. I was like, "OK." And they said, "And we want premium service, so we're going to pay you more." So I said, "Oh, OK." And there's a lot of lululs that call when you make soft-stuff things, so I thought it was another lululu. So I said, "Well, fine. Just send me 50% up front, and then we'll talk about it." And the check came the next day. I didn't even know what to do. I'd never seen so many zeros in my life.

LAUREN GILGER: Did you think it was real? When did you believe it?

JANE SPICER: Well, you know, I took it—I do remember this clearly. I took it out of the envelope, and I held it up to the light, like that's how you tell if a check is good or not. And went, "Oh my god," and I stuffed it back in the FedEx envelope. And at that time, I was in two buildings, and there was a house in the front that was the office, and then my cutting and sewing staff were in the back. And I ran back to tell them. It was a pretty janky building, and the parking lot was torn up. And I ran up the first three steps and I caught my foot and fell down the three steps on the other side. So my staff heard all kinds of crashing, and they came out, and I was sitting on the ground with skinned knees, skinned elbows, but the check was intact. I was gripping it to my chest, and I said, "You guys, we just got really, really busy!" And that was the start of, you know, really being buried for quite a few years.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So talk about that growth and that kind of exponential growth so quickly. How did you handle it?

JANE SPICER: Well, it was crazy. We grew 400% in one quarter, and I had just bought another building, so we were in the process of moving. So we didn't have enough staff to do it. So I was so scared that we couldn't handle it that I deposited the check in a different account because I didn't want to spend it, just in case. You know, I was like, "I don't know if we can do this." I literally worked around the clock. You know, I just hired everybody that could sew, brought them in, so we had sewing teams in the building. Then I also had companies from Mexico come up, and I would teach them how to sew at night, and they would load their truck up and take it down to Mexico to sew. I literally didn't go home. I slept in the factory because that was, you know, eight more hours of—maybe take a nap here or there—was more time to work, and just kept on going and kind of improving processes as we went or as we made mistakes, just going until we could fulfill the orders.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. So you're global now in a major way, selling these all over the world and making them, it sounds like, all over the world—a huge operation. Tell me a little bit more about Tiger Woods and sort of the relationship. It sounds like you have a relationship now with his mom when she needs some new headcovers for him, she'll call. That still happens?

JANE SPICER: Yeah. The first phone call was kind of a funny story. So I was, you know, very young in the business and basically hired anybody who had a pulse. That was the qualification, just grateful that they'd come and work for me. And I heard one of my team on the phone saying, "Well, I don't care if her name is Mrs. Woods," with loads of attitude, "we don't have any tigers, and she can't have any."

LAUREN GILGER: Oh, no.

JANE SPICER: Yeah, it was a big "oh no." So I'm yelling, "No! No!" running at the phone. It was still attached to the wall, so I grabbed the phone cord, ripped it out of her hands, and the phone bonked, you know, on the floor. Crash, crash, crash, all the way along. Picked it up, "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Yes, yes. Oh, we have tigers." We didn't, but I knew I'd get it for her. And since then, I've always kept six tigers locked in my closet or in my office drawer so that they're always ready for her so that that never happens again.

LAUREN GILGER: Just in case.

JANE SPICER: Just in case.

LAUREN GILGER: Like if a factory burns down, you still have the tigers.

JANE SPICER: I still have the tigers, yeah. I'm still right there for her.

LAUREN GILGER: That's so great.

JANE SPICER: Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: So tell us about Frank, the headcover that Tiger Woods has used his entire career. Also became like a character. It's in commercials; it became everywhere. What was that like for you?

JANE SPICER: Oh, it was wonderful. I mean, back in the fax machine days, one day a fax came over from Nike and said, "Hey, we're thinking about this. We'd like to license Frank. We'd like to license your tiger." He didn't have a name then. "Let's have some discussions." And they were wonderful to work with. They came up with the name Frank because he speaks his mind. He's very frank; he's very cheeky. And they were great. They sent a bunch of storyboards, and I said, "You know, my mom's name..." because on all of Daphne's headcovers, there's a signature label that's my mom's signature, and I put that on after she died so that she was always part of us. So I was like, "My mom's name is on here. This tiger needs to be polite. He can be sassy, but can you guarantee me that?" And they were great. And so they created some commercials, and they were wildly successful, so they created more and more. And, you know, now they do clothing. We did a—we call it the derivative, another kind of cartoony logo of Frank, and that's on lots of Nike clothing out there. So it's just grown and been a fun journey with them.

LAUREN GILGER: So I wonder, looking back at this career of yours, and you're still going, clearly, but I mean, starting at age 10 doing this and still doing it today and having had the kind of success that you've had staying in Arizona, what do you think your biggest takeaways are? What are the best lessons learned?

JANE SPICER: Well, you know, I think that business is just like hiking, really. I'm a big hiker. I had a period in my life where I did Piestewa Peak every day for two years. And some days I'd get up and I'd bounce out of bed, and I'd go to the top of the summit and I'd come back, and it was great. Other days, I didn't want to get up, or it was a grind. But I did it every day no matter what. And I didn't see all the ancillary benefits that were coming from that at that time. I was just kind of meeting a personal challenge. That's what business is like. Some days it's great, you're on top of the summit. Some days it's rainy and muddy, and it stinks. Some days you're banged up; some days you're on top of the world. But if you continue going, it's always worthwhile.

LAUREN GILGER: And some days you're banged up holding a check.

JANE SPICER: Exactly! Exactly, yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. We'll leave it there. Jane Spicer, CEO of Daphne's Headcovers, joining us to tell the story. Jane, thank you so much for coming in. I appreciate it.

JANE SPICER: Thank you very much for having me.