Front Nine with Rick Buchanan, Founder & CEO, Biion Footwear

Biion Footwear made its first appearance at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando in 2015. It was a colourful launch with 36 styles in brilliant combinations. The shoes were made of EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate) and founder and CEO Rick Buchanan spent a lot of time explaining that you could actually play golf in rubber shoes.

Fast forward to 2023 and Biion sells in 50 countries around the world, has expanded into fashion, boating and recreation, and broadened their product line with new models, colours and applications. The company is based in Collingwood, Ontario and while expansion has taken them into many diverse markets, their roots are still in the golf industry.

Fairways Magazine recently caught up with Rick on a Zoom call.

Launching a new brand in the golf business isn’t a walk in the park. You’ve been at it for nine years. Is it everything you thought it would be?

We try and be as positive as we can on this stuff. We’re like the little train that could, but it’s not been a straight line up. A lot of people from the outside think, oh shit, everything’s going great. But there’s a lot of punches in the stomach. There’s a lot of hurdles and roadblocks and backward steps. But what has kept us going, and I tell people this, has been the shoes. I can be down and out, our team can be down and out, and I’ll get a phone call from Steve Harvey or Janie Hendrix, Jimmy’s sister, Johnny Damon, or someone out of the blue offering us an incredible opportunity. And just stuff like that. It’s been incredible the opportunities we’ve had that have kept us going. Hard work, perseverance and of course a bit of luck have gotten us where we are today. I suppose it’s the cuts and bruises you get along the way that helps you grow stronger and ultimately makes the brand. I don’t know if we’re different than other new brands but that’s been our story.

When you first launched there was an emphasis on hardcore golfers. It seems to me that now there’s more of an emphasis on casual golfers, recreational golfers. Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah, I think so. If you look at the trend in golf right now and what golfers are wearing, we’re not going after the pros at this point. We’re going after the 95% of golfers that want to go out and enjoy a game and have fun and look good, and feel good. We are a comfort and color story for sure, but bring performance and functionality to the forefront within the golf industry. It’s something fun for the golfer. When I started this, I thought we’d be 90% men, especially with the Oxford Wing tip, but we’re 50-50 in golf. We’re selling a lot of women’s shoes, which I had no idea we would, and women are buying several pairs, men too, because it’s a shoe that’s multifunctional. If you want to golf in it, you can. If you want to go on the boat, cottage, garden, whatever you want to do in Biions, you can do.

We have coined the term ‘one shoe with many talents.’ We don’t want to alienate golf, per se, but the functionality and the performance has opened up several other sales channels for Biion. We’re really driving home performance in EVA, especially. We’re elevating EVA where we get compared to Crocs all the time. A lot of people say, we’re the Crocs that you’re not embarrassed to wear, but you take a look at Crocs, it’s a success story. They did $4 billion last year, so they’re doing something right. Reason being is I think through the pandemic, a lot of consumers, a lot of people in general went to that leisure mode, right? They’re wearing sweatpants on Zoom calls and more relaxed athleisure wear. So, we saw our sales climb for sure through Covid, especially on e-commerce, because we’re a shoe that’s just not a golf shoe that you keep in your locker. It’s a golf shoe that you can put in your car, your bag, awesome travel shoe, especially if you’re golfing on vacation. Who wants to carry six pairs of shoes when you can just have a couple pair of Biions for the beach, for dinner and for the golf course. We have met a ton of great golfers – Ricky Fowler, Jordan Spieth, the Golden Bear himself Jack Nicklaus – to name a few, and they have Biion shoes that they wear to practice, on their boat and out to dinner. We don’t want to compete with Sketchers or Nike and millions of dollars of endorsement deals; it has just happened organically on or off the golf course, and that’s terrific. We’re not out there to compete with FootJoy and Adidas in the pro division. We’re out there to have fun for the recreational golfer that wants to look good.

In the minds of consumers, whether they’re golfers or boaters or anybody else, what do you find has been the biggest misconception about Biions?

We’ve been e-commerce driven for the past four years and I think one of the hardest things is getting the consumer to understand EVA when they can only see it online. They wonder, “Can you really golf in these?” Early on with club pros, we would visit and ask if they would try the shoe in the shop and the response was often, “Nobody is going to golf in a rubber shoe.” But we’ve given a lot of shoes away in the course of eight years, and it’s come back to us tenfold proving you don’t knock it until you try it. And once we get those feet into our shoes, people get it. It’s a comfort story, it’s a fashion idea but still, until they’ve tried it some people are still wondering, “Is it going to grip?”

And they’re pleasantly surprised that they work on the golf course. I wear them all the time. There’s a lot of people that have many pairs of Biions and golf in them religiously, but we’re not going to be for everybody. And we respect that. In fashion, people get it right away. It’s a color story in golf, I feel. Definitely a color story, but we’re a comfort story too. It’s something you can play 18 holes in and not have to take them off. But yeah, the misconception of people thinking they can’t golf in a rubber shoe has meant it has taken us a lot longer to sell our shoe as opposed to more traditional footwear with high performance leathers and carbon fibers and super spider cleats, and we’re coming in with a soft outsole with HEXTRA grip. So that’s been, I’d say, the biggest roadblock.

You’ve obviously morphed way beyond golf. How did that come about?

Well, I knew we would transition into fashion eventually because that was my background. A lot of my contacts were in the fashion industry, but the boating industry came by accident. It was golfers wearing us on their boat, and we just so happened to be a non-slip outsole. So, it worked in the boating industry, and then really, it’s been other industries that recognize how good the product is and look at what they can do with a rubber shoe to be quite candid. The customization opportunities have been incredible. Biion is an omni-channel brand selling into Golf, Sport, Fashion, Boating, Hospitality and now the medical industry.

We get inquiries all the time from hospitals, food service companies, wedding parties – you name it.

Coming back to golf, you started with the green grass markets but really saw your growth take off in e-commerce selling direct to consumers. Now it appears you’re getting back into wholesale. Is that a switch or an expansion?

One of the things we’ve learned is that it’s tough to start a business and maintain a business and grow a new brand on Zoom and on phone calls. People need to see the product in hand. Golf pros and buyers need to see the product, you need the handshakes for sure, especially with new distributors.

So, we’ve started opening up into strategic wholesalers in North America now with PGA Superstores in the U.S. and Golf Town here in Canada. We’ve hired a new sales agency that runs North America for us in the golf industry, so we’re slowly getting back into green grass. On the fashion side of the business, we’re in Nordstrom’s and now a new partnership with Hudson Bay Company up here and Harry Rosen and several other independent retailers.

We’ve got 20 distributors now that manage just over 50 countries for us. Only three of our distributors are golf specific. The majority are fashion driven, lifestyle and sport driven. Golf is still a major component of Biion here. It was our roots when we started in North America. We’ll never alienate those roots. And we’re still probably almost 50% golf on e-commerce in North America. Japan and South Korea are heavy in golf. So too is Latin America. Everywhere else, Biion is just more of a lifestyle brand for fashion and sport.

The perception is that Biion is a fun product. How did you build that reputation?

We started doing a lot of golf tournaments in 2017 and 18 and 19. We would send three or four people out with our trailer and have music and serve drinks, and everybody would get sized up. And we created some excitement around the brand there. Travis Matthews grew their brand from doing events like this. So, we saw the opportunity there. We pride ourselves on doing a good job at tournaments.

We’ve got two big marketing trailers now, a 20-foot stage trailer and a 35-foot stage trailer that we take to events. We get the boombox going, we’ve got cocktails going, four or five or six staff that go out and spend the day on the golf course and interact with golfers in a fun setting with a fun product. It’s been incredible for us. As I said, one tournament leads to ten more, particularly on the celebrity side of the business. We did the Joe Carter tournament up here, the Blue Jays tournament, the NHL, the NHL Alumni. Covid took the rug out from underneath our feet as far as events go, but post Covid now, we’ve seen a massive increase. We’ll probably do 80 tournaments this year.

They’re not all celebrity tournaments by any means. We do a ton of corporate tournaments, but celebrity events often lead to other opportunities. We did the Steve Harvey tournament in Georgia this year, which in turn got us into Cedric the Entertainer’s tournament, the David Ortiz tournament and led to a collaboration we’re doing with former Boston Red Sox player Johnny Damon. Then George Lopez, DJ Khaled’s tournament was a couple of weeks ago in Miami, and we had a couple reps down there, and there’s about 12 people wearing Biions at his tournament, including Cedric the Entertainer and Steve Harvey and whatnot. We’ve been blessed that it’s grown that way, and like I said, it’s been all through our roots in golf.

Rick, you’ve got some new products coming that look really exciting.

Very exciting! After we started, we had the Oxford on the market for six years before we introduced a new model called the Trainer. This year, the Oxford is still our #1 shoe, but the Trainer will probably surpass the Oxford in 2024. It’s a Stan Smith sort of SKU, and we’re hitting a younger demographic with it, both in golf and with fashion trendsetters in the 15 to 25 age bracket. It’s popular with older generations too.

We’ve also got a new Chelsea boot that lands on the market in October, and it’s a Chelsea boot that you can actually golf in, which is awesome. It was inspired by the wet conditions in the UK and Ireland and Scotland. A totally waterproof golf boot.

And then we’ve got a new mule called the Rome, which is more of a slip-on with a closed toe. Judging from our trade shows this year, it’s a very promising SKU, and will hit the market in the first quarter of 2024.

Sustainability has come up several times in our chat and I know it’s important to you. Can you tell us what you and your suppliers are doing in that regard?

All of our shoes are three-piece construction, and we’ve really focused on material development, especially through the pandemic. The Rome, our new mule, is 100% made out of recycled materials. By the end of 2024, we’ll be about 80% sustainable with bio-based materials including a new injection rubber that’s made from 100% rubber compound. And then our outsoles now are made of recycled plastic bottles. We were able to do a lot of this through the pandemic. We just didn’t sit back and hope for the best. We worked with our factory partners and came up with, I would say, the most sustainable shoe on the market in the golf industry hands down right now. So, we’ve done our homework and hoping for good success with the new SKUs.

Okay, Rick, thanks for doing this interview. One last question: Socks or no socks?

It’s 50-50. Today, it’s cold out, so I’ve got socks on, but I’m majority without socks. In-store it’s 50-50. Obviously on the boat, you’re sockless, but on the course in Florida at 90 degrees, I like to have a sock on for sure.

For more information about Biion Footwear, click HERE.