OCEANTEE has been making waves in the golf industry ever since the brand launched just a couple of years ago.

The professional Tours, tournaments, players, businesses and golf clubs are all making sustainable switches as a result of founder, Ed Sandison’s, determination to show the industry that quality and environmentally friendly products and processes can go hand in hand.

Sandison’s big idea started with the smallest problem; plastic tees. They may be small in size, but as well as being classed as single use plastic, the damage they cause is almost immeasurable. If left on the course they are often picked up by birds, they break greenkeeping machinery and even enter our waterways ending up in oceans or discarded on beaches.

Sandison’s plan was to develop an alternative that would ensure that a little less plastic makes it into our oceans as he explains: “Golfers have been brought up with plastic being the norm, but there really is no need to keep on relying on them when there are better materials available.

“When I start speaking to people about why our bamboo tees are a better solution than plastic or even wooden tees there is a light-bulb moment, then people are quite open to switching.”

From Sandison’s eureka moment he’s been on a voyage of discovery investigating revolutionary sustainable materials, facilities and processes around the world. Tees were the starting point, but during lockdown, not only did Sandison manage to launch the brand’s first item of clothing – a polo shirt named after an endangered shark and featuring the world’s first biodegradable, plastic free, elastane – he also managed to secure a series of agreements that will see the brand’s profile increase dramatically through 2020 into 2021.

Early adopters of the OCEANTEE brand came from far and wide, but one of the first golf clubs to retail OCEANTEE tees was Prince’s Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent.

They have been actively embracing sustainability across their business as Rob McGuirk, general manager at Prince’s Golf Club, explains: “We are challenging ourselves to be aware of the impact we have on this beautiful landscape so OCEANTEE was a great fit for us.

“What we are particularly proud of is how quickly the members have embraced the brand and its products. It shows that golfers are increasingly aware of the effect that they have on the environment and the connection that they feel to the places where they play.”

Another organisation who were keen to work with OCEANTEE was the Oman Golf Committee who are responsible for putting on the Oman Open, a European Tour event.

Championships and technical director, Jamie Wood, contacted OCEANTEE after seeing the brand and commissioned co-branded matchboxes for the tournament. “We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment so working with OCEANTEE makes complete sense,” said Wood.

“The products are fantastic and gives us a relatively low-cost way to showcase the Oman Open’s commitment to environmental responsibility.”

At this event the brand’s direction took a really interesting turn when winner of the tournament, Finland’s Sami Valimiaki, took some OCEANTEE matchboxes home and asked his management team – ISM – to get in touch. Since then the relationship between the two companies has blossomed.

The ISM team has been wearing branded OCEANTEE clothing at Tour events and its tees were provided to all competitors at the two ISM-managed European Tour events in Cyprus in November. Most impressively, all of the ISM Tour players at Aphrodite Hills made a ‘Plastic Tee Pledge’ kickstarting a pan-industry campaign to encourage golf to abandon plastic tees in favour of sustainable alternatives.

“There is a real appetite for change across the industry,” Sandison comments.

“Tees were just the beginning for me, but it is the easiest switch for golf to make. We want to use our brand to showcase golf as an innovative, forward thinking sport and at the same time to give our non-golf charity partners, like the Marine Conservation Society, a platform to educate golfers about ways that they can become more environmentally aware.”

This message is reinforced in a new brand video that was released at the end of October, showcasing OCEANTEE’s commitment to the environment and posing the question: ‘What can a single tee do?’

There will also be an official announcement in the pipeline for December about a partnership for 2021 between OCEANTEE and the Ladies European Tour.

As with much of the brand work Sandison undertakes, including his ongoing commitment to donating 25 per cent of corporate profits to marine conservation and golf sustainability charities, this promises to be more than a box ticking relationship for both parties.

Nothing about OCEANTEE is haphazard, and Sandison has built a brand that wants to be different whilst always adding value to the industry.

Even the development of OCEANTEE’s Women’s line has been unconventional. Rather than simply commission a designer, Sandison decided to recruit a female focus group from across the industry and ask them what was missing from golf.

The responses and interactions were such that Sandison and his team has designed a much wider range that uses a series of new fabrics and manufacturing processes. The entire line is manufactured at the only factory in the world to have achieved Greenpeace’s textile procurement standard.

This uniquely combines the use of organically farmed fibres, no harmful substances, fair pay and transparency.

As the brand and product line-up grow, the next steps for OCEANTEE are ones that take the brand and its products away from the United Kingdom and Sandison is excited by this progression.

The American market is one that has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of OCEANTEE ever since Golf Digest featured the tees as a highlight product at the PGA Show in 2020, even though the company wasn’t an exhibitor. With an agreement in the making for the US for spring 2021, Europe is next on Sandison’s list and is a market that is already embracing sustainable consumerism.

He explains: “Even back in 2009 EU reports were showing that people in countries like France, Austria and Slovenia were readily aware of the impact of their consumption on the planet.

“Golfers treasure the environments that they play in so if we can show them that switching to bamboo tees, or purchasing clothing that has no plastic in it can have a positive impact then I am sure that they will embrace OCEANTEE.”