How Featherie's Founder Built A Successful Company At Just 14

Because I'm a golfer I know exactly what I want in my pieces and that's been really important for me to design the pieces and to make sure that the fabrics are good on the course and make sure that the styles make sense and are very functional and so I think definitely the designs are really important for me to do and to contribute to. Howdy y'all I'm Elizabeth Gore welcome to The Big Idea from Yahoo Finance. As the co-founder of the small business funding platform Hello Alice it has always been my mission to help entrepreneurs have the tools they need to succeed. So let's cowboy up. Today's Big Idea question is how can young entrepreneurs build a successful brand before the age of 18? Our industry focus is sports apparel. The global sports apparel market was valued at around 220 billion in 2025 and projected to reach about 298 billion by 2032. Joining me today to talk about it is a little known expert the founder and CEO of Feathery Kate Korngold and her mother Christy Korngold. So youth entrepreneurship is on the rise and it's really exciting right now that between all the tools out there that young people can start their own companies. What Kate has done is extraordinary. She saw a need in golf. Growth in golf 60 percent of it is because women are entering the sport and she saw a need and she tackled it. So can you as a young person do this? Absolutely. Let's talk to Kate. All right y'all welcome to The Big Idea. Thank you for having us. You are officially our first youth guest and I hope there's more to come. Did you skip school today? I did yeah. That makes me so happy. No it's terrible. Well Kate and it's so good to have you all and I'm really inspired that you saw a need. You had to convince everyone from your parents to manufacturers to do this and now Feathery is in the world. Tell me about the company. Yeah so I've been playing golf since I was about four years old and growing up I would go out with my family and my dad to the course and we would go in the pro shops afterwards and I found that there was a problem that there was no golf clothes made for teen girls. So I would watch my brother be able to find something in the boy section and my dad found something in the men's section. Even my little sister could find something in the little girl section but there was nothing made for teen girls who had grown out of the little girl section and weren't quite ready for the woman's section. And so I sat with this problem for a while and when I told my parents about it they told me just to hang tight and that a bigger brand would come out with something and eventually I ended up waiting about three years seeing if a big brand would come out with something and it never happened. So I decided that I was going to sketch out my own ideas and my parents gave me the green light and basically start started from scratch. So I found manufacturers, I found fabrics and colors and basically everything that goes into creating a clothing company and it was really eye-opening. It was a really eye-opening experience. So eventually after about a year I came to a product that I was really proud of and that I knew that girls would be proud to wear and pro shops would be proud to carry and I brought that product to the PGA show which is the largest trade show for golf and it happens every January in Orlando. So I brought it there in 2024 and it was amazing to see the response from the golf industry. It was super positive. It was really reassuring and rewarding for me to see that I had identified a real problem and that I had solved something that a lot of girls like me had been dealing with for a long time. And you you shared with me something I found really interesting that some of the shop owners for lack of a better term said you know what this this I don't have this clientele but you had a clear message about that. What was it? Well when Kate first went to the PGA show and the pros and buyers and merchandisers were coming by many of them commented and said it's a great product but we don't really have juniors playing and it was fascinating after our third year we went back this January those same buyers and pros came by and said I've realized that what I sell in my store sends a message and if I'm not carrying something for the teen girl or for women who are just getting into the sport that are looking for something that is young modern fresh then then I'm that they don't belong here on the course which was really a fascinating thing to hear in just three years and also very exciting that people are finally taking girls and women seriously that they're a serious part of the sport. You have to see it to be it right? Absolutely. Tell me about the name. Yeah so a feathery or a feather ball is the first high performance golf ball and it revolutionized the game of golf because the ball could fly a lot further than it could before and so when I came across this name I thought it would be perfect because in some way I'm hoping that my feathery can also revolutionize the game of golf and it really fit it was perfect. So when you're when you're standing there in the middle of a the PGA show and I assume I just picture like all the booths and everything around you are folks in their 40s 50s 60s and here you are I mean what's like to have the guts to do that it's incredibly impressive. It was really scary walking in for the first time I told my mom I was like what am I gonna say and she just said you just have to tell your story it's authentic and it's real and it's inspiring and so when I went in of course people are walking by and they're stopping they're like what is this 14 year old girl doing um but it was a really really really cool experience. And what what would you be your advice so someone's watching our show right now they're 14 and they have a big idea what would your advice be to them? I would say go for it I mean you never know if it's a bad idea until you try it and you should see where it takes you because it could bring you somewhere really really cool. And and when you were having to research how to do this I'd love to let's take the next step same same 14 year old is watching right now and they don't know where to start so yes go do it but how did you even start developing your product? Yeah so when I had the idea I just began sketching out ideas and because I'm a golfer I knew exactly what I wanted in my clothing so I knew it had to be high performance yet stylish and I knew that I needed little performance details in it so when I was sketching out all my pieces um I was picking out all those details and then we found a designer who could help me sketch out my ideas and after that found manufacturers um found third-party logistics uh fabrics colors basically everything that goes into a company and it's a really long process especially if you don't know what you're doing um but it all comes together and it's really rewarding afterwards to see where it takes you. Did you do homework through all this? I did yeah it was hard in the beginning to balance everything um especially because I was going into high school and now I'm in high school so balancing work or feathery and school has been hard but I think I found my groove right now. And as a parent and yeah as you know I have a 15 year old how did you guide your daughter through this process and how did you because you are young right and and make sure she was okay through all this because it is a lot right? It is a lot so in the beginning it was just it it was Kate and I and when we came back from that first PGA show I looked at Kate and I said this is so much bigger than just the two of us and so we had to find experts in different areas one of the big things was that teens um those that are are the customer are spending a lot of time on social media and finding a lot of their products on social media my kids had never been allowed to have social media so together we had to figure out what does it look like to market on social media to create a website to create um social um social sites Instagram TikTok it it's it you know it was a learning process for me as well I think together we've we've really we we get off a lot of calls and we look at each other and we say what did that person just say and we will figure it out in the beginning all of Kate's calls had to be after 4 p.m because it had to work around her school schedule exactly as the company has grown over the last few years it's not possible for everything to be after 4 p.m we still try to Kate is still included um and a huge part of of you know every aspect of the company but um we've definitely had to bring on board experts in different areas marketing um finance team uh there's a lot behind the scenes now as the company has grown and you've you've expanded right you started with um you know what do you call it skews is that correct yeah tell me tell me what you've expanded to and why by the way yeah so after the first pgi show we had an overwhelmingly positive response from females and women in the industry who were looking for high performance modern sophisticated golf clothes that didn't have patterns and were easy to mix and match with other things so um after we got that feedback in the second collection i decided to expand my sizing to include women as well so we now have a feathery girls collection which is our base capsule collection that i launched in the first pga show and then we also have a feathery women's collection which is sizes 2 through 14 and includes all women who are interested in clean modern sophisticated golf clothes and how um you know product expansion is a hard decision right it's capital intensive you have to put attention to more than i mean how did y'all make let me start with you how did y'all make that decision that okay we are going to go into an entire different area well i think kate had a lot of wonderful ideas with the first collection and we had to kind of rein her in because it was important to figure out if this was really something the industry felt was uh necessary when we got that feedback as kate said we expanded into women's and i think we've had to be very strategic about how we've expanded we want to make sure that we are still able to offer the same premium product high quality product people are expecting we also know that it's just as important to provide a quality product as it is to provide great customer service to our customers and our wholesale accounts and um and we want to be careful about growing too quickly so that we can continue to do those two things right somebody said to us early on if you explode and grow too quickly that sometimes you can implode and that's not what we want to do we want to if you explode too quickly you can implode and we want to make sure that um we're doing it right so to the company to the mission to the products exactly exactly and kate has a lot of great ideas but i think making sure that we're doing um and sticking to feathery's mission which is to provide this premium high performance golf apparel um that people are proud of is is first and foremost have you had to listen to tough feedback criticism how is that definitely i think that in the first pga show a lot of people came up and were like i just don't know if i would carry this i don't know if this is gonna like grow i don't think this is going to be successful and i take that feedback and i grow from it and i build up i build upon it um and i think it's definitely motivated me to continue growing to continue growing this mission and to continue to grow the business as well and at this point as your mom said um you've got a team are there what are things that you choose that only you can do with the company versus what you can offload to your team appropriately definitely i think because i'm a golfer i know exactly what i want my pieces and that's been really important for me to design the pieces and to make sure that the fabrics are good on the course and make sure that the styles make sense and are very functional and so i think definitely the designs are really important for me to do and to contribute to and then there are other things that i my mom helps me with and the rest of the team helps me with but i think definitely the designs have been very important for me to be part of kate's got her hand in every design and i've made some suggestions as a mom and she has said nope i'm not gonna wear that that is not going to be something that feathery creates so um yeah kate is kate is the head designer colors um she's decided patterns are not something that she would wear and um probably aren't in feathery's future anytime soon it was really uh fascinating the first time she sat down with her drawings and um sat down with the designer who was putting them in tech packs and as kate pointed out the different things that she needed like a ball holder or a tea holder the designer turned to her and said now i understand why a woman needs to design their own golf clothes there are so many things that um if you're not playing golf you don't realize are important in your your golf apparel which was really um eye-opening and so true so like spot on well designed by the end user right that's super interesting are you always sketching i am yeah i always have so many ideas in my mind you do you carry a sketchbook with you i have one at home and i just have millions of ideas and there are i want to keep doing things i want to put in my next collection i think um what i'm about to ask you every teenager in america is going to tune in right now and how did you wear down your parents to finally do this i have to know yeah i mean when i first went to them they didn't believe me at first because they thought it was just impossible that there was no golf clothes okay designed for teenage girls and eventually they realized i was right and they told me well after waiting three years and no one's coming out with it that it would be okay if i just keep talking to them i did yeah three years there was one moment that actually pushed us over the edge what was it after three years at kate had taken a golf camp at a very prestigious club um here in the states and after the the camp was over we went to the pro shop so that she could leave with something that had the on it and they had a very large shop they actually had multiple shops and she left with a hat because there was literally nothing for her to buy that wow she could fit into and it was that moment where my husband and i looked at each other and said this is not right this she kate is kate is spot on like this is sending a message to not just kate but to all girls who are teens that are playing golf that you are not as important as you know with the boys and um i think that at that moment we both said kate's gotta kate's gotta do this and she you know we knew she was passionate about the idea because she had been talking about it for so long and um you know we all decided worst case scenario it doesn't work out but how will you know if you don't try well i will tell you you're gonna have to pitch a lot of investors in your life and a three-year process it's usually not that long so you did a great job um so you got you all keep mentioning the impact of the sport and you you give one percent is that correct every tell me about your what you're giving and why and so on yeah so one percent of all sales goes to giving back to women and girls in the golf community and then we've also partnered with multiple organizations to just get more girls and women onto the course so this past summer we did a girls golf clinic we had women tournaments and basically the goal of feathery is just to make golf less male dominated and to make women and girls feel confident and comfortable on the course and um that's a big mission but i think we're slowly chipping away at it and i think it's working so far do you feel um do you feel more excited this is a tough one about the products the business or the impact i think the impact i think walking into the pga show was very cool but this third year seeing how many woman brands there are now for woman golf clothes and it's just amazing to see that women finally have all finally have options and finally can feel comfortable on the course and i think that feathery has definitely contributed to that to make i always believe in like look good play good and so look at feel good as well so if i have something that i feel confident wearing on the course i'm going to feel confident being there and so i definitely think the mission has been really exciting to see um but of course absolutely i want more girls and women to get into feathery and to represent it on the course that's that's exciting um are you are you thinking a year out three years out five years out i'm just curious and how far out are you thinking for this business right now i'm thinking pretty far out i think definitely after college i want to continue to grow it i think that i mean i have so many ideas i don't think i could do it all in the next three years so definitely don't want you to implode as her mom said right no imploding yeah slowly grow um but yeah i'm definitely looking long term i think this could go really far i want to know for you was there a moment after the company launched where you were like oh my god this is working i think when we came back from the pga show and the number of uh female professionals that came by the booth saying thank you so much for creating this i have i dealt with the same issue as a teen girl playing in tournaments where they would give everybody the same boys polo that we had to wear um i think that that was extremely validating for both kate and i to know that the hard work the the time and commitment that she had put into trying to figure out how to make this work it was really validating i think that even over the last three years it's been the feedback that we've gotten from courses from customers that's what keeps us going that's what makes all of this hard work worth it i think that it's really exciting also to see the potential where the how the industry is moving um you know 38 percent of golfers are female junior golfers are females really i think that number is growing uh 28 percent of on course golfers are females and uh 60 percent of golf's growth since 2019 has been because of wow so it's it's like it's finally a woman's moment in golf and i think that that is to be to be a part of that is super exciting and what what what has been the most exciting moment since you launched i think i think seeing other girls who come up to me and they're like yes i lived through this problem and you just solved it and it's amazing and then also hearing from female pros and other females in the golf industry saying like i identified a real problem um it's been really rewarding to feel to hear the feedback from everyone that's awesome yeah so on our show we talk about dirty unicorns so it's it's a mistake because we all make dozens a day in business but a mistake you've made that you learned from in your business i'm just curious what what your dirty unicorn is i think one of my biggest mistakes is not starting early enough i think i sat with the problem for way too long well your parents weren't letting you yeah um but i think if i had started it earlier i just regret not starting earlier i feel like i sat with it for too long i waited for a bigger brand to come out with something and it never happens and i thought that the golf industry would change something but it's never never changed and here you are yeah and what about from your perspective and is is there mistakes that y'all have made that we can all learn from oh we make mistakes every day and i think uh probably the number one thing is to learn from your mistakes yes very good to course correct that it's okay it's it's something that is part of the you know comes along with the territory um and but to make sure that you if that's negative feedback or if that's something that's just not working that you change it and not afraid to change it do you see shoes in your future um she does i don't know if i do yeah i mean socks for sure yes now with a bunch of new accessories this year you did tell me more yeah so our new collection is a couple new pieces couple new colors and then over the course of the year we'll be dropping new accessories as well oh that's exciting i also have a really exciting partnership um this year at the end of the year with the red organization oh i love red where we are coming out with three products that um represent red and 25 of the proceeds will go to support um and empowering women and girls through their organization and just for folks listening red was started by bono and a team of folks gosh 20 25 years ago it's their 20th anniversary now have y'all been through any of the challenges with supply chain and tariffs and have you had to navigate that absolutely tariffs has been a hot topic at the dinner table for the last year and i still think it's we haven't quite figured it out but it has unfortunately impacted us significantly especially hard as a small business especially as a small business yes yeah um but it it seems like every day there's something new so right we're just trying to navigate it and do you all just you know sit down and think okay we got to pivot we have to conserve cash i mean what do you do in those moments not just tariffs but things that unexpectedly happen in your business so we've explored um multiple different manufacturers to make sure that you know something happens in one location we can shift to another location we've done extensive research on fabric mills and making sure that we're not putting all of our eggs in one basket so that we have options when things change in the market um yeah and just making sure that we're prepared well what what are you most excited about what's next so the new collection launches tomorrow yeah how do people find it um on our website feathery.com okay and we'll also be posting on our social medias um to keep updates and everything do you have a favorite in the collection this is a new sweater that we're launching and i'm very excited about it oh i love the trim thank you gorgeous so yeah is that your favorite out of the collection i think so yeah yeah how come i've really wanted a sweater for a long time and um it's finally here and it's so cute it's the first time you've had a kind of a cold weather uh first time we've had like a knit sweater we've had some outerwear pieces before um but i've been waiting a long time to be able to show this that's so exciting yeah you're incredible thank you for coming on i just so proud of what you built and can't wait to see the future but also i really want to thank y'all for your impact on women's sports i mean it's so important that my daughter has the ability to one feel comfortable on her own skin her own clothes and see herself at the course so thank you both for coming on the show you're amazing thank you for thank you for having us at the end of each episode i like to give a shout out to a small business that is doing amazing work today i'd like to shout out one of kate's favorite entrepreneurs jenny wang jenny is a tech entrepreneur who founded alta an ai powered personal styling app with a background in computer science and experience at major tech companies she created alta to solve a common problem making it easier for people decide what to wear and where to buy it wang built alta to act like a digital stylist using ai to understand a user's wardrobe preferences and lifestyle then she suggests those outfits and how to shop for them her goal is to make fashion more personalized efficient and accessible through technology you can check out alta at alta daily.com thank you to kate and christy for coming on the show this was so special to have a young person with us we hope all of you learned a lot this has been the big idea from yahoo finance you can come say howdy to me at any of my social channels at elizabeth gore usa please make sure to scan the qr code below to follow yahoo finance podcasts or check us out at the big idea wherever you get your podcasts i'm elizabeth gore and as my grandma always said hold your head up high and give them hell see you next time this content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services