Daily Inspiration: Meet Jay Piper

Today we’d like to introduce you to ParHopper Golf Apparel.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m Jay Piper, half owner of Parhopper along with my partner in crime, Max Pavelec. I’ve always been the guy with loud shirts. I went to art school in Savannah, GA (SCAD), and was always drawn to bright/vibrant shirts. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design back in 2015 and have since worked for design firms, print companies, web firms, and now run my own design business. Over the years I tried several different brands of my own. I’ve designed and helped establish hundreds of brands for clients but could never land on a brand of my own.
Aside from design, I have been a golfer my entire life. It wasn’t until I moved to Denver from Savannah back in 2018 that I really fell in love with golf. The guys I met here and started to golf with each week were better than the guys I grew up playing with so they pushed me to want to get better and I did pretty quickly. Fast forward 2 years to 2020. One of my closest friends here and someone I gold with quite often, Max Pavelec, asked me if I was interested in starting a brand together. Max is very successful in his career and wanted a sort of creative outlet to do for fun. As much as we loved to golf, I said why not a golf brand? We both liked the sound of it so we started to brainstorm names. That’s when our partnership started.

We were actually out and about on a Saturday in the Summer of 2020 and we were bar hopping. My dad was with us at the time and had been trying to help us think of names. Out of nowhere, he says “well we have been bar hopping all day… why not play off of a par in golf and call it ParHopper?” Well, that was just genius. All 3 of us started grinning and knew that was it. That was what we wanted to call the brand.

From there the brand developed so easily. We knew we wanted a brand that was different. We didn’t want your old country club boring brand. We wanted something that shows personality, something that turns heads on the tee box, and ultimately a brand for the golfers who like to have fun on the course. We love golf, but we love to have a good time even more. ParHopper was created for the golfers who love the game but also love a cold beer or two along the way. With that concept in mind, Max and I started to discuss the logo. What better character to represent a golf brand than a bunny rabbit? Thus, we created “Hopper.” To show our true personality of the brand we gave Hopper a crooked ear and an X’ed out eye to show he is slightly buzzed. Essentially our brand became a drunk bunny rabbit.

It was the quickest, easiest logo I have ever designed in my design career. I designed it in about 2 hours and we didn’t revise it at all. We literally created our brand logo on the first try. From there we started social media pages, I built us a website, we started pushing marketing and creating custom polos, hats, shirts, you name it. The rest is history! Everywhere we started to go wearing our hats or shirts would strike up conversations with strangers. Anyone who passed by and saw the logo was curious enough to ask us what it stood for. That’s when we started to realize we had something special.

As Max started to see the social media pages grow and sales actually started to come in through our website, he got excited and gave me the green light to start working on custom polos. From there I started designing all of our patterns and working with a production team to get the fits exactly how we wanted them. Max has helped fund ParHopper from day one, has been my partner in business, and has helped develop the majority of the ideas behind most of our products. I can’t thank him enough for seeing the potential in the brand and staying on board with me and actually pushing this thing to see where it would go.

Here we are now in 2022, turning two years old in August. We have grown our social media following to over 20k. We have started this year with more sales in 3 months than we did the entire year last year. We have created partnerships with local golf lounges, started an ambassador program that has over 25 ambassadors, had a couple of videos go viral and we have a ParHopper 4 man scramble we are planning for the Summer. We are starting to produce more and more custom products and have no interest in slowing down! We are so excited to see where this brand will continue to go and can’t thank everyone who has supported our brand enough. Thank all of you guys for helping us bring a new style into the golf world.

Tee it up, Drink it down.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest roadblock we had was covid obviously. We nailed down our products pretty quickly, but covid started to make it extremely hard to actually get our products in hand. At one point we waited 7 months for an order of our hats to arrive! We did go back and forth with our production team on how we wanted our polos to fit, but we think we have found the perfect medium. Our polos have an athletic fit but don’t cut the circulation off of your biceps. The fabric is extremely comfortable and the patterns well… they turn heads.

We started small and slowly started to put more and more money into the brand. Max believed in the brand and saw the growth opportunity so he became more and more willing to invest into it. To this day we have not pocketed any money from ParHopper and have put every bit of profit back into the brand. We both still have our full-time jobs, so we don’t look to ParHopper as a money source yet, we are more concerned with getting it in front of people.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I think what sets ParHopper apart is the fact that we have such a close grip on it. I specialize in branding, web design, apparel design, and social media marketing. We have saved so much money being able to build our own website, we design all of our own products, we do all of our own marketing and essentially do all creative aspects of the brand in-house. It’s easy for us to take an idea and bring it to life quickly. Having such a great partner also helps the brand continue to grow. Max is a more black and white kind of guy vs me being loud and vibrant. He keeps me in line when it comes to the design and gives great input to keep it from getting too loud. We have a really solid mix of minds to keep the brand innovative.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
ParHopper is a new style of golf apparel for those who love the game but also love a beer or two along the way. This isn’t your old country club polo and we aim to be far from it. We make apparel that stands out on the tee box. We’re the brand that people walk by and think “damn that’s a cool shirt.” Our gear is extra comfortable, 100% unique, and sure to turn heads.

Beer a hole? Let’s do it. Fireball shots for birdies? Always. Shotgun on the first tee box? Is there another way to start the round?

The golf course is our second home. The links are where we go to hang out with friends and to make new ones. It’s where we talk shxt about the group in front of us slowing us down. Sure, we love to shoot well but we just love the game in general.

Our apparel is for athletes and for the average Joe’s, we don’t discriminate. Who cares if you’re good at it, just have a good time with it. We are all about going for it… very rarely do we lay up. So, you shouldn’t either. When you’re on that par 4 that is drivable, go for green, especially if the group ahead of you is still putting.

We believe your most important shot is your next one, so take a shot with us. We have polos, hats, hoodies, balls, and a whole lot more. Hop aboard a new brand.

Contact Info:

• Email: parhopperapparel@gmail.com
• Website: https://parhopper.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialparhopper/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialparhopper
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@officialparhopper