THE TRILBY TOUR SERIES: RICHARD GILLIStalks to Saville Row's William Hunt who started the Trilby Tour to promote his wares

IN GOLFING parlance, William Hunt made the trousers that “went around the world”. And to hear the Saville Row tailor tell the story, you could be lulled into believing it was all a happy accident. But don’t be fooled, getting his clothes noticed is what William Hunt does very well.

When he met Ian Poulter (“a spiky-haired young bloke”) at a pro-am before the 2004 British Open at Royal Troon, he said he liked the trousers I was wearing and could I make him some, says Hunt, as we eat lunch at The Groucho Club in London’s Soho.

“He was due to be playing on the Thursday but on the Tuesday we still hadn’t made him anything. He rang me and said where were they, so I lied, telling him I had them and that I’d bring them up. We had some Union Jack material hanging about so we knocked them up and took them up to him at Loch Lomond, where he was staying.”

Poulter, says Hunt, was not initially taken with the design, “The colour drained out of him and he wasn’t convinced, but once he got them on he grew into them.”

When Poulter walked on to the first tee at Troon, the response was vociferous and immediate.

“There is no specific rule regarding the banning of that style of trousers. However, having said that, we wouldn’t wish to encourage that type of attire,” spluttered Arthur Dunsmuir, the captain of Troon that morning. But by then the story, along with Hunt’s name, was leading the front pages on newspapers around the world.

“Poulter’s a Marmite guy, you love him or hate him,” says Hunt now, “but that day helped him launch his career”.

It didn’t do Hunt much harm either.

Encouraged by the media headlines, Hunt decided to expand his business from Saville Row suits into golf wear. But he found the day to day job of making money in the golf industry hard going.

“Selling clothes through golf pro shops is hard work because the people at the sharp end – the golf pros – are not geared up to sell your product, they are not good businessmen, in that sense. The problem is you’ve got the head pro who has a captive audience, but the captive audiences are all his mates, and he feels he has to do them a favour the whole time.

“If you come in my shop week in week out, you’re looking for me to do you a deal, and I feel obliged to give you one. So their cash flow gets crucified and the pro is giving everyone a discount and it’s killing him. We distribute to small boutique stores up and down the country and we don’t bother with the department stores, who say, ‘we’ll put one of your shirts in the window this week for a thousand quid’. When was the last time you saw something in the window of Brown Thomas and ran in and bought it?”

By now, however, Hunt’s commercial relationship with Poulter had reached its end, as the player was lured away first by the cheque book of adidas Taylormade, and then to set up his own clothing line. Hunt won’t be drawn on whether the break up was acrimonious: “I’m 50 years old, I tend not to fall out with people anymore. When you’re in your mid-20s you take business break-ups as personal. But now? If he wanted to do his own thing good luck to him.”

Are Poulter’s range of clothes any good? “That’s not a fair question,” says Hunt, “Me commenting on Ian’s trouser designs is like him commenting on my golf, it’s not really like for like. He had no more use for us and we had no more use for him.”

The absence of a one-man PR machine like Poulter however, led to Hunt reassessing how he was going about the business of selling golf clothes.

The usual model sees a clothing company paying tens of thousands of euro in endorsement fees, money that according to Hunt is largely wasted. “We got lucky with Ian Poulter and it worked either by fantastic planning or incredible fluke, depending on who you believe. But on the whole you end up paying for someone who might win and might get some exposure and who might get seen on TV or he might tell someone he’s been kitted out by me. I tried that avenue and you become a slave to the player, it’s all ‘I want this, I want that’. Golfers are quite single-minded – they have to be – so it’s all about them and you have to put a lot of effort into getting something that might happen. You really don’t get much return from anyone out of the top six or eight in the world, it’s become like football, which is all about the big few teams and nobody cares about the rest”.

To solve these dual problems of distribution and promotion Hunt set up his own Trilby Tour series of amateur golf events, the latest of which takes place at Druids Glen in Co Wicklow on May 31st. The aim is to offer club golfers a sniff of what it’s like to play in a real pro tournament, with Sky’s TV cameras following your every move. The Irish event is now one of 12 on the Trilby Tour, which has a final at the Oxfordshire course in Britain at the end of the summer.

But as ever, below the golf, the business is whirring. The hundred or so entrants to each event pay a €290 fee and in return receive trousers, shirt, belt and of course, trilby hat from the William Hunt range. Viewed through this lens, the Trilby Tour is a series of hour long advertisements.

“The golf industry hasn’t really caught on to us yet,” says Hunt. “We’ve ended up with a 12-part series on Sky Sports of people walking around in our clothes, that’s 1,200 outfits we’ve sold and there are no other products on the golf course. So compare that to our golfer who might get seen ...”

Venues such as Druids Glen also contribute a fee to host the event, which Hunt says, they should be able to make back two fold, “even if thee are half asleep”. Each of the 100 players brings a caddie so Hunt is delivering a number of thirsty and tired people to Co Wicklow, many of whom will buy hotel rooms and pay for practice rounds. “We looked at The K Club but I knew I wanted to go to Druid’s straight away”.

The relationship with the club was brokered by former Irish Open champion and Ryder Cup player John O’Leary, whose own club, The Buckinghamshire also hosts a Trilby Tour event.

“I only like working with people who I like,” says Hunt.

His list of friends extends to several of the Manchester United team, from his days running a boutique in the city. The relationship began with a visit by Mark Ferguson, son of Alex, to the store (Ferguson junior once appeared in a Hunt advert in the city, wearing a suit under the line Son of God). Many of United’s golden generation became regulars, which led to another PR coup for Hunt, the making of the team’s official FA Cup suits for the 2007 final.

After making Gary Neville’s wedding suit, Hunt inquired as to which of his competitors had been commissioned to make the team’s outfits.

“They already had some Italian designer – I can’t remember his name – so I just told him to get rid of him! Fire him! I’m a United fan! So Gary made a call and two minutes later called me back and said ‘you’ve got the job’!”

But again the savvy tailor was thinking of the PR angle. “The association with the club is worth a lot, something you’d normally have to pay a lot of money for. Those Audi seats in the dug out at Old Trafford don’t come cheap, you know”.

Neville ordered Hunt to make navy blue suits, due to a superstition related to their suit colour in a previous final. “But we played a little trick on Gary because when it came to giving out the final suits, the first one up was the club captain and when he undid the bag there was a nice white suit there. He wasn’t best pleased, though. He kicked me very hard up the arse, properly hard, like a pro footballer would”. The pain was well worth another headline.