With a little extra time, energy and creativity, Alice Scott said what was born of a joke became her livelihood.
“How can you go wrong with a name like Butthead Covers?” she asks. Yes, that’s right, “Butthead Covers.” Scott, a Sherburne high school graduate and part-time resident of Earlville, said her company specializes in making golf club covers designed as creatures and characters of all kinds.
Scott and her husband Danny were living in Arizona after her early retirement when one day out on the golf course, the idea for her business was born. She said a man they had been golfing with spotted a cover she had in her golf bag. “What is that, a turkey butt?” he said. Alice said they joked all afternoon about her “turkey butt” that was simply a cloth cover, but from there she decided she would research the idea and come up with her own version of a “turkey butt.”
“I made the first one myself by hand,” she said. Alice quickly got busy forming a business plan. After looking around, she registered her domain name, her son Mike started working his magic on the website and after not finding any local manufacturer, she decided to outsource the production.
“With my working for AT&T for over 20 years, I used a lot of the same concepts for this business,” said Alice.
Making the business mobile was one of Alice’s main goals. “We knew we would continue to spend summers in Earlville and still live in Arizona throughout the winter months,” she said. The business opened in 2004 and is run strictly online; the products are ready to ship to meet the demand anytime.
Hoping to distribute nation-wide and work their way eventually into the international market, Alice said her business plan had to be redirected after the first two months. “I planned that it would take two years to hit the international market, but in reality after we launched, it took two months,” she said. “We first presented at the PGA show in Orlando. We won best new product and from there we were on our way,” she said.
“We have been fortunate to see success throughout all of our endeavors,” she said. “It has been magical.”
Now with more than 2,000 direct customers and thousands of distributors all over the world, Alice said “Butthead Covers” continues to be a lot of fun, but there is a business to run as well. She said all of the golf covers are original creations and with the addition of two more product lines, “Bootyful People” and the “Tiny Hiny” line, business is booming.
Aiding charity efforts is an important aspect of the business. Alice says the couple is involved with the Special Olympics and hardly a day goes by when they are not sending golf club covers to charities.
The mission of the company, which Alice says has been lived up to since the beginning, is to bring humor to the game of golf while contributing to charity and the economy along the way.
The Scotts continue to travel to Earlville in the summer and throughout the year they attend shows to introduce their product to more markets. Always continuing to create new ideas, Alice said secrecy is key and she does not divulge any of her ideas until they are launched. To see the Butthead Covers products or to place an order, go to www.buttheadcovers.com.
Editor’s Note: “Chenango Stories” puts the spotlight on those people whose compelling stories you might not otherwise hear. If you know someone who is interested in telling their “Chenango Story,” contact Jill Kraft at 337-3075 or e-mail: jkraft@evesun.com.