Teen Founder Kate Korngold Saw Golf’s Blind Spot and Built the Fix

Kate Korngold kept finding the same three choices when she shopped for golf clothes: the children’s section, the boys’ section or women’s apparel designed for a different age and body.

She was a competitive junior golfer who understood what her clothes needed to do through a full swing, a long practice session and changing weather. She also knew how she wanted to look. The golf industry, for all its resources and talk about growing the game, had left girls such as Korngold to choose between function, fit and personal style.

At 14, she decided to stop waiting for somebody else to notice.

Korngold founded Featherie, a performance apparel company initially created for teen girls, with her mother, Kristy Korngold, helping lead the business as its president. The brand has since expanded into women’s clothing and says it has generated 146% year-over-year growth. Because Featherie is privately held, that figure is company-supplied and has not been independently audited.

The percentage is impressive. The reason behind it is more revealing.

Featherie did not create interest among women and girls. That interest was already there. Korngold simply recognized that one of golf’s fastest-growing participant groups was still walking into shops and struggling to find products designed with its needs in mind.

Founder Profile

Featherie at a Glance

Founded

By Kate Korngold at 14

Original Market

Teen and junior girls

Expansion

Full women’s collection

Reported Growth

146% year over year

Featherie says it directs 1% of sales toward supporting women’s golf. The 146% growth figure was supplied by the privately held company and has not been independently audited.

The Problem Adults Had Learned to Accept

Young golfers often reveal weaknesses in the industry because they have not been around long enough to accept them as normal.

Korngold did not have decades of golf-business experience telling her why creating a specialized apparel line would be difficult. She had the direct experience of a customer who could not find what she needed.

“I never thought it would be possible for me to start my own business,” Korngold said in a 2024 interview with Golf Today. “Everyone has been so incredibly supportive and loves the idea that it took a 14-year-old to fill a major void that all of the large brands had overlooked.”

That sentence should make the golf industry slightly uncomfortable.

Golf regularly discusses attracting young people, particularly girls, but participation is only the beginning. Retention is shaped by dozens of signals that tell a new golfer whether she belongs. Instruction matters. Course access matters. Competition matters. So do the experience inside the golf shop, the fit of a uniform and the ability to wear something that feels like her rather than a compromise handed down from another department.

Korngold approached apparel from the course outward. Featherie products include stretch fabrics, ventilation, secure zippers, tee holders, scorecard pockets and UPF 50-plus protection. These are not decorative additions dreamed up in a conference room. They address details a golfer encounters during an actual round.

“Because I’m a golfer, I know exactly what I want in my pieces,” Korngold told Inc. “That’s been 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 functional.”

There is a useful business lesson in that approach. Market research can identify a demographic. Lived experience can identify the small frustrations that decide whether a product actually works.

Golf’s Growth Is Testing Old Assumptions

Featherie’s arrival coincides with a significant change in the recreational game.

The National Golf Foundation reported that more than 8.1 million women and girls played golf on a course in the United States in 2025. Female golfers accounted for 28% of the on-course population, matching the highest proportion on record. Their numbers have increased by 2.5 million, or 46%, since 2019.

The junior numbers may be even more important to Featherie’s story. Girls represented 35% of junior golfers in 2025, compared with 15% in 2000.

Those are not projections about a distant version of golf. Those players are here now.

The industry’s challenge is catching up to them.

Golf spent years treating women’s and girls’ products as smaller extensions of existing men’s lines. The old “shrink it and pink it” approach was never genuine product development. It was an admission that the consumer had not been included early enough in the process.

Korngold began from the opposite direction. She was the golfer, the customer and the person experiencing the problem. Her first designs reportedly included practical details such as dedicated tee and ball storage, locking zippers and fabrics selected to provide coverage while allowing unrestricted movement.

The company also broadened its women’s collection after discovering that adult golfers shared many of the same frustrations as its original teen audience. What began as a narrow solution exposed a wider market failure.

Why It Matters

The Audience Golf Can No Longer Overlook

Women and girls are helping reshape the American golf population.

8.1M

Female on-course golfers

28%

Share of on-course golfers

46%

Growth since 2019

35%

Junior golfers who are girls

Source: National Golf Foundation, 2025 U.S. participation data.

A Mother-Daughter Business With a Larger Purpose

Featherie founder Kate Korngold, left, and her mother and company president, Kristy Korngold, model the brand’s apparel on the golf course. The mother-daughter team built Featherie after Kate struggled to find performance clothing designed for teen girls. Photo courtesy of Featherie.

Youth entrepreneurship stories can easily become polished tales about ambition, leaving out the adults, capital and operational work required to turn an idea into a functioning business.

Featherie’s story includes that support.

Kristy Korngold has worked alongside her daughter in building the company, helping transform sketches and product ideas into sourcing, manufacturing, retail and wholesale operations. Kate brings the golfer’s perspective. Kristy helps provide the experience and structure needed to move the business forward. The partnership gives Featherie two relevant viewpoints: the junior player who encountered the original problem and the adult woman who understands that the apparel gap extends well beyond teenagers.

The brand now sells girls’ and women’s collections, has exhibited at the PGA Show and has pursued wholesale growth through a partnership with RepSpark. Featherie also says it dedicates 1% of sales to initiatives supporting women’s golf, including entry fees and opportunities for young players.

That commitment matters because clothing alone will not solve golf’s participation and retention challenges. Apparel can, however, remove one more reason for a girl to feel that the game was built without her in mind.

Korngold expressed the idea plainly in an interview with the Association of Golf Merchandisers.

“I created Featherie to make sure girls know they matter in this sport,” she said.

That is the line worth remembering.

Not the founder’s age. Not the growth percentage. Not the novelty of a teenager appearing at an industry trade show alongside established companies.

The enduring part of Featherie’s story is that a young golfer noticed what was missing, trusted her own experience and refused to believe that a longstanding omission had to remain one.

Golf is gaining girls at a historic rate. The companies that will help keep them are the ones willing to see the game through their eyes.

Korngold did that before much of the industry did.

Then she started building.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on R.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.

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This story was originally published by Athlon Sports on Aug 5, 2026, where it first appeared in the Golf section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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