This $350 Million Golf Resort Built By A Former Greeting Card Mogul Is One Of America's Best

Forbes

Mike Keiser turned a patch of coastal Oregon into Bandon Dunes, the unlikely home of some of the world’s best golf courses. Now he’s expanding the resort with a simple strategy: If he builds it, they will come.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2024/06/12/how-this-former-greeting-card-mogul-developed-a-remote-golf-paradise-bandon-dunes/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00One thing I had observed as a retail golfer was almost all the best courses in America,

00:06unlike Scotland and Ireland, are private.

00:10So avid golfers, of which there are millions, would love to play Pine Valley or Augusta

00:15or Shinnecock or any number of private courses.

00:18So I thought that was a negative for golf in America and an opportunity for someone

00:22to come in with a quality golf course that's open to the public.

00:26That's been my ethos since day one.

00:29Golf should be affordable.

00:30Golf should be something that anyone can play, and that's what we found here at Bandon Dunes.

00:37My name is Mike Kaiser, and I started Bandon Dunes 25 years ago.

00:46The actual success of Bandon Dunes was astonishing to everyone, including me.

00:50No one thought that people would come to Bandon.

00:54We took bets on whether we'd do four or five or 6,000 rounds per year, which was roughly

00:59break-even, and everyone was just astonished that avid golfers would journey all the way

01:05to Bandon, Oregon, which is four hours from Portland, 11 hours from San Francisco.

01:10Who would make that drive or flight?

01:13Many people did.

01:14I mean, we are now doing 260,000 rounds per year with a lot of people contributing to

01:20that.

01:21Mike Kaiser is an acclaimed golf course developer.

01:23He's the founder of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.

01:26He's inspired, financed, and built other courses around the world.

01:30In 1985, he gets inspired when he plays a bunch of legendary Irish Lynx courses, and

01:35that same year, he gets his first opportunity as a developer.

01:38He buys a 60-acre sand site in New Buffalo, Michigan to prevent it from becoming a strip

01:43of condos near his family's lake house.

01:45He turns that into what's called the Dunes Club, and the Dunes Club is a private nine-hole

01:49course.

01:50It's very successful.

01:51He has a great time doing it, so he decides, I want to do another project.

01:54It whets his appetite for something bigger.

01:56And basically, at the time, he also felt that America's best courses were either too expensive

02:01for the average person or gate-kept by private clubs, so he felt like he could do something

02:06where he could create affordable golf for just about anybody.

02:16So Lynx golf comes from the Old English word, hlink, which means rising ground or ridge,

02:21and refers to sandy area along the coast.

02:23You'll find many of the traditional Lynx courses in Ireland, Scotland, and England, and there's

02:27a very specific definition as to what can be a Lynx course.

02:32This essentially created a style of golf where you're on the sand sites, you're by the water,

02:36by the ocean, there are very wide fairways, oversized greens, there's a lack of trees,

02:41and it's kind of very a minimalist and natural type thing.

02:45Initially, I looked on the east coast for a site and despaired when after two years,

02:50the only things I had seen were on the intercoastal waterway.

02:54They were on water, but not the ocean.

02:56I mean, I couldn't find a site even beginning for sale for even 100 acres, much less the

03:02500 acres I sought.

03:04And I expressed my disappointment to my good friend, Howard McKee, who worked at Skidmore

03:09Owings and Merrill, and he said, you should look in Oregon.

03:13And I knew nothing about Oregon, but I hadn't been finding anything on the east coast.

03:17I put the word out, and lo and behold, within a year, a broker called and said, I've got

03:23this site right on the ocean, a little over a mile of ocean frontage, big sand dunes.

03:28I don't know anything about golf, but I just wanted to call you and tell you about it.

03:33I rushed out there, and it was so good that I then rushed up to Seattle and talked with

03:38the three old guys who had owned the site for years.

03:43And they said, you seem like a nice young man, and we haven't been able to sell this

03:46property for four years.

03:48Sure, we'll reduce the price by half, and we'll wish you well.

03:52It was truly serendipitous.

03:55So I had the money, then I needed an architect.

03:58So the hardest thing to get started was choosing an architect that knew something about Lynx

04:03golf.

04:04And I went to Glen Eagles and talked with Jimmy Kidd and his son, David, and they said,

04:08oh, sure, we know how to build Lynx golf courses.

04:11Let us at it.

04:12And they came right to Band and Dunes and did a fabulous routing.

04:16And then the question was, who will ever come to Band in Oregon to play it?

04:21And we didn't know the answer to that until the first year when we did not the 10,000

04:25rounds I thought was unrealistic, but sort of my prayer.

04:30The first year we did not 10,000 rounds, but 25,000 rounds.

04:35Last year, Band and Dunes recorded an astonishing 257,000 rounds played, bolstered by a top

04:41tier hospitality experience and an eight-figure merchandise business.

04:45Forbes estimates the resort had just shy of $125 million in revenue last year and turned

04:50a profit north of $31 million, valuing the resort at $350 million.

04:56Demand isn't slowing either.

04:57Band and Dunes has an 18-month waiting list, and it's easy to see why.

05:01Four of its full-length courses rank among Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Best,

05:05and its $350 greens fee is roughly half of the $675 that Pebble Beach charges.

05:16When you ask Mike Kaiser about his ethos, about what he's trying to accomplish with

05:19his courses, he's always first to kind of state that he wants it to be in tune with

05:24nature, to complement nature, and that's been a core part of his mission, especially with

05:28Band and Dunes.

05:29Additionally, he owns a bunch of land that he keeps solely for conservation, and when

05:34he builds, he kind of builds in an environmentally conscious way.

05:38Obviously, golf course development can be polarizing.

05:41Developers see things one way, environmental groups and other organizations see them another.

05:45It's hard to generalize without knowing the specific situation, but if you talk to Mike

05:50Kaiser, the one thing he will always say is he's committed to building courses that are

05:54synced with nature.

05:55My dad was an Eagle Scout, and he drilled into us whenever we went on a hike, a mountain

06:00climb.

06:01My dad believes the campsite better than when he got there, so that was sort of early environmentalism.

06:07If you're going to make a mess, make sure you clean it up.

06:12It's a lot easier when building a golf course if you don't have real estate as part of your

06:16plan, because then you just need beautiful dunes, use them for the entire coastline as

06:22opposed to reserving some of the best land for residences.

06:25It's a better way to stay pure.

06:32Being an acclaimed golf developer wasn't exactly what Mike Kaiser thought he would be doing

06:38with his life.

06:39After college and after a stint in the Navy, he got out and he was planning to enter Harvard

06:43Business School.

06:44In 1971, he set to go into HBS, and while on a ski bum vacation, he decides he doesn't

06:50want to go.

06:51So the way he tells the story is that his subconscious was working overtime because

06:55he literally had a dream that he had to start a greeting card company, making cards on 100%

07:00recycled paper.

07:01He got together with his best friend and college roommate, Phil Friedman, they formed Recycled

07:05Paper Greetings, and it actually grew into a very substantial business.

07:09In 2005, they sold it for $250 million to a private equity firm.

07:13My father was aghast.

07:15He was a Wharton graduate and thought nothing made less sense to him than not going to business

07:21school and starting a greeting card company, about which I knew nothing.

07:25The whole idea was greeting cards on 100% recycled paper, so we thought in the days

07:30of beginning ecology, they would just sell themselves.

07:34Definitely wrong.

07:36Everyone thought it was a nice idea, but they bought cards based on the content, not on

07:39the paper.

07:41We call our dads and say, Dad, will you give us $5,000 to start this greeting card company,

07:46about which we know nothing.

07:49And my father and Phil Friedman's father both gulped and said, okay, just this once.

07:56No one thought it was a good idea.

07:58The early days at RPG were going to the Yellow Pages in Chicago, because we had chosen Chicago

08:03as the place to live, looking under artist, bold type.

08:07We figured if they could afford a bold type inclusion in the telephone book, they were

08:11better than the ones without a bold type.

08:14And we would just dial them up and go see them, and we would basically ask them for

08:17their old Christmas cards.

08:20And a surprising number of them thought it was sort of cute, and they said, if you like

08:24Sure, here, take my last 10 years.

08:28So at that early going, we actually had an easy time finding pretty good content from

08:34Chicago artists.

08:35So in 1975, Kaiser and Friedman meet Sandra Boynton, who's a Yale graduate with a penchant

08:40for humorous illustrations and clever messages.

08:43The way Kaiser describes this time in history is that greeting cards back then were all

08:48hearts and flowers.

08:50Sandra's approach offered something different, humor, cleverness.

08:54So they sign her, and instead of the typical $50 per design fee back then, she asks for

08:58a royalty, which they grant.

09:00It's probably one of the best decisions they ever made, because by the mid-1980s, the company

09:04grossed over $100 million in revenue.

09:07And Kaiser will attribute most of that to Sandra Boynton's work.

09:10Now, if you ask him, he'll say she was the woman who made him enough money to build Band

09:15of Dunes.

09:16He'll call her a genius over and over again, and ultimately, it's true, because the success

09:19of recycled paper greetings is what allowed Kaiser to pursue this second career.

09:23Sandra Boynton is a genius.

09:25We met her at the New York Stationery Show in the 1960s, and we didn't know she was a

09:30genius.

09:31We knew that she was gifted, but not a genius.

09:34Basically, whatever she designed for us sold well, and in many cases, sold superlatively.

09:41Her most famous card was a picture of a hippo, a bird, and two sheep, with the message,

09:46Hippo, Birdie, Two Youth, and it ran out of stores.

09:50We actually had a system where we knew what our best cards and our worst cards were, and

09:55that was essential for our success, because we could basically make sure that only good

10:00cards were in any given store.

10:03We grew from $2 million when we first met her to $100 million.

10:07I would attribute almost all that growth to Sandra Boynton, then a genius, still a genius.

10:13She's still working, doing children's books and children's songs.

10:17Whatever field she's in is top of the charts.

10:19She's brilliant.

10:26A lot of golf aficionados around the world were stunned how well Band and Dunes did,

10:32and quickly understood the formula.

10:35Sand dunes on ocean with great architect equals successful golf.

10:40Once Band and Dunes had established itself as an ongoing success, many people came out

10:45of the woodwork, I would say, to find sites that they could develop into Lynx golf courses

10:51around the world.

10:52There are many opportunities close to Band and Dunes.

10:56Specifically, there are sites for three golf courses that I'm looking at just south of

11:01Band and Dunes.

11:02And then further than that, if I live long enough, are the beautiful dunes, 50 miles

11:06of dunes going north.

11:07So to the south, there are at least three sites that I'm attracted to.

11:12Going north, there are as many as four, five, six sites.

11:17For the good of golf, golf should not be for the rich.

11:20And to fall Pebble Beach on one thing, I mean, they are approaching $1,000 for one round

11:25of golf, which is out of sight for many people.

11:28We try to be far less than half of what Pebble Beach is, which right now is $110 to $350,

11:35which is an affordable amount, depending on the time of year.

11:38And I think that that's important for golf.

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