In 2023, my husband, Nick, and I spent 6 months in St Andrews, Scotland—an extended “honeymove” built around our shared obsession with links golf. Between April and October, we played more than 110 rounds of golf on 43 links courses across the British Isles.

The experience opened our eyes to how many golfers were on the same cookiecutter trip, and missing out on some of the best Scottish golf as a result. It inspired us to start planning golf vacations ourselves, to share our love of links golf and some of the hidden gems we’ve found along the way.

When we got back to Canada, we officially launched East Sands Golf Co. The name is a nod to the quiet beach we lived on in St Andrews. Every golf tourist who visits St Andrews sees West Sands Beach, the iconic 2 mile beach that frames the Jubilee and the Old. But few see East Sands—its counterpart across town where locals surf in the summer and cold plunge in the winter.

East Sands speaks to the ethos of our trip planning approach: local recommendations and off-the-beaten track experiences that go well beyond the typical bucket list.

A brand that’s true to us

With a plan to run this boutique travel agency independently as a husband and wife team, we cared deeply about building a brand that reflected our values and goals from the start. We hired a Designer/Art Director to bring our vision to life based on the branding foundations I had developed.

Brand values

• Timeless: we’re big believers that if you chase what’s contemporary today, you’ll be outdated tomorrow.

• Trustworthy: we’ll never compete with the biggest players in the space, nor do we want to, so we need to earn people’s trust through our knowledge and bespoke approach.

• Insightful: much of our value comes from being golf geeks who know all the ins and outs—if you book with us you’re signing up for local knowledge and deep golf expertise. 

• Inclusive: we want to capture the female golfers who feel out of place booking a trip to Scotland, the couples who need to balance different priorities on and off the golf course, and more—it’s really something for everyone.

• Cool: we want our brand to be something we’re proud of—it’s as much for us as it is for our customers.

Our designer nailed the brief, developing a colour palette and logo that perfect encapsulates what we’re trying to build and brings the harsh elements and raw colours of Scotland to life.

Starting with a website

Visual brand and clear identity in hand, I got to work building our website on Squarespace. The goal was to show up professional and polished, while emphasizing the real (and unique) experience behind our services.

Leveraging my content marketing roots, I also built a blog and email newsletter, both named The Yardage Book. The blog was designed to share course reviews, insider tips, and some of our unique points of view. The email newsletter was designed to circulate more of this content to highly engaged customers, as well as to offer early access to group trips or promotions to our subscribers.

A social presence to match

Next up was to formally launch our brand across social, slowly but surely building an engaged audience of fellow golf geeks who could learn from us, be inspired by us, or potentially travel with us.

Our main focus is on Instagram since the search behaviour of a Millennial audience often defaults to Instagram over websites, making this a key digital property. We since added Facebook to better reach a Boomer demographic, as well as LinkedIn—a channel we will invest in increasingly over time as we have more group trips to promote.

A little bit of everything

As Co-Owner/Operator, my work on East Sands Golf Co. isn’t limited to marketing or branding. I’m active in everything from our financial and legal structure, to trip planning and service delivery, to hosting group events. That being said, it’s been a major career highlight to get to apply my marketing and branding background to my own company as Nick and I bring our dream to life.