CARLSBAD — Golf manufacturer TaylorMade recently announced it will use KBS shafts as the stock option in its putter and wedge lines, continuing a decades-long partnership and demonstrating the reach of Carlsbad businesses beyond the city’s limits.
Femco Steel Technology Corp. entered the golf club shaft business in 1989 and launched the KBS brand in 2007, according to investor documents.
John Weber, vice president of Femco, told The Coast News that he has worked closely with TaylorMade’s research and development team during his 26 years with the company.
“TaylorMade, for over a quarter century now, has tapped us on the shoulder when their R&D department has run into an engineering challenge, and that challenge happens to fall under the venue of shafts,” Weber said. “The relationship we have with them is not just as a shaft supplier, but we are in some way, shape, and form also an engineering partner with them, especially when it comes to the shaft side of it and them trying to achieve a certain performance criteria in a product.”
Femco is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, and maintains KBS Golf Experience centers in Carlsbad, Tokyo, Japan, and Taipei, Taiwan.
The company announced in August that it would use KBS CT Putter 120 Stepless Black shafts across the four head shapes in TaylorMade’s Spider putter line. The Spider ZT Max also offers several KBS shaft options to support its high-moment-of-inertia design.
Spider putters have been used by major winners including Brooke Henderson, Nelly Korda, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy in recent years.
A TaylorMade spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
Femco also announced that its KBS Hi-Rev 2.0 wedge shaft would be the stock option in TaylorMade’s Hi-Toe 5 family of wedges.
“This industry is extremely competitive, and they are all looking for the slightest edge on each other – whether it’s feel, whether it’s the spin, the ball flight, being able to control a putter’s face deflection,” Weber said. “With all these different performance attributes, they are all looking for that razor’s-edge advantage and we’re part of that equation.”
Thomas Kalinowski, who works in research and development and LPGA Tour operations for Femco, said designing shafts with the world’s best players involves meeting specific performance measures. The goal is for the shaft to complement the clubhead without taking any shots out of a player’s bag.
“If they can’t create those shots, then you know, then they’re looking at a reason,” Kalinowski said.
He added that solving specific problems for elite players benefits weekend golfers and reflects the company’s broader approach to shaft design.
“To be honest, at KBS, we are particular about not missing any needs,” Kalinowski said. “So we’re a fitting company. We want to fit everybody in the world, in doing that, we identify any holes that we are lacking.”
Weber said that approach extends to being an “engineering partner” with a manufacturer such as TaylorMade, particularly on a product like the Spider ZT Max, which is designed to minimize twisting of the clubface.
“When it came to the ZT Tour putter shaft, they were looking for a balance of stability and feel,” he said. “If you have too much stability, you sacrifice feel. If you have too much feel, you sacrifice stability. So it took a couple iterations to get the product to the point where they felt it had the perfect balance of stability and feel.
“It does take an entire team of people to put it together from the R&D effort initially, right on through to the execution of the factory. It takes an entire team of people to achieve what we’ve achieved.”
“TaylorMade, their R&D people are brilliant, and what they’re working on in head design and their innovation in changing,” Kalinowski said. “Each company is accelerating their product for a reason, and it doesn’t make sense that we wouldn’t be doing the same on an ongoing basis.
“We’re always trying to better the game.”
