Royal & Awesome to make their mark at Muirfield

The team behind Scotland’s spectacular golf clothing brand, Royal & Awesome, are returning to their home town of Gullane to celebrate the 2013 Open Championships at Muirfield – and are inviting fans to join them in the festivities between July 18-21.

Successful Gullane entrepreneurs – brothers Fraser, Ali and Graeme Smeaton and school friend Graeme Menzies – will be donning their dazzling clothing and marking the occasion with a raft of events, giveaways and competitions.

The festivities, open to everyone, will reward spectators wearing Royal & Awesome clothing with nightly giveaways, discounted taxis and free drinks at three local pubs after each day’s play – The Old Club House in Gullane; The Nether Abbey in North Berwick; and Ducks in Aberlady – a nod to the brand’s strapline of ‘for the pars and the bars’.

Golf fans will also be able to enjoy a trick shot show with ‘Tricky Rob’, hosted by Royal & Awesome, on Friday evening on the children’s golf course in Gullane outside The Old Club House.

Royal & Awesome, the brainchild of Ali and Fraser Smeaton and family friend Gregor Lawson, was launched in April last year by AFG Media and emanates from the success of renowned costume brand MorphsuitsTM. The team started with 200 suits, a £400 website and were running the business in their spare time around their day jobs.

Four years later MorphsuitsTM are the most popular fancy dress costume in the world, selling 500,000 outfits each year and generating annual revenues of over £10m. The brand has 1.2 million Facebook fans, websites in 17 countries and is listed in some of the world’s biggest fancy dress retailers.  AFG Media now employs more than 20 people, with offices in Edinburgh and London and a distribution network across Europe, North America and Australia.

This success provided the infrastructure and expertise to launch two new brands, including Royal & Awesome, which takes all the history and heritage of golf in Scotland and adds some fun and colour.  

With impressive first-year sales, which are set to double this year, and a growing Facebook following of more than 65,000 golfers, Royal & Awesome has much to celebrate.

Fraser Smeaton, the chief executive officer of Royal & Awesome’s parent company AFG Media, said: “Having attended primary school in Gullane and then North Berwick High School, we really are the local lads! As a family we have always had a passion for golf, all working as caddies at Muirfield and Gullane Golf Club during school and university holidays and volunteering as ‘score-boarders’ the last time the open was at Muirfield, in 2002.”

The brand’s clothing, donned by thousands of avid golfers across the globe on a weekly basis, has regularly increased its range over the last year and now has collections for men and women, including trousers, shorts, skorts, plus twos, shirts and accessories.

Royal & Awesome is now working on new eye-catching designs across its range and hopes the new designs prove as popular as the current top seller, aptly named Old Tom Trews, after golf’s famous Scottish forefather.

● See Royal & Awesome’s spectacular range of golf clothing at www.royalandawesome.com or www.facebook.com/royalandawesome