The Operator Behind The Party
Aaron
Heiser
The first CEO of golf's loudest streetwear brand spent two decades learning the trade in Amsterdam, Shanghai and Beaverton.
The first CEO of golf's loudest streetwear brand spent two decades learning the trade in Amsterdam, Shanghai and Beaverton.
In October 2024, Malbon Golf did the unglamorous thing. It hired a CEO.
Malbon was already a phenomenon. Stephen and Erica Malbon had turned a backyard idea about golf-as-culture into a brand with collaborations, a clubhouse aesthetic and a waitlist energy that most heritage labels would trade their logos for. What they did not have was someone whose entire career had been about turning that kind of heat into a machine that ships, scales and survives a slow quarter. So they went and found one.
His name is Aaron Heiser. When he arrived, the founders did not step aside so much as step sideways - into co-Chief Creative Officer roles, keeping the brand's voice while handing over the operating system. Heiser took the chair as the company's first-ever chief executive, with the mandate to run all of it.
It is a specific kind of job: keep the cool, add the rigor. Plenty of brands die in exactly this transition. Heiser was hired because he had spent twenty years watching how the biggest sports company on earth did it.
Founders Stephen and Erica Malbon moved to co-Chief Creative Officer roles and remain on the board. Heiser oversees the day-to-day from Santa Monica and reports to that board.
What Stephen and Erica have built is absolutely incredible, and something I'm not sure I have seen in the industry before.
Before golf, there was a tour of the global apparel business that reads like a relocation invoice. Heiser's last and longest stop was Nike, where he stayed for roughly eighteen years. He did not sit still inside it.
As a General Manager he oversaw more than 100 Nike stores across Western Europe. Retail at this scale is not romance; it is logistics, inventory and a thousand small decisions a day.
Roughly four years as VP and GM of Greater China Retail, one of the hardest, fastest consumer markets on the planet. His third child was born there.
His final Nike role: Global VP of Apparel, Accessories & Licensing - responsible for product creation and merchandising. An Oregon native, he had come home.
The earlier resume is its own merchandising master class: assistant merchant at Federated Merchandising Group straight out of Cornell, then product roles at Gap, Giorgio Armani and Armani Exchange, and Tommy Hilfiger. By the time golf called, Heiser had sold clothes on three continents and built the systems behind them.
Long before the corner office, there was a wrestling singlet. Heiser graduated from Cornell University in 1998, out of the School of Hotel Administration, and wrestled varsity for the Big Red. He competed in the 134 to 150 pound range, with concussions occasionally cutting his season short.
Wrestling is a useful thing to have done if your future job is scaling a brand without losing it. It rewards weight-cutting discipline, solitary preparation and the willingness to lose in public and show up the next week. Heiser still credits the school for the rare combination he wanted.
"Cornell wrestling provides the perfect capability-experience balance. There's no other school that has awesome wrestling and awesome academics at the same level."
The numbers are the company's, not his alone - but they describe the terrain he was hired to manage. A brand reporting roughly 80 percent sell-through is one with demand outrunning supply, which is a delightful problem and a operationally brutal one. Heiser's whole career has been the discipline of meeting that demand without diluting the thing that created it.
International is the next chapter. With a third of sales already abroad and a CEO who personally ran retail in Europe and China, Asia is not an abstraction on a slide. It is a place he has lived.
To say it is absolutely on fire as a brand would be an understatement, and I look forward to supercharging that momentum.
His third child was born in China during the Shanghai posting. The family treated relocation as a feature, not a bug.
Between the moves, his children have collectively visited roughly 40 countries. Most CEOs collect air miles; his kids collected passports.
He is part of a notable ex-Nike migration into Malbon's leadership, joining former Nike product and marketing talent under the same roof.
His Cornell degree was in hotel administration - a school built on the art of taking care of guests, which is a sneaky-good foundation for retail.
Malbon truly has become a global community that bridges diverse backgrounds, celebrates individuality and fosters camaraderie both on and off the golf course.
What Stephen and Erica have built is absolutely incredible, and something I'm not sure I have seen in the industry before.
There's no other school that has awesome wrestling and awesome academics at the same level.