Chris Markham and the price of a better round

An eyepiece fell off. For a device whose entire purpose is to help someone see a distant target, this was a fairly pointed criticism. Chris Markham and his friends had bought inexpensive golf rangefinders and discovered the cost of the bargain. The alternative, as they saw it, was to spend hundreds of dollars more. Between the two choices sat a question that would become Blue Tees Golf: why should dependable equipment require such an expensive introduction?

Their answer arrived in a business they launched in 2019. Markham became its co-founder and CEO, helping turn a shared irritation into a company selling tools for other people’s rounds. The appeal of the story is its modest starting point. A group of golfers wanted something they would be happy to put in their own bags. The grand strategy could wait until the eyepiece stayed attached.

A small failure, an expensive question

Markham’s account of those early purchases is specific. In one later retelling, three of four cheap rangefinders failed within weeks: an eyepiece broke, one stopped switching on, and another gave distances more than ten yards out. Golf already offers ample opportunities to misjudge a shot without paying an electronic accomplice.

The product they wanted had to combine useful features, considered design, and a price ordinary players could contemplate. That last requirement helped define the business. An accessory can be desirable and still be a difficult purchase after clubs, balls, and the cost of getting onto the course.

Even the name carried an invitation. “We wanted it to sound inclusive,” Markham said. He associated the blue tees with rounds involving people of different ages, genders, and abilities. The name came from an experience he recognized. It was a small piece of the course that could belong to several kinds of golfer.

A finance graduate in the golf bag business

There is a useful counterweight to the casual golf-brand image in Markham’s earlier career. He studied business finance at Point Loma Nazarene University, attending from 2008 to 2012. His professional background included Comerica Bank and Oxford Finance. Before leading a company that measured the distance to a flag, he had worked with the financial details of other businesses.

A former Comerica colleague, Konstantine Theodoridis, praised both his analytical ability and his skill with people. That combination makes sense in the context of the job Markham later took on. A consumer hardware company needs customers to like its products and suppliers to get paid. Enthusiasm is useful in both conversations; arithmetic remains compulsory.

The founding group brought different capabilities to the project, including industrial design, ecommerce, and marketing. Markham’s own advice to emerging founders put that division of labor into plain language.

“Build a team of people that are smarter than you with different yet complementary skills and then get out of their way.”

Chris Markham, 2021

The last clause does quite a bit of work. Hiring people with expertise creates a second obligation: allowing them to use it. His public prescription leaves the founder with the less theatrical tasks of choosing colleagues well, establishing a direction, and resisting the temptation to supervise every useful thought.

The cost of reaching the shelf

Blue Tees released its Series 1 Sport in the summer of 2019 and sold roughly 3,000 units directly to consumers. Its original price was $160. The Series 2 followed in April 2020 at $190. These were early signs that the founders’ complaint could travel beyond their own golfing group.

Retail interest introduced a different calculation. Markham described needing more money for production and for the interval before retail customers paid. The business was young, and conventional bank financing proved difficult to obtain. Assembled Brands supplied working-capital financing suited to inventory and receivables.

There is a quietly interesting reversal here. Someone who had worked in finance was now explaining why his own promising business needed a financing partner. Demand could open the door to a shop. It could not, by itself, pay for everything that had to happen before the product reached that shop.

For 2021, the company reported more than 1,000 course-shop and small-shop accounts in North America, alongside larger retail relationships. It also reported that the team had grown from five people to more than thirty employees and contractors. Those historical figures describe how quickly the operating task widened. Keeping the rangefinder intact was the beginning; keeping stock available became another part of the promise.

Reaching an audience also meant finding people who understood the golf trade. In 2021, Blue Tees engaged Read the Greens, GOLF Media. Its founder, Vanessa Marie Price, described looking forward to testing the equipment and working with the team. For Markham, it was another partnership around a specific business need: introducing the company and its products to more of the industry.

The PGA Show offered a physical version of that introduction. Ahead of the 2023 event, Markham talked about connecting with customers and the golf community, with a new product catalog and booth. The golfer who once compared purchases was now helping present a growing range to people deciding what their own customers might buy.

A photograph for everyone

In January 2022, Markham, Drew Koehler, and Brandon Francisco accepted an ING Industry Honors award for Product Ingenuity - Technology at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando. The Series 3 Max had helped bring the company that recognition.

Markham described photographing the honor and sharing it across the company. “I wanted everyone at Blue Tees Golf to know they ALL contributed to this moment of recognition.” The capital letters were his.

It is an unusually concrete companion to his advice about hiring. The three people at the presentation could hold the frame; the acknowledgment could reach the people who were elsewhere. For a founder, sharing credit is easiest to assess when there is something specific to share.

An industry award also placed the company in a different setting from its original online storefront. Blue Tees was being considered alongside other golf businesses by people who worked in the trade. Its founders had something to take back to colleagues besides another set of sales figures.

Permission to turn the volume up

Markham’s ambitions extended beyond the laser. By 2023, he was talking about GPS devices, an accompanying mobile app, and the PLAYER+ speaker. The company was building around a round of golf as people actually enjoyed it, including the soundtrack.

That expansion needed capabilities the founding team could obtain through a partner. Markham said Blue Tees connected with iGolf in the summer of 2022. Course information was one requirement. Mechanical, electrical, and engineering expertise mattered too. His account gave the partnership a practical purpose: help bring new product ideas into working form.

His references for the brand included the attitude of newer golf lifestyle companies such as TravisMathew. He saw room for players who wanted to express themselves and enjoy their friends’ company. A speaker made that idea tangible. So did a touchscreen that could deliver information during the round.

For a CEO, that broadening also changes the kinds of collaboration the business needs. Markham’s explanation of the iGolf relationship returns to the same practical idea as his hiring advice: identify the expertise required, then bring people with that expertise into the work. The partnership gave his team another way to apply that principle.

The product choices make his view of the customer easier to understand. Accuracy matters, and so does the experience around it. A golfer can want help choosing a club and still have strong opinions about the next song. Designing for that person means taking both requests seriously.

The round moves into a stadium

In March 2025, Blue Tees announced an expanded partnership with Upper Deck Golf, which stages golf experiences inside sports stadiums. The arrangement included product displays and a PLAYER GO giveaway for participants making a hole in one along the event’s nine-hole course.

For Markham’s company, the setting offered another way to meet golfers while they were doing something enjoyable. People could encounter the equipment outside a conventional shop or course. Stadium golf also suited the brand’s willingness to loosen the ceremony around the game. A familiar sport looked different when the target sat below the upper deck.

The box is only the beginning

By 2026, the company had introduced Rainmaker, its first portable launch monitor. The new device widened the brief again, from helping a player during a round to providing information during practice. Blue Tees described connections between practice data and its broader family of products.

The continuing work is visible in smaller announcements. In September, the company released Rainmaker firmware intended to reduce the wait for shot data. Later that month it announced E6 simulator integration for Windows PCs, connecting over Bluetooth with a separately purchased E6 license.

These updates give Markham’s story a useful present tense. Leading this business now involves products that keep changing after purchase. A customer’s experience depends on what happens after delivery as well as what arrives inside the box. Support, compatibility, and the next software revision become part of the same relationship.

The original problem remains a fair test for everything added since. Does the equipment do something useful? Can the intended customer justify the cost? Does using it leave more room to enjoy golf? Markham and his friends began with a piece of equipment that failed those questions. Every new product gives the company another opportunity to answer them.