Anyone who has seen the sheer joy emanating from Gregg Wallace’s face on BBC’s Inside The Factory will appreciate the thrill of peeking behind the curtain of the manufacturing process. Earlier this year, I was given my own Inside The Factory moment and got to assemble my very own trolley on PowaKaddy’s production line. It was great to get an insight into just how the brand goes about getting its vast fleet of trolleys out to the world, with every model being designed and assembled from its headquarters in Kent. I was lucky enough to have a go on the production line myself, assembling my own RX1 GPS, the brand's newest remote electric trolley.
At this year’s Open Championship, PowaKaddy will be celebrating its 40th anniversary at the very tournament where it launched its first prototype. PowaKaddy was the brainchild of mechanical engineer Joe Catford who was fed up with carrying his clubs around the course. Over the course of the early 80s, he set about creating the world’s first powered golf trolley and, backed by local businessman John Martin, launched the PowaKaddy Classic at the 1983 Open. This visit to The Open would kickstart the PowaKaddy brand into formal existence, as the team returned from the North-West with over 500 orders. These very first official orders began shipping to golf professionals and retail outlets in late 1983.
1999 brought the release of the first iteration of PowaKaddy’s ultra-popular Freeway range, which quickly became the number 1 trolley range in the UK. It was the precursor to the FX range that still dominates the UK trolley market to this day. By 2013, the new Freeway Family of electric trolleys was released - incorporating the unique PowaFrame chassis into every new model, and later introduced the revolutionary Plug 'N' Play battery connection technology in early 2014. More recent PowaKaddy iterations include the compact electric GPS model in the shape of the CT8 GPS and the PowaKaddy Micra push cart.
Unlike Gregg Wallace, I don’t have any more factory trips lined up to see how things like crumpets or pork pies are made, but I’m proud to say the RX1 GPS that I built with my own hands is still bounding up and down fairways alongside me today. It’s hard to believe PowaKaddy has been in the game for 40 years. Now with over a million trolley sales under its belt, it’s great to see the brand that was the genesis of an entire category still thriving and at the forefront of innovation to this very day.
