About seven years ago, Wes Loman was a traveling medical linens salesman living in the Greensboro, N.C., area.
His wife, Katie, was a stay-at-home mom raising the couple’s five daughters, who were all under the age of 13, and the couple also had a side night business creating clothing and hats with nautical themes under the name The Old North State Clothing Company.
Their collective responsibilities became exhausting.
“We were burning at both ends,” Loman said. “We were getting ready for this event one night and we kind of looked at each other and at the same time we were both like, ‘I don’t want to do this no more.’ I was like, ‘I’m glad you said that,’ and she was like, ‘I’m glad you said that.’ ”
They sold the clothing company and loaded fabrics, finished products and equipment that included embroidery machines and heat presses into a trailer to meet a buyer from Virginia on the road about halfway between them.
Their entrepreneurial spirit was still strong, however. So what next?
Old North State had an Instagram page, and a few months after the sale Loman was going to shut it down.
Katie had another idea – to repurpose the page.
“She said, ‘Well you love going to the ocean, you love playing golf and you like documenting both of those through pictures. Why don’t you just call yourself ‘The Salty Golfer’ and start doing that?’ ” Loman recalled. “I was like, ‘Great, let’s do that.’ ”
Thus was born a growing Strand-based lifestyle brand that now includes merchandise, a craft beer, Loman’s public identity change, and a 1972 Volkswagen Westfalia camper van named ‘Sandi’ that has essentially become the brand logo.
“When they wear our stuff we want people to be like, ‘This takes me to a beach, it takes me to a golf course by the ocean. That’s the life I want to live,’ ” Loman said.
Building the brand
Loman’s appearance plays into the Salty Golfer brand. The Murrells Inlet resident and Nashville native who played high school and NAIA college basketball is a burly 6-foot-8 with an inviting bushy light beard and mustache.
Just prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Loman’s medical sales region expanded south down the coast, giving him a territory from Fayetteville, N.C. to Savannah, Georgia.
That justified a coveted move to the Myrtle Beach area, which was more of a central location than his home in Jamestown, N.C. His family members have owned property on the Grand Strand for many years, and he often vacationed here.
Once the pandemic hit, golf was about all there was to do socially in the area. So Loman played a lot and got to know a lot of the area golf professionals. He would often run a live feed on his Salty Golfer Instagram page.
“People all across the country just started watching me play golf, which is fascinating to me,” said Loman, who carries a 6.6 golf handicap that was as low as 3.2. “People were living vicariously through my Instagram Live.”
He began using his videos and posts to promote the Myrtle Beach golf market.
“My whole deal with starting the Salty Golfer was I just wanted to be an ambassador for Myrtle Beach golf and show people how good we have it here,” Loman said. “I still think Myrtle Beach is the most affordable good golf you can play. It’s one of the few places where you can come play golf, and if the rest of your family doesn’t play golf there’s still stuff for them to do. There’s good food here, there’s good vibes here, there’s golf for all types of people here.”
He started booking golf trips for people who followed his posts, and would serve as their personal concierge and tour guide when they came.
When the number of trip requests became untenable, he reached out to Founders Group International, which owns and operates 21 Strand courses as well as a golf package company, to get their assistance booking them.
“We would set up trips for all these people but I would host them,” Loman said. “Then I was like, ‘Well, how do I monetize this? I’m doing a lot of work and people really dig what I’m doing, so how do I make this happen?’ ”
Some customers began asking if Loman had a memento for their round together that they could keep.
“Then the lightbulb clicked in my head like, ‘Maybe I can start selling shirts again,’ “ Loman said.
He created Salty Golfer merchandise, and some area golf courses began selling it in their pro shops.
Crafting a beer
Loman had some artwork that he noticed resembled a beer can, so he met Grand Strand Brewing Company owner Clayton Burrous, and the two decided to collaborate on a Salty Golfer beer.
Loman wanted a non-IPA that was fairly light, so it’s an American pale ale with a hint of pineapple.
“We worked on a recipe and we had some blind tastings and different things like that and we finally found a recipe we really liked,” Loman said. “We’re in year four of the beer and the beer just absolutely took off.”
Loman thought the beer would be seasonal, but it’s brewed year-round, is available in both North Carolina and South Carolina, and is in grocery stores including Walmart and Food Lion.
“Now we’re just this full-blown apparel lifestyle company,” Loman said.
The Salty Golfer merchandise line includes clothing, hats and golf-related accessories such as headcovers and belts. They can be purchased through the Salty Golfer website and in the pro shops of approximately 40 courses in the area and elsewhere in the Carolinas. That number is consistently growing, as is the Salty Golfer Instagram page that now has about 30,000 followers.
“It’s been cool to watch. I’m still like on this high from it. It’s really cool,” Loman said. “I want to grow this thing and give it to my kids one day if we want to. We’re on a ride man, it’s a lot of fun.”
Loman quit his medical sales job after 20 years in 2024.
“Katie one night said, ‘If you’re going to do this, let’s [freaking] do this. Let’s go all in,’ ” Loman said. “If we’re going to fail as the Salty Golfer, let’s fail really big. Let’s not waste any expense and give it all we can give. And that kind of gave me the shove to go do it, and we haven’t looked back.”
He has a couple business partners who have contributed to the expansion of the brand in Burrous and Jacob Smith, an area hotelier and condo owner.
“It’s really cool to have two business partners that believe in something just as much as you when you’re the one who created it, and they do,” Loman said. “It’s so cool that it’s so local. I’m super lucky to be here. The Myrtle Beach golf community has really kind of grabbed a hold of us, and we’re just so proud of this brand being from Myrtle Beach.”
Acquiring Sandi
Loman is a follower of jam bands including the Grateful Dead and Phish, and has always been interested in the old Volkswagen vans that are symbolic of the music.
“I always wanted one,” Loman said. “It’s just a symbol of freedom and road trips, beach trips, what the Salty Golfer is all about.”
He actually had a VW bus included in artwork for the brand before he owned one.
A follower on Instagram reached out about three years ago regarding his father selling his VW bus. Knowing the purpose Loman had for it, the man cut a reasonable deal to part with it.
“It’s the logo for the brand. It’s on a lot of our things. It’s just a symbol of what we’re about,” Loman said.
Though Loman’s likeness is used for some merchandise, he prefers using the van. “The bus is undefeated. It’s hard to beat it,” he joked. “It’s been cool to see it grow and people gravitate to it.”
Loman can often be seen driving Sandi around the Grand Strand, though it has no air conditioning, so he’s judicious about it on especially hot summer days.
Salty Golfer is a family affair as well, as Katie, his daughters – two of which are now attending Coastal Carolina University – and friends will take part in sales and events with Loman.
Active in the area
Loman was invited by the Golf Tourism Solutions marketing, technology and event operation agency that promotes the Myrtle Beach market to take part in the 3,000-player Play Golf Myrtle Beach World Amateur Championship that is being played Monday through Friday this week. GTS operates the event.
He is playing in the tournament and has a large retail space at the nightly World’s Largest 19th Hole golf expo and cocktail party at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.
Loman was asked by SportFive, the sports marketing agency that operates the PGA Tour’s ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic, to set up along the fairway of the par-5 13th hole known as Waterloo at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club during this past May’s tournament.
“We were asked to create a wild, raucous atmosphere on the 13th, and we created a T-shirt for that, we had the bus there, and anytime a pro got home [on the green] in two [shots] we just chucked T-shirts out,” Loman said. “It just every day got bigger and bigger, and that was really cool for the brand. We’ll do something again next year.”
Loman was a vendor at the Carolinas PGA Merchandise Show this year and plans to be a vendor at the national PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando in either January 2027 or 2028.
He also recently became an official ambassador for sister Pawleys Island courses True Blue Golf Club and Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, where he has created a lot of content over the past few years.
He’s looking at potential locations to try to expand the beer and clothing brand, including Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
Where does he want to eventually take the brand?
“Global domination,” Loman joked. “We just want to continue to grow. I tell people all the time, ‘If you have a dream, go after it man.’ Like, this is a dream of mine.
“It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and it’s the last thing I think about when I go to bed is the Salty Golfer.”
