The Entrepreneur
In that way, Oki has paid homage to his own humble roots. Born into a modest home in 1948 Seattle, Oki was raised on principles of hard work, strong moral character, and a awareness of one’s personal responsibility.
“I remember going at very young age, maybe 10, and picking strawberries in the summer with my grandmother,” he says. “It was backbreaking work, and I wasn’t earning a lot of money. But it taught me what hard work was all about.”
It was that aptitude for hard work and a self-professed willingness to “get my hands dirty” that Bill Gates saw in Oki in 1982, when the 27-year-old Gates hired the then-34-year-old Oki as a marketing manager for his Northwest startup, Microsoft. It was a match made in heaven — Oki’s marketing savvy and affinity for hard work helped take Microsoft global, and allowed Oki to retire from professional life just 12 years later, at the ripe old age of 46.
“Retirement,” though, isn’t a word in Oki’s vocabulary. Less than a year after leaving Microsoft, Oki purchased Echo Falls Golf Club in Snohomish and began transforming the landscape of public golf in this region.
He quickly found, however, that the business of golf isn’t all that different from the game itself — you have to knock a few out of bounds before you learn how to hit them straight down the middle.
“I learned pretty quickly after buying Echo Falls that I knew nothing about the business of golf,” Oki says. “We made some mistakes, and we learned from them. I don’t like to repeat mistakes, so I said, ‘If I ever have the chance to build my own course, I certainly won’t make those mistakes.’ Well, the opportunity came along to build Newcastle a few years later and we didn’t make those mistakes — we made bigger ones.
“So we learned from that, too, and have since worked hard to constantly make sense of what is really a very tough business.”
As Oki continued to look for ways to exceed the expectations of Northwest golfers, he traveled to courses around the world taking notes on everything from clubhouse and practice facilities to scorecard design, food and beverage options — even the cleanliness and amenities of on-course bathrooms.
“We’re constantly looking at every aspect of the game of golf to make sure that we are giving golfers a top-class experience,” Oki says. “From the wider cart-path lanes that help avoid putting wheel ruts in the grass, to the heated toilet seats in the bathrooms, we want every single aspect of the golfer’s experience to feel top-of-the-line.”
No two Oki courses are exactly alike, but all boast a distinct reflection of their founder’s vision to take the country club experience away from the uber-rich, and deliver it to the public at an affordable price. Of course, his motivation isn’t entirely philanthropic — a recent New York Times report suggested that more and more adults are giving up the game of golf, meaning golf course developers such as Oki need to do more and more to convince golfers to come — and more importantly, to come back.
“There’s really no upside to the golf business, but there is tremendous downside,” Oki explains. “When the economy goes down, rounds go down. But you still have to cut the grass, and clean the bathrooms — your expenses don’t change a bit, and it’s not like you can suddenly double your rates or something. We’re committed to making golf accessible to the public golfer, and obviously the higher the price goes, the less the public golfer will be able to enjoy the game. So, you have to find other ways to convince golfers to come to your courses.”
Oki’s prime method for rewarding loyalty is the Oki Players Card, which allows golfers to accrue points for rounds played on any of Oki’s portfolio of courses, while also providing discounts on golf, pro shop and food and beverage items.
“With the Oki Players Card, we’ve created a reward for frequency and loyalty — a golfer can still receive all the advantages of club membership, while still being able to choose from a wide variety of courses in different areas,” Oki says.