A tailor

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The retail portion of Golf Cart King is called Cart Castle, and offers customers pre-built golf carts as well as dozens of options for customizing their own cart.

Golf Cart King has become a well-known institution in Liberty Hill since it opened just over a year ago, and for good reason. Not only does the facility offer a retail store known as Cart Castle, but it is truly also “king” when it comes to the customization of golf carts.

A cart at Golf Cart King can be customized from the chassis on up, including everything from the wheels and tires to the steering wheels and seats.

“We can basically customize every aspect of a golf cart,” said Landon Wisser, chief marketing officer for Golf Cart King. “A lot of the shops out there just want to sell units and do basic service, but we are different because we do a lot of customization. We also have all our own golf cart parts.”

Wisser said people oftentimes wonder why Golf Cart King needs such a large space to conduct business. That can easily be answered when one walks into the warehouse—tires are stacked on racks up to the ceiling, employees are unloading trucks full of parts daily, and dozens of pallets are waiting to go to dealers who carry Golf Cart King’s products across the United States.

“We have a network of over 800 dealers who carry our products all over the country,” Wisser said. “We also sell a lot on e-commerce sites, like Amazon and eBay.”

Besides being a hub for custom parts, Golf Cart King is also a dealer for popular brands of golf carts, like Club Car, and the company also has its own brand of golf cart called Atlas.

One of the most unique and customizable experiences from Golf Cart King comes in the form of the seating.

The finishing touches of all custom seats at Golf Cart King are done in house and by hand on sewing machines.

“We do all our own seats here in Liberty Hill,” Wisser said. “We actually brought in a renowned custom hot rod upholstery expert from Las Vegas. He moved to Texas and lives in Bertram now.”

Wisser is talking about Junior Marquez, who has been featured in several national magazines as well as television shows on the Discovery Channel. He now oversees the production of the entire upholstery division at Golf Cart King.

The second floor of the facility is where the upholstery division is housed, and a tour through the work area is a sight to see. Industrial, computer-aided machinery stitches intricate patterns into the marine grade vinyl and cuts the vinyl to the proper size for the custom seats.

“The machines do the patterns really fast—you just program in whatever design you want, and it does it,” Wisser said. “The seats are made to order, so people can choose what pattern they want and what color vinyl they want as well as the accent colors [of the thread]. We have 120,000 variations available.”

Industrial, computer-aided machines are used to stitch intricate patterns into the marine grade vinyl used for seats at Golf Cart King.

Not everything is done by machines though. Once the patterns are stitched into the vinyl, everything else is done by hand, including the assembly of the seats and putting the finishing touches on them with standard sewing machines.

Golf Cart King also sells its own line of products called MODZ, which is where the customization gets really fun, Wisser said.

“We have over 130 MODZ wheels to choose from for your cart,” he said. “We sell around 75,000 wheels a year. We produce a lot of wheels because they are a great way to make your cart really stand out.”

Golf Cart King also sells over 100,000 tires a year, which they also offer under the MODZ line. Steering wheels, tower tops and of course the custom seats round out the offerings from MODZ.

“We make the custom tops as well, and those are made right outside of Austin with aircraft grade aluminum,” Wisser said.

Golf Cart King currently has about 50 people on staff, and the company has grown 400 percent in the last six years, Wisser said. That’s why it’s not a big surprise that the company is already working on its phase two plans, which will include another building adjacent to the current building on County Road 214.

Wisser said specifics on that project haven’t been solidified yet, but the growth of the company requires the expansion, mainly for more storage space.

“We are definitely working toward having our carts outfitted more and more with parts made in Liberty Hill,” he said. “A lot of people know the parts are made in America, but even better is that they are made in Liberty Hill.”

One such company, called Excalibur, is based in Liberty Hill and is responsible for making custom “clays baskets” for the golf carts. A clays basket mounts to the front of a golf cart to provide extra room for storage.

“Eventually we’ll also offer brush guards, side steps and more, all made right here in Liberty Hill and under our All-American line of products,” Wisser said. “We own the trademark to the All-American phrase in the golf cart industry, so we will soon be releasing a line of made in America products.”

DID YOU KNOW?

•Clays baskets are named as such because at one point, they were primarily used to hold shooting clays for sporting clays courses.

•The storage basket in the back of a golf cart is called a sweater basket, aptly named because it was used to store riders’ sweaters.

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