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MARCH/APRIL 2003
Osama on the green: It's the bogey-man
By PETER WARD, Sun Staff
LOWELL You're on the fairway, and in an approaching golf cart is Osama bin Laden.
What's your weapon a four iron, woodie or putter?
You choose the club, and send the bearded bogey-man screaming down the green face first.
It's your pleasure, courtesy of Corky Newcomb.
In Newcomb's "Hunt for Bin Laden" game, patriotic duffers with red-white-and-blue Old Glory balls pursue a golf ball etched with bin Laden's mug and President Bush's memorable "Wanted: Dead or Alive."
Newcomb invented the game (he sells three balls for $6) to help charities after the 9-11 attacks.
Since then, they've become not just a novelty, but an adventure. From Fort Dix to Guantanamo Bay soldiers were happily smashing bin Laden's head all over the place, he said.
"I'm trying to do my part to help," said Newcomb, a dynamo marketer from Wolfeboro, N.H., who proudly accepts comparisons to Ron Popeil the king of TV gadgets best known for hawking the Pocket Fisherman and Mr. Microphone. Corkie Newcomb shows off his Osama bin Laden golf ball. The ball is part of Newcomb's "Hunt for Bin Laden" game, which Newcomb invented to help charities after the 9-11 attacks. SUN/MICHAEL PIGEON
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Newcomb's company, C.N. Is Believing (get it?) offers dozens of amusing and clever sports-related items, many of which glow in the dark.
His products include:
a lighted golf ball for nighttime play;
illuminated Easter eggs;
golf balls made of bird seed;
a golf ball that can find the cup;
talking golf ball-topped cologne and perfume;
a flat-sided baseball that automatically curves. (He said the late Red Sox Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams struck out trying to hit the Automatic Curve ball in 1977.)
Newcomb has arranged numerous night golf tournaments for charities in 69 nations, lighting up entire courses: balls, clubs, greens, cups even the sand traps.
"The whole night golf thing surprised me. We've sold millions. All I was trying to do was to let people play the last few holes after work in September and October," he said.
Now 52, the sandy-haired Newcomb found his niche after graduating from the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore School of Business. In the 1970s, he found spent bullets on Civil War battlefields and packaged them for the nation's bicentennial celebration.
That lasted "until I ran out of bullets," he said.
Most of Newcomb's gems can be purchased at Kmart and other sporting goods outlets, or direct from www.cnisbelieving.com
Newcomb is the company's ideas man. Styletek, run by president David Kincman of Westford, and Bob Jones, vice president of operations, is where the heavy lifting occurs.
They design the specifications using a computer, cook and shape the plastic pellets, and create the metal plastic-injecting molds.
It took them seven months to perfect the Nitelite golf ball. A ball won't sell if it's too small, too light, too heavy or too slow. This one travels up to 250 yards.
The final product belies the sweat that goes into its making.
"It looks as simple as a paper clip," said Newcomb, adding, "The utopian objective is to make it equal to the real McCoy."
And in addition to his grail, Newcomb has his fun, as with his long-distance Fore-ever Golfball, which adds 20 yards to a stroke and is justifiably illegal.
Founded in the late 1970s, Styletek made footwear until the domestic industry vanished overseas. It still makes some footwear parts for the golf goods company, Titelist, which has looked askance at Newcomb's glow-in-the-dark golf balls.
With a laugh, Jones, the Styletek executive, said the company wasn't sure at first what to make of Newcomb's idea. But then his checks cleared the bank and the product found a market.
Most of the lights for the product are hydrogen-peroxide "cold light" products you've seen kids buy the colorful lights at fairs are provided by another manufacturer contracted to Newcomb.
Newcomb and Styletek tried searching for a different way to light up balls.
Jones turned the lights off and held up the results what looked like a paper bag lit green.
He and Newcomb laughed to indicate, "Back to the drawing board."
Perhaps Newcomb's strangest product is "Matchmaker," an antenna-like device adorned with a plastic heart that purports to help people find the perfect mate.
"If you go back to the Egyptians, they had little wands," he said. "It's the same principle as dousing. In this case, you're at a party, restaurant or bar. You see a blond girl in a red sweater. And when you walk past her the magic wand will turn toward her."
How it works isn't clear. But the instructions say, "It's very important to believe that the Matchmaker will work."
"It's a great ice-breaker," Newcomb said.
Peter Ward's e-mail address is pward@lowellsun.com .
Debbi Karpowicz Kickham
119 Fisher St.
Westwood, MA 02090
(781) 407-9305
(781) 407-9306 (Fax)
* National Media Spokesperson, Sure Fit Slipcovers
* Contributing Editor, Bridal Guide Magazine and member, SATW
* Co-Author, Off The Wall Marketing Ideas
* Author, I Love Men in Tasseled Loafers
* Creator, My Faux Chateau, the world's first luxury-for-less showhouse
* Former Media Spokesperson, AT&T, Robb Report Magazine
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