Eric Sarin is the CEO and co-founder of Alma Mater Footwear. He is an entrepreneur and creative leader with an impressive track record of more than 20 years of experience in premium sport and fashion brands.
He has delivered concrete business results in both large organizations and start-up/turn-around ventures. With decades of product experience — including launching Adidas Originals and leading product at K Swiss and Le Coq Sportif — Sarin leads design and innovation at Alma Mater and is driven by precision, performance, fit and style.
The Alma Mater Story
Alma Mater Footwear is a luxury sneaker company based in Malibu, California. After years of designing shoes and building businesses for big brands, the team launched Alma Mater to make shoes the way they’ve always wanted to – with more thought, more care and full control over what gets built.
Alma Mater launched its first golf shoe – The Beta – in summer 2025. After years of research and design, the Beta showcases a breakthrough in golf footwear with Alma Mater’s three-piece engineering – a new approach to golf shoe construction that provides greater stability and better cushioning for players, without sacrificing comfort or style.
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What was the genesis for Alma Mater Footwear?
I spent 20 years making shoes for some of the biggest brands in the world and had phenomenal experiences with these great companies. At the same time, I was able to see first-hand the constraints that challenge large organizations and the compromise that can exist in product creation.
So, I gathered a group of the most talented and experienced people in the industry, who also happen to be lifelong friends, and founded Alma Mater in 2017 with a very simple idea: to build shoes the way we believe they can and should be built… with care, precision and without compromise.
The idea for the golf shoes came from Jordan Poyer, a 12-year NFL safety who plays for the Buffalo Bills and went to my high school, Astoria High School in Astoria, Oregon. He convinced us that we should be making golf shoes so we spent two years completely reengineering a golf shoe that wasn’t a compromise between comfort and stability.
What elevates your product line versus others in the competitive category?
The Beta line was developed as a result of our own experiences and observations. We noticed that most golf shoes either walk well or swing well. We also see that the most stylish options are not built to perform.
The Beta is built in a fundamentally different way than any other golf shoe, and we are calling it 3Pe (3-Piece engineering).
We combined nitrogen infused foam that was developed for ultra marathon running shoes, a perimeter-oriented traction solution and a walled cup sole construction to hold it all together while adding excellent stability (resulting in three pieces of construction).
The Betas walk like high-end running shoes with great cushioning and rebound and when you start rotational movement, they grab the ground with adaptivity and generate an insane amount of torque.
In terms of sales – what is the approximate percentage being sold via green grass shops, brick and mortar retail outlets and online?
It’s a bit too soon to tell.
We are currently selling direct to consumers on our website, and we have a sales team that is actively taking orders for green grass facilities and custom orders.
Who is your customer?
We make shoes for competitors. Our golf shoes resonate with players and athletes who obsess over the technical details of every piece of their equipment or their game to find an advantage. These players see optimal footwear as the foundation of their swing and an opportunity that most golfers overlook. We believe that these types of competitive players will be drawn to Alma Mater.
Members of private clubs, groups and events also appreciate our ability to customize the design of the Betas to create a unique look and style for their needs.
Companies routinely tout the importance of customer service. Define the term and the approach you follow.
I believe customer service is about trust, and that trust needs to be built and earned every day. It starts with the products that we build and then standing behind them without question.
Servicing the customer means giving them something they want and standing behind what you’ve offered them – not only in the quality and execution of the product, but also in the ambition to bring the customer something unique and innovative.
For retailers, a big piece of our customer service is the option of a custom version of our Beta golf shoe. At the moment, if you walk into any high-end club, you see the same high-end shoes that are also available online or at a big box retailer. We are changing that approach to deliver a unique golf shoe that can ONLY be purchased through a club or group. Giving our partners a way to differentiate themselves from the competition is a key part of our service.
How do you solicit customer feedback and what roles does it play in future product development efforts?
The feedback loop for product creation is a critical component of development. We have multiple sources for input that helps inform our design and development process.
We work directly with high school and college golfers, professional athletes from other sports who are avid golfers and we’re also starting to work with tour-level players. This gives us a rounded view of the needs of competitive golfers.
We also work with professional testing labs to put the shoes through demanding tests for performance – both during the development stage and continuously testing through production. In the coming year, we will also participate in some third-party product review programs.
Do pro golfer endorsements matter and will the company begin pursuing them?
Endorsements matter, but authenticity matters more. We are in an age where professional athletes have more reach and more overall value than ever before. There is also a lot of noise out there.
Our approach is centered around finding partners who are entrepreneurial and believe in what Alma Mater stands for – elevated product and innovation and long-term relationships.
If you could change one thing in golf unilaterally – what would it be and why?
The obvious choice would be to eliminate the compromise that exists in golf footwear today. We are passionate about creating great products and there is nothing worse than bad or lazy product design.
This doesn’t mean that everything has to be super expensive or premium, but we’d like to see every company in the industry put as much passion and support into its entry level product as it does with its flagship product.
The biggest challenges short and long term are what? And what are the strategic responses you are implementing to deal with each?
Short term is getting our shoes on peoples’ feet. Over the last six months, we’ve found when we get people to try our shoes, we’ve got them hooked. One general manager from a bucket list course tried out our shoes for a three-day stretch and he told us that his back, hips and knees hadn’t felt as good in decades. This is the type of feedback we hear from most players who test our golf shoes.
The long-term challenge is to adapt to a competitive and dynamic market. There are a lot of great companies making a lot of great golf shoes. We just happen to have a specific view on what makes the best possible shoe. We’ll have to offer shoes that are just as compelling at multiple price points for a variety of retailers and customers.
The good thing for Alma Mater is that we’ve been making shoes for 25+ years and we’re not in a hurry. We’re committed to delivering excellent products and great customer service to build the brand one step at a time.
Best advice you ever received. What was it and who was it from?
“Be long-term greedy” — from my dad.
I think the phrase means that whatever we do, we need to think about the impact over a 10- or 20-year horizon. We can never be short term in our thinking because the payoff just isn’t there. So, we have to continually innovate, deliver great value and take care of all of our partners, customers and stakeholders over the long term. And that’s how we’ll win.
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