SISTERS DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES

Words: Karen Milliner

The name MGI is synonymous with cutting-edge electric golf buggies, not just in Australia but around the world.

This industry big hitter, started 31 years ago in the garage of a Melbourne suburban home, is entering a new chapter by taking on investors, but the family remains firmly at the MGI Golf helm with CEOs Miranda Turner and Carrie Edwards-Britt, the daughters of company founder Ian Edwards.

The new shareholders are private equity firm, Anacacia Capital (majority shareholder) and Athletic Ventures, a syndicate attracting current and former elite athletes as investors, including golfer, Karrie Webb, and cricketers, Mitchell Starc and Alyssa Healy.

The investment deal not only provides an exit strategy for Ian (he will serve on the board as a non-executive director) and a financial return for his three decades of hard work, it gives Miranda and Carrie opportunities to extend their brand’s global reach. 

Both have been part of MGI Golf for about 19 years, working their way up to be joint CEOs. Carrie runs things from the global head office at Nunawading in Melbourne while older sister Miranda is based in the Las Vegas office, where she oversees North America operations. 

“We’re very excited about the future,” Miranda says. “This is a financial investment not a management one. It was important to us when we went looking for an equity partner to have one that would match what we stand for, that would allow us to keep our family company feel, culture and leadership style and to honour Dad’s legacy and everything that the company has been built on.”

Adds Carrie: “This partnership gives our dad a well-earned chance to take a step back and it gives Miranda and I the opportunity to take the next steps in our careers as CEOs. It will help us with global growth and bringing new and innovative products to market more quickly.” 

Miranda and Carrie were pre-teens when Ian decided to get into electric golf buggies, after his dad had asked him to find one. The market was small back then but Ian, a single father and keen golfer, seized an opportunity. It proved to be the start of his global MGI empire.

Smashing his first year’s sales targets, he would go on to design and release innovative new electric buggies, explore global markets and acquire the rights to the Sureshot brand of watches, lasers and handheld GPS units. His entrepreneurial mind and vision patented the gyroscope technology on the Navigator model which, still to this day, is MGI’s crowning jewel.

MGI not only dominates the Australian and New Zealand markets for electric buggies, it has been recently named the leading brand in the United States and Sweden and is rapidly growing in Canada, the rest of Europe and in Asia.

As much as Miranda and Carrie loved sport, it wasn’t a given that they would join the family business. In their 20s, both worked in different industries: Miranda in travel, after completing her business degree with a major in tourism and minor in marketing, while Carrie, who studied accounting, managed a leading Melbourne nightclub. But their dad convinced them to be part of MGI.

“Does anybody ever grow up thinking they want to work for their parents? Probably not, but it’s been the best decision I ever made,” says Carrie, who returned to study and completed her MBA two years ago. “There’s so much we have learnt from Dad. Seeing him work tirelessly as a single father and his dedication and drive to be number one has definitely rubbed off on me, my sister and our uncle [Neil, who is part of the business].”

Miranda concurs. “I said to Dad when he asked me to join, ‘There has to be travel involved!’ and he said, ‘You can go anywhere and take the business there’. I started in national sales so I would fly out to see and employ our sales reps in each state and get in the car and go for long drives and see some of the world’s most beautiful golf courses. I fell in love with it. 

“The golf industry is a very rewarding one. It’s relaxed, the people in it are in it because they want to be in it and they love the game of golf and they’ve found a way to make a living out of it.

“Carrie and I have always had a choice if we want to be in the family business or not. At any time, we could have walked away but we both still have a long way to go in the industry that we love.”

In addition to her CEO responsibilities, Carrie is heavily involved in new product design.

“Working on new product design is fun and rewarding,” she says. “We’re very customer-centric in our product development and we have some exciting innovations coming out in the next 12 months. That is keeping us energised. We have been working on some of these designs for quite a few years now, so it’s always exciting when we bring them to market.”

Just released is the new Ai 500 electric buggy which joins MGI’s Navigator GPS+ in the Ai Series family. Its integrated GPS system is built into a high-resolution, all-weather touchscreen display which can connect the user to more than 40,000 golf courses worldwide. 

Although it is early days in this next chapter of the MGI story, one thing is for certain. Miranda and Carrie have their dad’s drive to keep pace with tech trends, meet the needs of the modern golfer and ensure their brand remains number one. 

“We both want to do dad proud and we want his legacy to live on,” says Carrie. “We will do that by doing what we have always done, work hard and be passionate about what we do.”