One Stitch at a Time: Todd Bishop on Dormie Workshops and the Future of Canadian Golf

By Nkele Martin, PGA of Canada

Growing up in the Bishop family, you could find three generations on a tee box at any given time. Todd Bishop's grandfather was a lefty, as was his father. When Todd came along, it was only natural that he was too.

"I had a club across my chest as a baby when I was in a crib, so there wasn't much choice in whether I was going to play or not," Bishop joked. "It was just a question of ‘how soon could I walk?’"

Bishop describes golfing in his family as “osmosis”, a lifestyle passed down like a family heirloom. 

"What I love most about golf is the trips and playing away, because it's kind of like reading a new book," he said. "You kind of know the genre, but you don't know the beginning or the ending. You can kind of create your own chapters inside that book of every adventure you go on with golf.”

That love of golf, family and adventure took Bishop and his brothers across the continent and they eventually turned their passion into a profession. In 2014, Todd and his brother Jeff founded Dormie Workshop, a brand that has become one of the most sought after in golf; and they never lost sight of where it started.

Path to the Workshop

After a young life full of golf, skiing and surfing in Nova Scotia - specifically golf at Greenwood Golf Club and Oakfield Golf and Country Club - and surfing at Martinique Beach in Lawrencetown - Bishop turned pro in 2005 and became a PGA of Canada member in 2008.

Teaching was the next step, and he instructed on cruise ships and courses across Canada. 

Not long after Bishop became a professional, his middle brother, Jeff, followed him into the PGA of Canada ranks – and the two noticed holes in the industry. But in 2011, before they ever made a head cover, the pair launched Lined Up, a ball marker with a twist.

“There was nobody really making markers that had alignment game improvement style, and so we took that to another level,” Bishop said, holding up a glistening black marker with a green line running through it.

At the same time, the duo was running the Bishop Brothers Golf School. But that entrepreneurial itch was still there, and all it took was one more vacuum in the golf industry to send them on another adventure.

Jeff noticed leather headcovers were gaining popularity, but he found they were bland, and tough to get on and off the club. He thought about ones that reflected who they were – surfers, storytellers, East Coasters – and came back to his older brother.

"I think we should start a head cover business," Bishop recalls Jeff saying. But the eldest brother wasn't so sure; they already had the golf school and the ball marker company. But Jeff wasn’t taking no for an answer and gave his brother an ultimatum: he was doing it with or without him.

So, as they did with Lined Up, the pair set off to create an elevated leather headcover.

“We still kept our day job coaching and teaching one-off lessons, but at night we were working, learning more about leather, figuring out how to make these things,” said Bishop.

The brothers knew golf and its business industry, but they didn’t know the first thing about leather.

“Not knowing how to sew and not owning any machines, we had to rely on others to do the prototyping for us,” he said.

They settled on the name Dormie Workshops in September of 2014 while watching the Ryder Cup. Dormie references a position you want to be in a; “no-lose situation,” Bishop said. The brothers also liked the tradition and old-world feel of the word, and they put workshop behind it to “piece it all together.”

They debuted their product at the PGA Atlantic trade show two months later with a handful of hides and prototypes so rough that Bishop said attendees "didn't know whether they were oven mitts or whether they were a pair of hard socks." 

By the end of the show, a handful of courses had ordered a dozen covers apiece. That was enough. The brothers were hooked. They went all in.

Twelve Years Later

Dormie has since become everything the pair dreamed of. After bringing their third brother, Alex, into the fold early on, the company grew exponentially, and so did the trio. They learned how to work with full-grain leather, from heat pressing and using foil machines, even mastering designs with laser technology.

Now, twelve years on from that debut trade show, Dormie Workshops is one of golf's most coveted brands. Simple leather headcover? All day. Your favourite NHL team? You can get that, Dormie is the official leather headcover of the NHL. What about a custom design? Go crazy. They also offer other creatively designed products like belts, yardage books, and towels.

The brand sells to courses and customers across the world, boasts over eighty thousand followers on Instagram, and has more than a dozen full-time artists. It even won SCOREGolf’s 2025 Younger Award for Best Golf Brand.

The brothers, still major equity owners of Dormie, refuse to compete on price. "We wanted to compete on design," Bishop said. “That's really our main goal. We want to have the word Dormie and be synonymous with quality and craftsmanship.”

The company has also stayed true to its roots in the Atlantic golf community; It’s the title sponsor of the First Tee – Atlantic Cup fundraising event at Ashburn Golf Club and the PGA Atlantic Women’s Pro-Am, now the Dormie Women’s Pro-AM.

“Somehow it's all come together where we're not teaching anymore, but we can still have a lot of impact and help others become big advocates of the sport and fall in love with the game,” Bishop said.

Throughout the years of rapid growth, Dormie has stayed a family operation. Cousins on both sides work in the business alongside the brothers while former junior golfers that Jeff and Todd taught also work for the company. 

“That's a real thrill because those are the ones you care the most about, and that you also trust the most,” Bishop said. 

Two years ago, the company opened a second workshop in Los Angeles, mirroring its Halifax base to serve the U.S. market directly. 

“We've been around the globe quite a bit, and having the U.S. as a neighbor, it's always been the easiest, most economical way to find the beautiful weather, [it has] great markets for golf, and so it was a natural extension,” Bishop said.

While production in the states has rapidly increased, Canada, and the East Coast, will always be Dormie’s home.

“Being a Canadian brand first and being established here, our headquarters will always be in Halifax. Our design and sales and marketing are all centered here,” Bishop said.

That same instinct is what led Bishop to help form the Canadian Golf Brand Alliance (CGBA) nearly two years ago. The idea came on a spontaneous road trip to the U.S. with his son after their ski trip got rained out. While driving, he started thinking about how little visibility Canadian golf brands had compared to other sectors, despite the sport's massive following.

"You go to a grocery store, there's arrows pointing ‘this is a Canadian product.’ You go into Home Hardware, ‘this is Canadian paint,’" Bishop said. "You go into a golf shop, nothing.

“The more I drove, the faster I started to think about ‘who do I need to get on board with this?’ And I just started calling other guys and girls who I knew had their own business in the golf space and were Canadian based, and that was really the only foundation, just coming together as a community and learning.”

Two years in, the CGBA counts more than 30 members ranging from apparel to beverage brands, and it has a goal of doubling that. The non-profit alliance connects businesses to learn from and collaborate with each other, offers members marketing support with services like Canva subscriptions and Google Ad space, and looks to promote Canadian businesses in the golf space. 

The alliance, like Dormie, is learning while growing. It will soon host a town hall with its members, is working towards securing non-profit grants, and plans to build a Canadian-only aisle at the 2027 Toronto Golf Show.

Bishop sees the CGBA’s mission as an addition to the Canadian golf atmosphere, not a response to any political spat with its Southern neighbours, pointing to the pride American brands have long taken in "Made in the USA".

With worldwide companies and some just starting out, Bishop describes the CGBA in an apt way: with a surfing metaphor. He describes the alliance as a "party wave," a term where riders share a break instead of one hoarding it. 

"That's how I would like to see the Canadian Golf Brand Alliance work with these brands, is that everybody's riding that same wave, and we are sharing it and having fun doing it with others, as opposed to being that territorial lone surfer that is toxic and doesn't want to play with anybody else,” he said.

The Long Game

With 12 years under Dormie’s belt, the Bishop brothers are once again looking for another notch. With St. Andrews as a top account and a UK void that reminds Bishop of 2014, they’re eyeing Europe. And an apparel line is planned for 2027, a longtime ambition of theirs that they finally have the demand to test out.

“We understand the market a lot better,” Bishop said. “We don't really know how big it's going to get. We certainly have visions in our head that it might have a similar growth pattern as the head covers. It's just totally unknown.”

They have big ambitions, but none bigger than prioritising family. Bishop's son - who broke tradition by golfing right-handed - is already immersed in the business, and his youngest brother's one-year-old daughter has her own set of pink clubs before she's fully found her legs. 

“To be in a position that you can make an impact on that generation is great,” Bishop said.

Some of Bishop's proudest golf memories, like playing Mauna Kea in Hawaii, shirtless, at the course pro's own suggestion, trace back to a leap of faith taken eleven years earlier in a Halifax workshop, and he is looking to make more with his family, his business, and the CGBA.

While he beams with excitement packing the car for a new chapter on a new course, Bishop always dreads the moment that chapter closes. 

“The thing I hate most is unpacking the car because I know the trip's over,” he said.

But while the 18th hole may signal the end of a day on the course, the Bishop’s hope there are many chapters ahead for Dormie, and their clan will be in every single one.

"We are always trying to put family first, business second,” Bishop said.

“That's the way we've been able to operate for the last 12 years, and we hope that it maintains that way.”