Scott Ruerup has a lot of stamina. He’s up at 4 every morning and spends two hours at the gym before work — a routine that energizes him for the day ahead.

It’s that same energy he’s drawing on in his new role as chief executive officer of G/Fore, the luxury golf brand owned by Peter Millar. His goal is to significantly expand the reach of the brand by growing lifestyle offerings, footwear to be worn off the course and womenswear.

Ruerup spend nearly 17 years at Oxxford Clothes before joining Peter Millar in 2011 as vice president and later president.

A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Ruerup always had a propensity for the creative fields. As a young man he started making his own suits as well as his mother’s dresses as a hobby. “I always had appreciation for craftsmanship, quality, fit, pattern,” he said.

When it was time for college, his father thought he’d be better served getting a business degree, so Ruerup did that before enrolling in SCAD. The summer after he graduated, he and a friend opened a store targeted to active young people like themselves.

After four years, and as a result of his then-girlfriend, now wife, complaining that all he did was work, they closed the store and Ruerup joined Oxxford. He started in customer service but soon befriended the master tailor. “I always wanted to get into Oxxford Clothes to learn how to sew by hand,” he said. “I knew how to do it by the sewing machine, but I wanted to learn the aspects of handwork.”

That friendship lasted 30 years until the tailor passed away recently.

Ruerup quickly rose through the ranks at Oxxford, gaining experience with everything from product and design to marketing and technology. “That really jumpstarted my career,” he said.

It also caught the attention of Chris Knott, one of the Peter Millar founders, who sent him an airline ticket to visit the brand’s headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. He met with Knott and Peter Millar CEO Scott Mahoney and they made him an offer to join as vice president, “and the rest is history,” he said.

When he started, Peter Millar was still a small business centered around its expertise as a beautiful Southern golf brand. Ruerup was soon elevated to president and for the next 13 years helped the company grow to the men’s and women’s lifestyle brand it is today.

It’s this playbook that he hopes to replicate with G/Fore.

The brand was founded in 2011 by Mossimo Giannulli, who made his mark in fashion with his Mossimo brand in the 1980s. G/Fore started as a colorful golf glove and expanded into a lifestyle collection of footwear and apparel influenced by golf. It was sold to Peter Millar in 2018 and Giannulli exited the brand last year.

“We’re so lucky to work for the brand he created, because he’s an innovator,” Ruerup said of Giannulli. “I love the fact that you can start with an accessory product and build it.”

At the time, the idea of colored gloves was an out-of-the-box idea, but it found a niche. “He developed that glove, and then shortly after, shoes, with the same thought process of bold, beautiful design,” Ruerup said. “They weren’t the same old stodgy shoes.”

He continued: “I speak to it each and every day with the whole team. Everything we do has to have a touch of that innovation. It has to have some detail that reverts back to that first colored glove. That’s a signifier we have to instill in the company. We were born in L.A., we were shaped in golf, and our legacy is style. If we stick to that each and every day, we’ll get there.”

Ruerup has actually been CEO of the brand since January after Suzy Biszantz exited, but his appointment was only made public last month.

He said one of the prerequisites for him accepting the position is that its headquarters be relocated to Raleigh from Los Angeles. Peter Millar agreed and built a space down the street from its offices in a “real cool industrial part of town,” he said.

It’s been a big advantage to share back-office functions such as finance, supply chain and shipping, he said, adding that the integration was “almost seamless.” But the relocation also required some staffing changes. Ruerup hired Adam Rutledge, formerly with The North Face, as senior vice president of strategy and operations, and Tyler Copeland as head of creative marketing.

Thomas Harvey, who cut his teeth at Theory, Original Penguin and Perry Ellis, headed design for the past four years and he’s worked to retain the subtle details that have proven popular for the brand, such as contrast collars, cuffs and plackets, and subdued patterns. “He’s from London, he has a global sense, which I love,” Ruerup said “He’s well-traveled and that helps tremendously.”

Although G/Fore is now located next to Peter Millar and Ruerup reports to Mahoney, the business is run independently. “Our design, marketing, stores are all G/Fore. I don’t have to call Richemont or Scott Mahoney every day.” Richemont owns Peter Millar.

Today, 50 percent of the G/Fore business is footwear and Ruerup said the brand will introduce its first lifestyle “street shoes” next year. Women’s, which accounts for around 35 percent of sales, is seen as a growth area. Sales this year are up 38 percent and its most popular products include golf skorts and cashmere polos and sweaters.

“We’re trying not to be so performance heavy on the golf course,” he said, adding that the team is incorporating more cotton-rich fabrics into its assortment to augment the performance product.

This holds true for men’s as well. Ruerup refers to it as a “golf-adjacent” lifestyle product. “Our goal is to come out on the 19th hole with a really cool, fresh, modern, contemporary look, not just another performance polo.”

Currently, 80 percent of the business is centered around golf, but Ruerup hopes to follow the Peter Millar game plan and build G/Fore’s lifestyle offering. Although its current distribution is centered around 1,700 green grass shops, the brand recently was added to 15 Nordstrom stores and it will begin targeting specialty stores in the future.

“I have nice relationships with those stores from the past 30 years but we haven’t approached them as yet because I want to ensure that we give them the best foot forward for that environment, which will be more of the lifestyle component,” he said.

Today, lifestyle is being positioned prominently in G/Fore’s own stores. There are currently four, on Madison Avenue in New York, Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Fla., Beverly Hills and Scottsdale. Ruerup said they do well and serve as “think tanks” for the company to gauge consumer response to the lifestyle product.

Although he’s got a clear vision of how to grow G/Fore, Ruerup doesn’t feel pressure. “At Peter Millar, we never talked about revenue,” he said. “We were thoughtful. We never wavered. We had each other’s back if we made a slight mistake, and no one ever pressured us on that. We’re going to do the same at G/Fore. Certainly we’re going to always work each and every day with a sense of urgency but for no other reason than this business is fast. But it’s not like we’re chasing something.”