Hiring a 35-year industry veteran to run aftermarket sales is not a move you make when things are going well. It is a move you make when you recognize the gap between your product reputation and your market position has grown too wide to ignore.
UST Mamiya announced Jose Miraflor as Vice President of Aftermarket Sales this week, tasking him with expanding distribution channels and strengthening partner relationships across North America and globally. The company frames this as building "the most experienced and high-performing leadership team in the golf shaft industry." Read between the lines and you see a shaft manufacturer that dominates the aftermarket sales charts but struggles to translate that into broader brand visibility.
The numbers tell a complicated story. UST Mamiya claims its shafts have been the top-selling aftermarket option in the United States for over a decade. The Recoil line alone holds the title of best-selling graphite iron shaft on the market. Yet the brand ranks 109th globally in our tracking, a position that reflects minimal consumer-facing momentum despite legitimate product success. A 24 percent month-over-month improvement suggests something is shifting, but from that starting point, improvement is a low bar.
Miraflor's background in product marketing and brand development hints at where UST Mamiya sees its biggest problem. This is a company that supplies shafts to every major OEM, from Callaway to Titleist to TaylorMade, yet rarely gets credit in the minds of everyday golfers. When you buy a new driver, you think about the head. The shaft is an afterthought unless you are deep into custom fitting. UST Mamiya owns the aftermarket, but the aftermarket is a niche within a niche.
The hire also reflects a broader trend in the shaft industry: brands recognizing that being an OEM supplier is not enough. Fujikura, Mitsubishi, and Project X have all invested heavily in consumer-facing marketing in recent years. UST Mamiya has historically relied on its tour presence and fitting network to do the talking. That approach built a solid business but left brand equity on the table.
Whether Miraflor can close that gap depends on execution. The infrastructure is there. The product credibility is there. What has been missing is the connective tissue between UST Mamiya's engineering reputation and the golfer standing in a fitting bay deciding between three shafts they have never heard of. If this hire is the start of a real push to change that, it could mark a turning point for a brand that has spent too long being the industry's best-kept secret.
