The smaller racquet companies and how to succeed!

[Crocodile]

Well I will start off by saying that it’s probably safe to say that if you are not one of the top 5 racquet brands in terms of sales and market share, you are one of the smaller brands.
Being a smaller brand is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact it can be a very good thing if you are achieving the financial goals you set out to achieve, and I wonder whether some smaller brands are happy to stay small, less outlay, less risk and more autonomy and ownership.
On the flip side of course having low sales and slim profit and loss figures for hard effort can be a very stressful situation to be in. If that’s the case then I’m thinking that the smaller brands have to do something different to attract more sales including one or two of the following things:
1. Make more beautiful looking racquets
2. Make higher quality racquets with great quality control and superior playability
3. Sell racquets at a more competitive price and offer better value
4. Sell racquets at a more expensive price point but offer exclusivity, like an Aston
5. Be a company that is very engaged with building relationships with the tennis community including players, coaches, retailers and online communities.
With the big companies, they certainly get a vast exposure of their brand with international professional sponsorships of players, organisations and corporations and therefore they can also easily generate sales with online marketing and visual media.
However my view with the smaller companies that don’t have the budget to sponsor players that you have to go back to granular things like meeting the community, travelling out to clubs to meet coaches, shops and players and maybe offer something different related to the 5 things I have mentioned here.
Anyway do any of you have an opinion on this. I’m quite passionate about it and find that some of the companies that are currently not part of the big 5 have something special and unique to offer tennis community around the world along with the major brands.

 

[Crocodile]

As a supplementary comment a lot of consumers and clients tend to be comfortable with the major brands such as a Wilson, Head, Babolat, Yonex and also Tecnifibre and these brands are not going anywhere and are safe options for clients both consumers and retailers.
The small brands however need to be able to explain their point of difference and how their product has advantages over the mass produced brands.
Do any of you see any of the smaller brands or even medium sized brands doing something special that could be a winner,
From my view the Pacific racquets certainly had an addictive feel to them, the feel was great and they used to have a no tolerance policy with their specs which I thought was fantastic:
Back in 1999 Volkl was the brand with superior engineering and comfort and their C10 and V1 are iconic masterpieces,
Pro Kennex with their kinetic technology and wood core frames are a tennis elbow sufferers saviour. And there are more examples.

 

[stephenpinkus]

Interesting post. I believe that quality and exclusivity(with appropriate outreach and PR) are the backbone of a business plan. To use American footwear as an example, people will pay higher prices for the quality and cachet of the niche players such as White’s and Nick’s and Alden. Price is not part of the equation - in fact, I believe that if the prices of the aforesaid were reduced, their cachet would be at risk.

 

[heavyD]

I don't even see Tecnifibre frames in western Canada. You pretty well see only the big four brands up here and the odd Prince. When I was using my PK Black Ace, nobody even knew the brand or what Kinetic technology was. It's clear that the only way for a brand to gain market share is to get them in the hands of top players which is tough to do. Babolat struck gold with Nadal which is not the norm but it's probably what it's going to take for one of these brands to catch on with the masses. Short of that I believe is that if you're a niche brand, at the very least get your cosmetics as good as they can be. Some of these PK and Prince frames look like they were designed by young teenagers. Also a racquet name like "Beast" (which by accounts isn't a bad frame) isn't exactly going to resonate with serious players which makes me wonder who are making the big decisions for these companies. At least Dunlop has started to get their cosmetics in order as their new frames look just as good as anything from the big four brands.

 

[konstantinos kalfountzos]

Make available 5-10 frames for agreed periods of time 2-3 week demos s o that reviews can be made by YouTubers. This way content will be created, I as a consumer will actually see someone hitting with the brand's racket, see how he plays, compare myself to him/her and take his opinion into consideration or not.

Brands like Diadem, Prince, Volkl, Angell should follow what I say above and do what Toroline has been doing for the past 2-3 months on Instagram and YouTube and in rackets case, the frames are re-usuable by the next YouTuber-reviewer. These brands have absolutely nothing to spend, risk or lose by this method.

Dunlop, for example, is underachiving right now outside of Japan. Apart from watching TennisNerd, who has actually reviewed Dunlop accompanied with hitting clips? Leadout Harry?
Look what comes up for me, the candidate buyer on YouTube when I type "Dunlop CX 2024". Almost nothing and it's been 2 months now.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dunlop+cx+2024

* the strangest and most irrational thing in 2024 was done by Head, having Sinner winning the AO Open without the new cosmetics.

 

[GodlessEndeavor]

Currently I buy yonex which I find to be a trustworthy brand with good products and prices that are not too unreasonable. For me to switch to a small brand racquet, one of the following would have to be true:

- they have a very unique product that intrigues me; or
- the quality is significantly higher than other products I can buy for a similar price; or
- the quality is equal but the price is significantly cheaper.

I don't see brands trying to do any of those things, except perhaps the new wooden racquets tennisnerd featured on his channel at some point.

In fact what I hear about almost all the brands (small or big) is they offer similar products with poor quality control.

I can't be bothered to buy 5 racquets of the same model and do the QC myself like some people do (fair play to those people though).

 

[konstantinos kalfountzos]

Currently I buy yonex which I find to be a trustworthy brand with good products and prices that are not too unreasonable. For me to switch to a small brand racquet, one of the following would have to be true:

- they have a very unique product that intrigues me; or
- the quality is significantly higher than other products I can buy for a similar price; or
- the quality is equal but the price is significantly cheaper.

I don't see brands trying to do any of those things, except perhaps the new wooden racquets tennisnerd featured on his channel at some point.

In fact what I hear about almost all the brands (small or big) is they offer similar products with poor quality control.

I can't be bothered to buy 5 racquets of the same model and do the QC myself like some people do (fair play to those people though).

For wooden rackets I suppose you're refferring to Epoke. You may be interested in these too:

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/new-wooden-racquets-from-epok.754806/post-17817920

 

[ErrorMachine]

I don’t envy their tasks of entering this market.
If I were a brand I’d put a lot of effort into ensuring QC with my supplier. I feel like that used to be a Yonex thing but haven’t heard much about it lately, though im under a rock these days. I’d also use charity as an incentive; a percentage is donated to tennis related charity.
As mentioned, hold demo days at the courts and clubs. Start locally in your backyard and scale up as you can.
Sponsor both adult and Jr tournaments. Make it a tennis experience with your tent and marketing info as the centerpiece.
I believe you gotta wrangle customers and not expect them to just arrive. Hire account executives to contact high schools and colleges with generous gear packages. Id try to be at every itf event possible. Sure, maybe by fluke you can sign the next GOAT, but most of those players are going to have better careers as coaches than tournament players. Introduce your brand and get them to try it and use it and recommend it at their club.
Finally, the products. It would be small at first and maybe grow slowly. I’d have a power racket that’s a Pure Drive clone. A control ~98 sqin 18/19 racket. A lighter Jr racket. And an oversized extended. You can’t please everyone, so focus on making these the highest quality specs.

What’s hard is this a lot of resources. As you know, it’s very easy for tennis companies to fail. I think for the big brands tennis is an offering of the overall portfolio.

I feel Solinco has an opportunity to excel. They have the brand recognition due to their strings. I feel if they reached out to the clubs that have their string, they can sponsor demo events, tournaments, clinics etc. Sometimes you have to literally put the product into the customers hands.

 

[Crocodile]

Some very interesting posts with lots of thought put in.
Epoke and wood core frames are a very interesting concept. I would love to see PK bring back their Core 1 frames wrapped in a bespoke classy cosmetic.
I do like things that are a bit special and unique and you can tell that an enthusiast was involved in creating something soulful.
Please keep commenting, maybe we could discuss each of the smaller brands and give our take on what they do well and what they could do to improve their products and service;