How This Sports business Found a Competitive Advantage

Richard Lee started out hosting table tennis competitions. When a longtime table tennis paddle maker from Germany approached him about US distribution, he decided to jump at the chance. In 2019, he acquired the business.

Through this encounter Richard learned almost everything there was to recognize about developing recent technology for paddles, so when pickleball began gaining popularity—he saw another business chance. “We found …, based on our encounter in producing products for table tennis, that we potentially can make a better product for the sport of pickleball,” Richard says.

Here’s how Richard maximized the business chance in a recent and growing sport.

 

Modernizing the business

When Richard took over Joola, a German table tennis business dating back to 1952, he faced the daunting job of modernizing a well-established brand. Beyond updating the business tech stack, he decided to replatform to Shopify, so the ecommerce platform could act as the foundation for Joola’s launch into additional international markets.

Richard thought centralizing resources for the business would make the business more efficient. He says the concept was to develop products in one place, and from there they could be shipped worldwide. But he quickly realized the sports equipment economy in different regions is distinct. “What we found is that when we centralized it, we were slowing ourselves down,” Richard explains.

Understanding the individuality of each region helped Joola speed up product advancement by utilizing local experts. This, in turn, later helped Joola unlock pickleball as a recent category of sports equipment.

conference pickleball pros serendipitously

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Joola throng started looking beyond table tennis for other paddle sports, especially ones that could be played outside with social distance. They decided to provide pickleball a leave at the courts near their office.

At the court next to them, they noticed two men playing at a very quick pace. The players were Ben and Collin Johns, two of the best professional pickleball players in the globe. Watching this match was enough for the Joola throng to decide to design and produce a pickleball paddle, and after some advancement, they had Ben and Collin test it. “Ben tried it for the first period and he said, ‘Hey, I ponder you got something going here,’” Richard says.

Joola’s throng applied its knowledge of the construction of table tennis paddles to pickleball paddles. Richard attributes much of the achievement to the business’s table tennis foundation. “We’ve brought some technology that pickleball has never seen,” Richard says.

Building the pickleball throng

For Richard, it wasn’t just about entering a recent economy; it was about building the economy and teaching people about the recent sport. “Pickleball is all about throng, and once you get in, you meet so many recent people,” he says. Joola engages with the throng through partnerships and back for local facilities, aiming to integrate themselves into players’ entire journeys, from beginner to competitor to pro or instructor levels. It also sponsors players, like Ben Johns.

To discover more about how Joola became the number one pickleball brand in the globe, listen to Richard’s packed interview on Shopify Masters.