Fiend at Court Unplugged
I have tried to exercise curbside pickup to the greatest extent possible since the onset of the COVID crisis. A significant driver of that practice is an abundance of COVID caution. However, I have to confess that I don’t really enjoy shopping. I have been ready for curbside pickup to go mainstream my entire life.
Last weekend, I had to run into a store in my childhood hometown to purchase an item that was immediately needed. That trip was a couple of days before the notification that we had all been exposed to COVID-19 at the hospital and thus required to quarantine. The tennis sporting goods end cap at the store was pretty bleak. Maybe it’s just my mood.
Consumer options are limited at this specific store. A more positive spin is that the display is picked over due to increased consumer demand for tennis equipment. I think that it is possible that the vast majority of tennis equipment by people outside the tennis eco-system is purchased from retail displays similar to the one I encountered. That end cap is the port of entry into tennis for many people.
The Tennis Industry Association (TIA) publishes a USA Wholesale Equipment Census on a quarterly basis. It is only available to TIA members who contribute data that is aggregated in that report. However, the USTA recently published a news article that cited some recent numbers. It provides a window into what is going on in the tennis equipment sales industry.
In the third quarter of 2020, racquet sales in the entry-level category was significantly higher compared to the same period last year. Shipments of youth racquets was up 40.9% and shipments of adult entry-level racquets increased 43.3% category. Entry-level is defined to be any racquet that is under $50. This uptick in sales is attributed to tennis benefitting from the new socially distant norms of COVID. Tennis is a non-contact sport.
The tennis service organizations currently have a hyper focus on addressing and improving the consumer experience as people new to the sport engage in their initial lessons or clinics. I believe that there is also an opportunity to move that consumer experience back a notch to the point of sale of tennis equipment.
That end cap is an opportunity to use equipment sales as a funnel to direct new tennis consumers to quality affordable tennis instruction. Additionally, those consumers should be pointed to additional resources for creating a lifelong attachment to the game. There is an opportunity for increased collaboration between the equipment manufacturers and the tennis service organization to build a more effective hook into that initial engagement.
On the bright side, there was no pickleball equipment for sale in that particular retail establishment.
- Tennis industry shows strength in face of coronavirus pandemic, Arthur Kapetanakis and Victoria Chiesa, USTA National News Website, December 03, 2020.
