Dont Start a Clothing Brand. Start a Pickleball Accessory Brand!
Table of Contents
Was up past my bedtime a few nights ago and the evening SportsCenter time slot was a rerun of some professional pickleball..
I had played it a few times but kinda thought it was just a fun, niche recreational game, so seeing it on TV had me a little shocked!
Sooooo my little shiny object squirrel brain wanted to sniff around and peak behind the curtain to get some numbers on this game.
Turns out … it is the fastest growing sport in the country.
Selkirk Sport: almost $100M last year. Basically off paddles alone.
Joola: $38M in the same lane.
The market is $2B today and projected to hit $9B by 2034.
There is so much room to build a great lifestyle business in this category…
Just probably not in paddles. Or apparel. More on that shortly…
What's Actually Wrong w/ This Category:
Open any pickleball brand site. You'll see:
Paddle names like "PRO 7000 SLK Carbon Hybrid Mk II"
Spec sheets bragging about face thickness and core polymer density
Stock photos of 30-somethings high-fiving in matching pastel kits
Color palettes that look borrowed from a 2009 tennis catalog
Either it's the engineering-led paddle companies competing on millimeters, or it's the lifestyle brands borrowing the wrong aesthetic from tennis.
Either way, the brand layer is MISSING!
s/o gettyimages freal
The Apparel Brand Trap
I figured the category play might be apparel. Like a Malbon or Metalwood play in golf.
Until I saw the numbers from one of the cooler brands I found, Recess. Only $1.2M last year.
But it makes a ton of sense when you zoom out and realize pickleball clothing is competing with every other athleisure brand on the market.
You're not unseating Lululemon with court skirts. The category is too crowded above it and most players just wear what they already own.
Apparel is a trap.
Where the Money Is Actually Hiding
Now look at what IS working in the adjacent categories.
Tifosi Optics: $20M last year in sport sunglasses
Titan: selling pickleball ball machines at $2,400 a pop
Both are accessory plays. Both prove that pickleball players will spend real money on stuff that isn't a paddle, as long as it solves a problem or looks good in their bag.
The accessory shelf in pickleball is basically empty. There is no Vessel of pickleball bags. There is no Goodr of pickleball eyewear. There is no SKLZ of pickleball training tools. The audience is there, the spend is there, the brand layer just hasn't been built.
You paying $2,400 to get that backhand dialed??????
ZOOM OUT! Look over at the fairway
Look at golf for the playbook.
Vessel built a real brand around bags. Bushnell owns rangefinders. Stitch owns travel cases. Groove-it owns club / wedge cleaning. There are easily 20-30 accessory brands eating well underneath the big equipment OEMs.
Pickleball has almost none of that layer yet. The ecosystem that golf, surf, and running all built out over 20 years is sitting there ready to be built into pickleball over the next 5.
Four Open Lanes I'd Actually Build Into
The eyewear play. Tifosi proved $20M is on the table. Build the Goodr of pickleball. Tasteful design, $69 to $89 price point, club partnerships, one clear silhouette people recognize from across a court. Eyewear is high margin, easy to ship, and the current category is genuinely ugly.
The bag and travel ecosystem play. Build the Vessel of pickleball. Day bag, club bag, travel case, sling. One material story, one color system, one logo that reads in a thumbnail. The first brand to own "the bag" for this sport compounds for a decade.
The high-ticket counter-position play. Titan is at $2,400 for ball machines with a feel that says "engineer in a garage." There's a play at $799 with design-led packaging that pulls in the casual player, and a play at $4K to $5K for clubs and serious solo players. Peloton positioning on either end.
The training and widget play. Aim trainers, return walls, scoreboards, grip tape, ball retrievers, on-bag accessories. The kind of stuff that lives in every serious player's bag and shows up in their Reels. Cheap to make, easy to brand, and high attachment rate to whoever owns the bag or the eyewear.
Weapon of the Week: The Cold Start Brief Prompt
Last week's prompt found the white space.
This one walks you out of the white space, holding a brief you could put in the designer's desk Friday morning. All you need is Claude or Chat or whatever.
Copy and edit this:
I want to build a brand in [CATEGORY]. Do a real market scan using web search and your full knowledge of the space, then deliver a complete cold-start brief in three phases.
PHASE 1, market scan:
The 10 biggest brands in this category and what each one is actually known for
The 3 fastest-growing brands of the last 12 months and what they changed to grow
The single brand with the strongest design point of view, and what specifically makes it work
Average price points across the category and the obvious price gaps where nobody is playing
PHASE 2, white space:
The 2 to 3 customer segments currently being lumped into one and shouldn't be
The product format, ritual, or use case that nobody owns yet
The brand archetype from another category (running, supplements, beauty, hospitality, hardware, home-tech) that would map cleanly onto this one
PHASE 3, the first SKU brief, give me one product to launch:
Product type and form factor
5 brand name options that don't sound generic or AI-generated
A hero positioning line in one sentence
Target retail price and a realistic COGS range
3 design moves that would make this product instantly recognizable in a thumbnail
Material, color, and packaging direction in 2 to 3 sentences
The first 3 ad hooks I'd run on Meta and TikTok
The customer this converts, and the customer it deliberately repels
Be opinionated. Pick a lane and defend it. If you're guessing on a number or a trend, flag it so I know exactly what to validate before committing capital
Run this on any category you've been circling.
The job isn't ideation anymore. The job is collapsing the gap between "I think there's something here" and "here's the first thing I'd ship.”
Source It
If the eyewear lane caught your eye like it did for me, and you want to get a sample or test a small batch this month:
Alibaba: FREE SUNGLASS SUPPLIER
Also Alibaba released their own agent… and it can literally do everything from source a product to build your store for you. Check out the link below to see more details on that!
Accio Work: Your Business, On Autopilot
Run your business effortlessly with Accio Work. Our specialized AI agents handle sourcing, supplier deals, store management, and marketing—all automatically. Backed by Alibaba.com’s vast product network, execution is fast and reliable. Skip the complexity—get results instantly while staying in full control of your growth.
Pietra** paid plan needed: (primary, vetted small-batch manufacturers)
And for the weekly quote we are going with one from the my GOAT… the great Steven Pressfield:
Till next time soldier,
Carson
P.S. If you made it this far, here is my weekly beg to subscribe to my brand new YouTube channel. !!!!!
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