If there’s one thing the people who work at Pickleball Central have in common, it’s a passion for pickleball and a desire to connect with the estimated 36.5 million pickleball players in the U.S. at every stage of their “pickleball journey.”
The comprehensive one-stop shop for all things pickleball launched its ecommerce website in 2006 as a two-person home operation selling T-shirts, gifts, musical pickles and pickleball ornaments. Today, the company has 62 employees and is the largest specialty retailer of pickleball products in the U.S. It carries more than 20,000 items in both its Amazon store and its DTC website to meet the dizzying demand of pickleball mania.
The mania is fueled not only by seasoned players, but also by beginners looking to learn the game. Pickleball Central President Michael Brown framed it like this, “We have something we call the ‘pickleball journey.’ And it goes from being ‘pickleball-curious’ (‘Wow, that looks like a fun game’) to ‘pickleball-casual,’ to ‘pickleball-serious,’ to ‘pickleball-obsessed.’”
Their own website caters to the “pickleball-obsessed.” Their Amazon store is focused on the “pickleball-curious.”
“We didn’t see pickleball products there, so we also saw an opportunity to introduce pickleball to Amazon,” said Brown.
Since launching in the Amazon store in 2013, they are learning more about the “pickleball-curious” customer through the data that Amazon provides to small businesses. Their main Amazon customer is someone who is exploring the game and researching products as well as price points on “everyone’s trusted resource,” he said.
Selling in the Amazon store has allowed Pickleball Central to break the glass ceiling on their customer base, said Brown. They now have two sales channels that work together, attracting two different audiences—hopefully converting the curious to the obsessed in the process. “From our perspective, we need to be as successful on Amazon as we are on our website, because that’s how we’re going to meet and make more players,” he said.
It’s a strategy that’s worked. Pickleball Central’s growth on Amazon has been constant. Plus, Amazon’s many tools and services have allowed Pickleball Central to expand and also connect more deeply with its customers in the pickleball community.
Jimmy Blue, Senior Director of Channel Marketing at Pickleball Central, added, “Amazon allows us to reach new customers we can’t reach directly on our website. Amazon has a huge customer base in the U.S. and internationally. We want to be in front of those customers to teach them about our brand.”
As the game continues to increase in popularity at an accelerated rate domestically and in international locations like Australia and India, Brown and Blue likewise see tremendous growth potential in the Amazon store.
With the game growing by 20% each year, Brown is enthusiastic about introducing so many new players to the game.
“We believe that once they try it, they’ll keep playing,” he said.