Hey
@Matt Hetherington, I was wondering if you can elaborate on how JOOLA (or your manufacturing partners) achieves consistently heavier blades for your pro players compared to the commercial market blades?
I'm also curious about the market research and product design decisions that go on at brands like JOOLA behind these types of decisions. Personally, I actually prefer heavier blades, and I've recently noticed that many brands have
very tight weight distributions among their blades around 85g (especially among those seemingly manufactured by the Korean blade factory). This has actually turned me off from buying/using some of these blades in the past (including Xiom's Hugo blade, but also the Andro VCO blade), because no retailer I contacted had one that was heavy enough. Would JOOLA consider making some heavier models commercially available?
Relatedly, how much do brands investigate whether naming premium blades/rubbers after players is actually a good way to market products? Tennis rackets are (to my knowledge) almost never named after players -- the only exception I can think of is Wilson's Federer line of rackets (and even these are not really designed for widespread use). Obviously tennis brands market their gear based on who uses it, but the product itself isn't literally named after a player. They just say something like "endorsed by XYZ." Looking at JOOLA's pickleball lineup it seems like at least some premium rackets are named after sponsored players. My
personal preference is to not use equipment with someone else's name on it, or a particular country's flag on the handle, if there is an equivalent alternative. Performance and comfort is always the first priority, so sometimes this isn't possible, but I'd always be happier if it were an option.
Maybe my preferences (for heavy, non-player-named blades) are just really niche in the table tennis equipment market, idk. But I'm curious how much research has actually gone into making these marketing decisions. It seems like
not naming stuff after players (and having fewer products overall) would at least help with managing inventory, which seems to be the biggest problem facing smaller table tennis brands. Because I'm sure it becomes a headache if a player you've named a bunch of stuff for leaves or changes gear
after you've already ordered a bunch of named blades (or printed a bunch of rubbers). And looking around, it seems like that happens pretty often -- Zhou Qihao being a case in point.
