Midwest Sports and Pickleball Rocks Partner On New Online Pickleball Store
Midwest Sports and Pickleball Rocks have combined passions to bring a new online experience to pickleball, Pickleball Paradise.
Pickleball Paradise’s mission is to provide the world’s best in class online pickleball experience. It will feature paddles, shoes, apparel and more from the sport’s top brands. In addition to an online storefront, the website is aiming to relentlessly grow the sport of pickleball. It will provide educational and entertaining content, including videos, to players of all levels.
Midwest Sports has provided omni-channel retail to tennis players for over 30 years and has grown into one of the biggest retailers in their space. When asked about expanding to pickleball president Greg Wolf explained, “We feel the same energy and passion around the sport of pickleball that we felt from tennis in its heyday. There is a sense of community from players who wake up each morning wanting to spread the word. It’s exciting, it’s contagious.”
Pickleball Rocks, the #1 selling apparel brand in the category for over a decade, was familiar with the retailer. Said Rodney Grubbs, president & CEO, “Prior to taking up pickleball and founding the Pickleball Rocks clothing company, we were a tennis family who bought all of our racquets and shoes from Midwest Sports. We have known of the Wolf family for many years so we knew Midwest Sports was a great, family-owned company.”
That background was important to Pickleball Rocks. Grubbs continued, “When Greg Wolf called and suggested a partnership with us, we knew they valued a lot of the same things as our family. We believed it would be a great fit immediately.”
Pickleball has experienced exponential growth over the last decade. “We’ve seen it grow from 200,000 players nine years ago to over 3 million players today. We understand the largest percentage of new players in the sport are or were tennis players,” says Grubbs.
Pickleball Paradise is hoping to capitalize on the strengths of both partners. The site will work to get in front of new players flooding into the sport while helping existing players discover a whole new shopping experience.
“We couldn’t be more excited,” said both Wolf & Grubbs.