When Jeff Harris picked up pickleball during the pandemic, he didn’t have a business agenda. His family retail store, Run With It in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., sold running and walking gear. At the time, pickleball was just a fun way for the then 57-year-old to stay active and social during citywide shutdowns.
That quickly changed when demand for the sport — and its associated products — began to surge.
“I realized that you couldn’t buy pickleball equipment anywhere except online,” Harris said. So in October 2020, the storeowner brought in pickleball paddles, balls and accessories, later expanding to court footwear. Word quickly spread that this longtime running store was now selling pickleball products, and traffic skyrocketed.
“All of a sudden, all this new clientele started coming through our door,” said Harris. “It took on a life of its own.” Demand was driven by pickleball and tennis players and eventually, runners.
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An expiring store lease eventually pushed Harris to make the ultimate investment: a full-sized pickleball court attached to the new store location, which opened this year. The court allows Harris to rent out play space, but more importantly, drives curated traffic into his store.
He noted that even runners are converting, with some opting to play pickleball on Tuesday nights instead of embarking on the store’s standing group run.
“The runners start playing pickleball and they’re like, oh my god, I can do this. I’m in good shape,” Harris said. “[Pickleball] is just a lot more social than running. You don’t know you’re getting exercise.”
Pickleball was America’s fastest-growing sport in 2022 and saw participation skyrocket 158.6 percent over the preceding three years, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA).
Like Harris, other storeowners are expanding their pickleball assortments, leveraging their established expertise in the world of athletic footwear. And as participation has grown, athletic brands like K-Swiss, Fila and Skechers have started making their own pickleball shoes, which are now finding their
way to running specialty stores.
“Running stores are starting to diversify what they’re selling,” said Christina Henderson, executive director of The Running Event trade show, which has been expanding its focus alongside the retail industry, adding, for instance, an outdoor section for the first time last year. “The people who go run their local 5Ks and that type of thing are also doing yoga, they’re also hiking. Now, they’re also playing pickleball.”
After fielding multiple requests for pickleball shoes, Fleet Fleet franchise owner David Boutillier, who goes by “Boots,” decided to start rolling out some pickleball products in spring ’22 at one of the three stores he owns with his wife in the Rochester and Buffalo, N.Y., area. Boots, too, noticed a growing interest in the sport with few retailers in the position to service the athletes’ needs. He ultimately expanded the products to all three locations after seeing strong sell-through. His stores currently sell Diadora pickleball shoes, as well as some equipment for the sport.
“Lots of pickleball players are runners,” Boots explained. “Maybe not the ‘enter every race’ type, but definitely the ‘runs often as part of being healthy and in shape’ type. That’s how they found us.”
Henderson said she first got wind of the pickleball interest in running stores early this year, after 54 percent of the trade show’s audience responded to a survey saying that they currently or plan to carry pickleball products. To cater to this interest, The Running Event this year will have a full-fledged pickleball court on the trade show floor hosted by K-Swiss, which will be looking to sign up retailers to carry their pickleball shoes in stores.
K-Swiss VP of global marketing Dave Larson said running stores are one of the few channels that can get pickleball shoes right in front of the active consumer’s eyes in an environment of highly knowledgeable sales professionals.
“Brick-and-mortar tennis has atrophied,” said Larson, who previously served as the SVP of product and marketing at Brooks. “Running is still strong, but there are very few pickleball retailers out there in brick-and-mortar. These guys are footwear experts, they can sell high end shoes. So it makes perfect sense.”
Nevertheless, some running retailers are still proceeding with caution when it comes to entering a new sport. Dave Kazanjian, owner of Whirlaway Sports Center in Methuen, Mass., said he invested time in training his staff about pickleball products when he decided to introduce the category in summer 2021.
“You really have to have the knowledge,” Kazanjian said. “You’ve got to be careful, because you could be sitting on a lot of inventory if you don’t know how to sell it and you don’t bring in the category and represent it well.”
For Kazanjian, this strategy has worked. Pickleball has already grown to become Whirlaway’s No. 2 category, only second to running.
“Some shoe categories have been fads in and out,” said Kazanjian, an avid pickleball player himself. “But I don’t think this is a fad. I don’t think it’s going away.”
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