Months one to three: decide what the racket is
Not what it looks like. What it is. A racket for club players who play twice a week is a different physical object from a racket for competitive players, and trying to sell one racket to both is how a brand ends up with a warehouse of returns.
Pick a player, pick a shape, pick a core density for that player, and order samples in three variations. Then put them in the hands of people who play, and listen. This is the only market research that works in this category, and it costs the price of six rackets.
Months three to five: the first order
Three hundred units on an existing mould with your paint. Resist the mould. Resist the second model. Resist the temptation to add a junior racket because a retailer mentioned it.
Spend the money you saved on two things instead: inspection, and a full kit. A brand that sells a racket, a bag, a set of grips and a tube of balls has four SKUs to sell to the same customer and one container to ship them in. A brand that sells only a racket has one transaction per customer per two years.
Months five to eight: the first container
Consolidate. Rackets from one factory, bags from another, apparel from a third, balls from a fourth. Four suppliers, four cities, one container, one set of documents. The cost difference against four separate LCL shipments is frequently larger than the entire sourcing fee.
Inspect before you pay the balance. If you take one thing from this article, take that sentence.
Months eight to twelve: the second order, where brands die
The first order is inspected carefully because everyone is nervous. The second order is where the factory tests you, and where a brand that skipped the inspection to save four hundred dollars discovers that the core density changed.
The second order is also where you find out whether your specification was written properly. If the contract says medium EVA, you have no argument. If it says shore A 45 plus or minus 3, with material substitution defined as a defect, you have a rework at the factory's cost.
The three that usually go wrong
- Paying for a mould too early. Forty thousand dollars answering a question your market has not asked.
- Skipping the second inspection. The first batch is always good. The second one is the test.
- Missing the season. Not because the factory was late, but because the order was placed after Chinese New Year instead of before it.
- Decide who the racket is for before you decide what it looks like.
- First order: 300 units, existing mould, full kit. Spend the saved money on inspection.
- Consolidate all suppliers into one container. It is usually the largest single saving.
- The second order is where factories test you. Inspect it harder than the first.
