We were lucky to catch up with Heidi Block recently and have shared our conversation below.

Heidi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I am a lifelong tennis player, but I first discovered Pickleball in the summer of 2020 and loved it right away. When I googled the sport to learn more about it, I was very disappointed in the results. I couldn’t find any good content or relatable brands. I couldn’t find good information about how to play or what equipment to buy. The only apparel I found were goofy graphic T-shirts that said things like “I’m the Big Dill” , which was not my vibe. The only bags I found were masculine, one shoulder backpacks. I’ve spent most of my career building great consumer brands for other companies and I saw the opportunity to create a great Pickleball brand. I wanted to create a brand that would offer simple, digestible content about the sport to encourage others to join in, but also high-quality, stylish apparel, that recreational players could wear on and off the court. I saw the sport beginning to take off and knew there was an opportunity. I felt that with my passion for racquet sports and my marketing background, I could create a great brand. Play-PKL was born.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have worked most of my career in consumer healthcare brand management. I have also played tennis most of my life. I never really loved consumer healthcare. It was something I fell into and developed an expertise in. Play-PKL has allowed me to marry my personal passion and my love of building brands. Considering the meteoritic rise of pickleball in the US, there is surprisingly little Pickleball apparel on the market. Most people wear tennis or general workout clothes to play. But I felt there was an opportunity to create pickleball-specific apparel. Tennis skorts are designed to keep the balls tucked inside the spandex shorts underneath, but pickleballs are too large and hard to fit well and would scrape your leg. Most men’s athletic shorts are designed with a baggy front-facing pocket. I designed a pickleball-shaped pocket on the outside of my skorts and shorts that sits a little further back so that it’s not in the way when you swing your paddle. The second difference in my apparel is that tennis clothes are designed to fit a 20-something model, but most recreational Pickleball players skew a little older and want something less tight fitting and not too short. Finally, my Pickleball apparel is from a Pickleball brand. If you were shopping for clothes for pickeball, and could buy a Pickleball brand, wouldn’t you? I feel so proud that I was able to develop this brand from scratch over the past year and a half. I had no background in apparel design, but I was able to find a great young designer to bring my ideas to life and a small California-based manufacturer that would take a chance with a start-up like me.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

This is a good question, because I feel like most of my story has been about resilience! When I first started with no background in apparel design, I thought I could just find a U.S. manufacturer who would work with me to create my line. I didn’t know that I needed a highly technical document, called a tech pack with every measurement and specification called out. I didn’t know that I had to select the fabrics, find someone to create my custom decorative trims, the zippers, the elastics, the drawcords and the list goes on. I started with my apparel designer trying to find a manufacturer for us, then moved to a consultant in the New York garment district, then finally settled with a partner who had a strong background in apparel and led me to my current manufacturer in California. The first fabric I picked was discontinued before I could even place my bulk order so I had to redo my prototypes with a new fabric. The first manufacturer I picked couldn’t print my designs on my fabric and gave me pricing that was so high I would have had no profit margin. The first time my printer executed my shirt with a placement print, they placed the print backwards. The first time my manufacturer sewed my skort, they sewed the shorts into the skirt inside out. The first time my brand icon was applied to my tank tops, it was applied upside down. Just recently, I received my first bulk order of tank tops, and the size assortment was totally wrong. Instead of mostly mediums and a few larges and smalls. I got mostly extra large tank tops, and my extra smalls were missing entirely. Through all of these challenges, I never give up. I take them in stride, one at a time, because I believe in my idea and I have the patience to make it a reality.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Like many entrepreneurs, I spent most of my career in large companies before going out on my own. When you work for a large company, the budgets are big and there is a lot of wiggle room for error. We used all kinds of marketing, advertising, media, and package design agencies to support our efforts. When you are working on a shoestring budget, trying to get a business off the ground, there is no room for big agency retainers and I had to learn to do so many things myself, from creating my own designs in Canva to writing content in my Shopify website to developing and managing my own social media pages. It has been a steep learning curve, but it feels great to have done it myself, and it will make me a better manager of agency resources when I scale to that point.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.Play-PKL.com
• Instagram: @Play_PKL
• Facebook: @Play-PKL
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/play-pkl/
• Youtube: @Play-PKL

Image Credits
Ben Goldstein