Meet Heidi Block | Pickleball enthusiast and serial entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Heidi Block and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Heidi, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
Before COVID, I’d been a life long tennis player and didn’t pay much attention to the pickleball being played on the courts next door. But, like everyone else during the early days of the 2020 COVID lockdown, my family and I were looking for safe activities to get outdoors and be active. My friend Isabel had extra paddles and had just learned pickleball and offered to teach us.

I loved pickleball right away–and so did my whole family. It was so easy to learn and something about the popping sound the ball made with every hit gave me a little rush of adrenaline. I went online to learn more about the rules and figure out what I needed to get started. But the experience was terrible! There was very little content and no relatable brands in the space. Not sure what I needed, I ended up buying my first paddle on Amazon, but it was too heavy and came with indoor balls. Who knew there were different paddle weights and indoor vs. outdoor balls?

The only pickleball apparel I could find were goofy graphic Ts that said things like “I’m the Big Dill”, which was just not my vibe. A lot of players I was meeting were wearing their tennis clothes to play pickleball but I wondered why there was no apparel specific to pickleball. I had plenty of tennis skorts that COULD work, but tennis skorts are designed to store balls in the spandex shorts underneath the skirt and that didn’t work for pickleball because the balls were too hard and scratchy against my leg, if they fit under the shorts at all. Even tennis shorts with outer pockets all had front pockets and the bulge of the pickleball got in the way of my swing.

As a career marketer with a focus on innovation, I saw an opportunity to create a brand that offered engaging, educational content about the sport and stylish, US-designed and made apparel and accessories. I wanted to save others from the same frustrating experience searching for sport information and from making the mistake I’d made with the wrong paddle and ball purchase, so it was important that the brand provide simple, digestible information about what equipment to buy and how to play.

As the brand began to take shape, I knew that I wanted it to stand for more than just products–I wanted it to enable me to spread my love of pickleball. I’ve had so many people tell me that they want to learn pickleball but don’t know how to get started. I wanted Play-PKL to be that friend that everyone needs to help them get started playing. Because pickleball is such an easy sport to learn, it’s accessible to almost anyone with a desire to learn. I know so many people who are active–maybe they go to the gym several times a week or take daily long walks or hikes–but they don’t consider themselves athletes because they don’t play a sport. With pickleball, almost anyone can be an athlete, and that’s pretty awesome if you’ve never considered yourself one before. I believe Play-PKL can enable the inner athlete in everyone.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Play-PKL is a lifestyle brand and go-to resource for all things pickleball. We provide educational content and make all of our custom men’s and women’s pickleball apparel, equipment and accessories. What sets us apart is both the quality and breadth of our product line.

It took 18 months to develop our first apparel line and was much harder than expected! I thought I could just bring some sketched ideas to a manufacturer and they would make the clothing, but the process is so much more complicated, both in terms of the technical specifications and sourcing the fabrics and trims.

I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I learned from them and pivoted each time. For example, my first manufacturing partner was a small shop in New York’s garment district. I didn’t realize that they really didn’t have experience with activewear until I’d already selected fabrics which didn’t hold my prints or heat transfers well and were much more expensive than they needed to be. So I pivoted. I found performance fabrics that worked much better and a new manufacturer in California with tons of activewear experience and better pricing.

Another mistake I made was in my grading (adjusting the patterns to scale up and down to a range of sizes). My pattern maker used standard grade rules, but my target customers don’t have standard athletic builds so the garments weren’t roomy enough to be comfortable for all sizes. So we adjusted for the next manufacturing run and will be adding an XXL option for this summer.

I originally anticipated scaling as a direct-to-consumer brand through my website. But getting people to buy a premium brand they’ve never seen in person has been a challenge, so I’ve done dozens and dozens of in-person events that have been the bulk of my revenue to date while building an e-mail database of these customers to retain them.

Now I’m seeing a lot of interest in wholesale but I don’t have enough margin with US manufacturing to maximize that sales channel, so I’m pivoting to a new Mexican partner.

Lessons learned? Listen to your customers, ask for help when you need it from those who know more, learn from your mistakes and don’t give up!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Let’s say my best friend was a pickleball lover like me. We’d want to focus our visit around pickleball. In New Jersey, it would be better if she’s visiting in the summer, when we’d have lots of options on free public courts. Near my home on Long Beach Island at the Jersey shore, we could play on any of the 20 permanent courts across the 18-mile barrier island, and maybe we’d drop in for Open Play at a different one each morning to try them all. In the afternoons, we could put up our feet on the beach and then grill some fresh fish from my favorite fishmonger, Blue Claw, or go out for a bite at one of the many fine restaurants on the island like Black Whale or Shipbottom Shellfish. Of course we would also find time for a visit to our lighthouse, Old Barney, a round of mini golf, and some shopping in Bay Village before she headed home.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The Co-Co! The Co-Co is a community and co-working space in Summit, New Jersey that has introduced me to an amazing network of super supportive local fellow female entrepreneurs.

Website: www.Play-PKL.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/play_pkl/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/play-pkl

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PlayPKL1

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@play-pkl?si=OdYqOgqJI5h3S4dh

Image Credits
Phillip Lwiza and Ben Goldstein