Pickleball England believes that having an online store to buy pickleball equipment is one of the reasons that the UK is the biggest pickleball country in Europe.
The UK Pickleball Shop has been a great supporter of Pickleball England by offering discounted nets to club members and a free paddle case to individual members that buy paddles from them. The UK Pickleball Shop has also provided prizes for our fund raising activities and being our ball sponsor at the English OPEN. We are grateful to Jane and her partner Mike Daly. They are also fun people to be around.
Jane McGuire of The UK Pickleball Shop has written a guest BLOG for us below.
Pickle-what?!
In September 2012 Mike and I were on a month long holiday in Arizona to play tennis when a friend asked us to join her in trying a new sport with a funny name: pickleball. After some cajoling we eventually went along and a very welcoming group playing a strange game on half a local tennis court took us under their wing. They loaned us
paddles, explained the key rules and got us playing and, like most other pickleball newbies, we were completely hooked within half an hour. We bought our own paddles that afternoon, stopped playing tennis and played pickleball every day for the remainder of our holiday. A new and life-changing obsession was born!
Royal Approval
When we got back home we were fortunate enough to find a really great club The Runnymede Royals (RRPC) based 40 miles away. We played 2-3 times each week making an 80 mile round trip each time and loved it. After a few years and a few too many traffic jams on the M25 we decided we should bite the bullet and start our own local club and so SLAP: South London Area Pickleball Club was formed.
New Beginnings
Around this time I was made redundant from my job
as an insurance lawyer so, because I love pickleball
and had been finding it difficult to get good
equipment, I took the plunge and invested my
redundancy money in setting up the UK Pickleball
Shop in January 2015.
I started with a small range of paddles from one US manufacturer but by reinvesting consistently I now offer over 80 different paddles from the premier manufacturers including Engage, Franklin, Gamma, Head, Hudef, OneShot, Paddletek, Prince, Onix, Prolite, Selkirk, TOPP and Vulcan with more brands to come in 2021, e.g. Wilson. I also offer 6+ different brands of both indoor and outdoor pickleballs (all on the USAPA/IFP approved ball list), a choice of portable pickleball nets and a wide range of pickleball bags, backpacks, paddle covers and other accessories ranging from replacement grips to pickleball training machines. Even though I am yet to take a penny out of the business I don’t mind as Mike and I feel we have been doing our bit to help pickleball to grow in the UK and Europe.
Passionate Partners
The UK Pickleball shop is the primary pickleball retailer in the UK and we are proud to be able to say that we are the preferred partner of Pickleball England (PBE) and Pickleball France (PF) for the supply of pickleball equipment. We’re really lucky to have PBE doing such
fantastic work to spread awareness and increase the number of people playing our wonderful sport.
Jeux Sans Frontieres
Over the past six years I’ve also shipped equipment to
many players in Ireland, France, Belgium, Sweden,
Finland, Denmark, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Norway,
Switzerland and other countries throughout Europe and
have attended events in the UK, USA, Spain, Finland and
Germany. A shared passion for pickleball overcomes any
language/cultural barriers and I firmly believe that the more people who play pickleball the happier place the world will be.
Making A Difference
The last year has been a challenging one for everyone. As pickleball is mostly an indoor sport in the UK, covid-19 restrictions resulted in relatively little pickleball being played and sales of most equipment plummeted with the exception of outdoor balls and portable nets. Balls were in short supply in the USA but I managed to keep the supply flowing and to source outdoor balls in a range of colours to help players to play safely (i.e. so each player could have their own type/colour ball to prevent sharing). Mike and I also paid to have six outdoor courts painted in two local parks in 2017 and they really came into their own with two-thirds of SLAP members and others using them in 2020. During the past year we have continued to serve customers, although the conversation has changed from the best paddle to the best ball to use outdoors but it has helped us to remain connected to the pickleball world.
Keep On Swinging
One fantastic thing about pickleball is that even if someone discovers the sport later in life they can usually play for many years and enjoy a long pickleball journey of their own. Mike and I are nine years into our journey and have loved every step and are looking forward to it continuing for as long as possible.
Like most people we have found that pickleball is the most fun, sociable sport we have ever played and it has taken over our lives in a really good way. We have made great friends here and all round the world and by running the Shop we get to meet many lovely people. Now if I’m ever asked what I do for a living I’m proud to reply “I sell pickleball stuff” to which people often reply “pickle-what?!”
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