Reading a couple of the threads on Prince racquets in here yesterday has had me wondering why more tennis brands haven't also got hugely successful badminton lines? Yes there are Prince, Wilson and Head badminton racquets but none is really a big player in badminton. Even Babolat with their huge amount of recent success over a relatively short period in the tennis racquet industry hasn't really made a major impact. You'd have thought that with close to 40 years of manufacturing composite tennis racquets they'd be able to produce at least some interesting badminton frames using cross over technologies. Is it just a lack of focus from tennis brands on badminton? Or is there a lack of credibility for the tennis brands in badminton, since they are not traditional badminton brands and therefore they aren't as well accepted. It's slightly puzzling to me, especially given the huge interest on this forum with the Adidas line and them not being a traditional badminton brand. It's just curiosity really but I'd love to know peoples thoughts on it.
Compared to tennis, badminton is relatively small. So I suppose tennis brands just see badminton as just another source of income to fund tennis equipment. Babolat are probably the only predominately tennis brand to have done well in badminton; Wilson haven't made much of an impact and Head have stopped badminton all together. So I think it is down to lack of focus. However, adidas, whose tennis equipment were a failure, have seemingly done well in badminton. And Yonex also do tennis rackets at the same scale as badminton, sponsor some of the top tennis players. So, if they did have the focus, they could rival Yonex, Victor and other predominately badminton brands.
Interesting, but Yonex have a very small market share in tennis despite having some top players, definitely way below their dominance in badminton. In terms of global sales I wouldn't have thought badminton was that much smaller than Tennis, not these days anyway. If a company like Wilson put their weight behind a badminton brand and used their experience in composite racquet development into badminton would it be able to create enough interest?
I think it has a lot to do with percieved mindset; some brands are predominantly stereotyped...for example, think Sony, tv comes to mind. Think Samsung, cell phone comes to mind, think canon/Nikon/Olympus, camera comes to mind. Of cse, there are exceptions to this, most notably Samsung whose footprints seem to be in every segment of electronics, but I digress.... my point is, in badminton, there exist established brands like yonex, Carlton, victor. With financial backing, player endorsement and sponsorships, it will take some time for a brand to break into this market. I agree with thomasJE that Adidas have seemingly done well thus far...the real acid test will come once it is officially launched worldwide. I for one, am eagerly anticipating their product launch.
Yes there is that, maybe those Tennis brands are choosing to endorse and sponsor tennis players as oppose to badminton players. I still think it would be really interesting to see if one of those big players in tennis made a significantly good racquet (which I don't think has been done to date) how they would fare. Yonex is so dominant that people will use there racquets regardless of whether they are great or not (see the F9 thread), but I think that it would be interesting to see more major competition. I think Adidas have done a great job in pre-launch. They've obviously produced some pretty good frames and have marketed them pretty well and created a pretty huge buzz. Will be very interested to see if that actually translates to success.
