Palmes Wants to Make Tennis Accessible, Starting With an ATP Collaboration

Yahoo

4 hours ago

LONDON — Just in time for the U.S. Open taking place in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., from Sunday through Sept. 7, the ATP, otherwise known as the Association of Tennis Professionals, is venturing into the world of apparel.
ATP has collaborated with Palmes, the Copenhagen-based contemporary menswear label on a collection of T-shirts, polo tops, tennis shorts, caps and a tote bag with the branding of the two brands, respectively.
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The collaboration will first roll out on the Palmes website and at the brand's Copenhagen flagship, followed by a pop-up at Gem Home in New York's NoLita neighborhood until Sunday.
A wider release with retailers End, Fwrd, Ounass, Kapok, Care of Carl and Illum will launch on Aug. 26.
ATP's collaboration with Palmes signals a new chapter in the governing body of the men's professional tennis circuits as interest in the sport rapidly grows. The ATP has a long-standing partnership with Lacoste, which outfits ATP staff and officials, including chair umpires.
'ATP hasn't made merchandise or apparel in a very long time. They did a lot of cool stuff in the '80s and '90s, but it's been kind of dormant. This collaboration is for the fans to get involved and buy the pieces. ATP is a sacred institution, in a good way, because it is the heart of men's tennis and bringing Palmes in, which is very anti-institutional, is an exciting overlap,' said Nikolaj Hansson, founder of Palmes, in an interview.
He founded the brand in summer 2021 after becoming interested in tennis during COVID-19 and finding a real passion in the sport. He fell into a YouTube hole of watching videos of Andre Agassi, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Billie Jean King and Rafael Nadal.
'I grew up on a skateboard, that was my entire childhood into my early 20s and I realized how many layers of stories there are in tennis and it reminded me a lot of skateboarding. There's so much culture hidden underneath the actual sport and the physical aspect — tennis has been a driver for cultural, social and political change,' said Hansson.
He quickly became obsessed with the sport, a tendency he confesses to. Hansson got eight of his best friends involved and they started playing together four or five times a week in the summer.
Though he enjoyed the sport, he found it to be missing an emotional link.
'The tennis space was either very retro and nostalgia-driven about what tennis was in the past or it was very performance-driven. There's nothing wrong with either, but I was missing something that I could identify with and was more individualistic,' said Hansson.
'A lot of my friends told me they weren't tennis people because they had this preconceived notion about what tennis was, which is a full white-outfit — that's how tennis is seen in movies, music and popular culture. What we really want to do with Palmes is to show that instead of changing who you are [for tennis], you should change tennis into whatever you're into as an individual,' he added.
Hansson's ambition was to make Palmes the bridge that a customer walks across to get into tennis. He takes references from his other interests such as architecture, art and design, then peppers them into the design of the product. He'll even inject some tongue-in-cheek elements sometimes.
One T-shirt has 'I'd Hit That' printed on, while a long-sleeve practice top has an illustration of a player rehearsing their serve and a crewneck sweater features a print of a man celebrating after a serve.
The product offering ranges from socks and water bottles to tailoring and jackets, with prices starting at 9 pounds for a set of four tennis balls and ranging to 450 pounds for a double-breasted pin-striped blazer.
Hansson lives and breathes tennis. He's turned the brand's flagship, which also serves as a studio and showroom space, into a world of tennis.
The store opened in November 2024 and he built the whole space from floor to ceiling with hand-sanded polycarbonate doors, which can slide to open and close each area; a curved hitting wall for playing tennis solo; red clay from a tennis court in different display boxes around the space and a wooden frame television to watch live and old tennis matches on.
Hansson has used the store to ideate the world of Palmes.
'The store is mostly about presenting the true spirit of the brand without compromise and testing how the brand feels. The goal is to slowly expand [the space] more and to turn the studio space into a coffee shop or wine bar in the next two years,' he said.
Right now the focus of the brand is on wholesale and growing its DTC channel, but expanding its retail presence is not something Hansson is ruling out.
The brand is stocked at Nordstrom, Selfridges and End. Palmes biggest markets come out of North America, the U.K. and Scandinavia.
The pool for playing tennis in Denmark is small compared to the rest of the world.
'There's 24 million people who play tennis in the U.S., but in Denmark it's 80,000. The barrier of entry into tennis is so high,' said Hansson, recognizing the economic cost of getting into tennis as a hobby.
For many, tennis can seem like a scary sport that requires a club membership and expensive gear.
'It costs money to play. Whereas, something like running, you can meet 400 people outside and run together, whether it rains or shines. There's so many structural hindrances to playing tennis and then there's the technical side. Tennis is technically difficult and it's not fun for the first 10 times, whereas almost anyone can run or ride a bike,' said Hansson.
Palmes wants to respond to those struggles.
Last summer, the brand rented out all the courts of a tennis club in Copenhagen every Saturday morning to invite members of the Palmes community to come play free of charge with rackets and coaches on hand for lessons.
'We biked to our store after for coffee and croissants. If you don't have someone to play with you're f––––d and this was a way of growing that [tennis] community,' said Hansson.
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