Jack Sock chose pickleball over tennis, and Selkirk over bigger brand names.Courtesy of Selkirk
Jack Sock won four Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal in doubles tennis and reached No. 8 in the world in singles. So it made news when the now 31-year-old Nebraska native announced in August that he would trade ponk for POINK by transitioning to professional pickleball. “I want to be the bridge of that gap between tennis and pickleball,” Sock said at the time. “I have a lot of passion for pickleball and I want to try to become the best.”
Sock’s hop caused another blip when he signed an endorsement deal not with his tennis sponsor, Babolat, or one of the big cross-sport powerhouses like Head, Prince or Wilson, but with Selkirk Sport, a pickleball-only company started in 2013 by a pair of homeschooled brothers who eschewed college and started a business because they saw the potential of the sport they had been playing recreationally.
Inside the industry, the Sock-Selkirk pairing is only one of the interesting steps the company has taken in the last three years. “They’re one of the top performance brands in the sport,” said John Cowley, who manages product for PickleballCentral.com. “I’ve been impressed by their ability to see the trends and stay on the cutting edge of the sport while pioneering a marketing approach that has forced the entire industry to raise its game.”
That’s why the brothers, Rob and Mike Barnes, don’t sweat the deep-pocketed competition. “A rising tide lifts all boats, so those big companies bring more attention to pickleball,” said Mike, 29. “But large brands move fairly slowly, so it’s hard for them to keep up with the rate of change.”
Finishing the thought, as the brothers frequently do for each other, Rob, 31, said that bigger outfits “usually have only a handful of people dedicated to pickleball, but our entire staff is focused on nothing but pickleball.”
With Rob and Mike as co-founders and co-CEOs, the workforce continues to grow more formidable, leaping from 10 employees in 2020 to more than 100 today; the boys’ father, Jim, is the company's president. In those same three years, sales skyrocketed by more than 100% in each of 2021, ’22 and ’23, making Selkirk — named for the Selkirk Mountains near the company’s headquarters in Hayden, Idaho — No. 1 in revenue among pickleball equipment manufacturers, according to the company, which is also the official paddle partner of the PPA and APP tours. “We’ll ship more product in 2023 than we have in the previous eight years combined,” Rob said.
Rob, the older brother, and Mike Barnes (below) have kept Selkirk cutting-edge. Courtesy of Selkirk
More important, the pair have a plan to maintain their position. “Our motto is ‘We are pickleball,’ and that’s not only because we’re solely focused on the sport but because we’re very involved in the community and trying to grow the game overall,” Mike said. That includes a program that “more or less” gives free gear to nonprofits, schools and fire departments, and another that enrolls pickleball coaches, retailers and influencers as ambassadors, offering them benefits (discounts, credits, etc.) as they represent the sport on a local level.
The Barnes boys were quick to bring proven ideas from other sports to the “mom-and-pop” pickleball world. At their founding they rolled out the industry’s first limited lifetime warranty for their paddles. They signed the sport’s first athlete sponsorship deals, cultivating a roster that now includes 22 top-level players, including Sock as well as Catherine Parenteau, the No.2-ranked woman, and Tyson McGuffin, the No. 3-ranked man, of the Professional Pickleball Association.
More recent innovations include Selkirk TV, a free streaming app available on Apple TV, Roku, Android and iOS that curates all things pickleball, from live and archived matches to interviews to lessons and shows. Their website includes Selkirk University, which offers a repository of instruction content on everything from hitting dinks to paddle care, and Selkirk Labs, which allows members (who can join for free) to beta test the latest equipment and buy it before it’s available for general sale. “It’s like being able to buy the newest iPhone six months before it comes out and give the company feedback,” said Mike.
The pipeline remains full, including several podcasts and TV shows that span from mini-docs to “Destination Pickleball,” a “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”-like look at the game. New apps will connect players with coaches, open courts and leagues. The company is even working on an AI chat bot that will match players to the proper paddle.
Courtesy of Selkirk
“Part of our strategy is vertical integration,” Mike said. “We have a full-time AI developer on staff. We have videographers and editors on staff. We’ve looked at companies that have built leading brands — Apple, Amazon, even Nike — and they have a competitive advantage because they can take everything in-house.”
Picking up the thread, Rob added: “It allows us to play by different rules. Other companies would have a hard time justifying the cost of all these media projects, but we’re doing so much and we have so many outlets that it makes sense for us. We’re totally privately owned, so we can execute and grow as we need. We’re trying to build a world-class brand within one sport.”
The expansion plan for Selkirk, an official paddle partner of the APP tour, focuses on going deeper, not broader. To that end, the company’s SLK line offers technically advanced paddles at lower price points than the Selkirk line (“We wanted to offer the best bundle you could get for $80, for $100,” said Rob). Otherwise, a designer recently came on board from shoe company Kizik to expand and upgrade the women’s apparel line sold under the Ava Lee brand. A new pickleball specific shoe is in development, and it’s expected to drop in 2024.
That a shoe should come next makes total sense. Selkirk already has a Sock.
Jim Gorant has been an editor at Men’s Journal, Sports Illustrated and Sportico, among other outlets, and is the author of the best-selling “The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption.”
