Frédéric Oudeville, Kuikma product manager, looks back on the adventure of the Decathlon brand dedicated 100% to padel. Kuikma has had a great start since the start of the year, even surpassing initial targets. It tells us a little more about the brand and its goals in 2019/2020.

  • How does it work in Spain? Can we give some figures? 

It works very well: we had sold all of our rackets in 3 weeks and were out of stock for 2 months. 

Now we have just received more stocks to meet the demand. We thank all our customers for their patience.

The performances are very good in all countries, including Spain. 

Our goal was to triple our sales of expert 2019 rackets and we are beyond this goal. This is encouraging for the Kuikma teams and a great recognition only a few months after the launch of this range.

  • In France and Europe, do we have returns? 

The returns are excellent. In less than 4 months, 331 players have already given their opinion, while we had a hundred on our 2 rackets in 3 years. We count a lot on this point: the recommendation is a key point of our project. That's good, it puts us a very good pressure to only offer products of which we are 100% proud.

And in the case, the average rating of the new racket range  is 4,81 / 5, which is an excellent grade. 

Beyond its performance, it is this criterion that gives us the most confidence  for the future.

  • What is the KUIKMA program this year in France and abroad?

We limit ourselves to the level of the animations and the events to keep low prices. At the international level, 2019 was the year of the launch. We spent a lot of energy internally, the priority being to allow all our teams in store to try our products to be able to recommend them. 

 

  • Will you sponsor some players?

It's still not in the program. We are delighted with the collaboration we have with Horacio Alvarez Clementi.

Horacio has allowed us to develop our new range of expert racquets and we have just validated our new ball. This will be the big news of 2020.

Horacio, for his knowledge, his motivation for the project and his availability  brings us everything we need for the development part of our products. 

To test the durability well, in addition to our laboratory tests, we have two players from the World Padel Tour who play with our products every day.

In France, our team was contacted by players in a logic of technical partnership with the objective of playing in tournaments with our rackets and constantly improving our products. 

In a few weeks, this will be formalized. 

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovers the padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since padel is part of his life. You often see him touring France going to cover the major events of padel French.

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