Richard Lee, CEO of Sport Squad, Inc.

Richard is the Founder and President of Sport Squad, the parent company of JOOLA. Originally, he started North American Table Tennis while he was completing his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science at the Johns Hopkins University.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
M and T Bank present CEOs.You should know power by iHeart Media.
Let's met Richard Lee. He isthe CEO of Yola, a local company
that deals in products and equipment everything. Pick a ball. Before we talk
more about Richard's journey in his company, I first asked him to talk a
little bit about himself, where he'sfrom and his origin story. So I
grew up here in Potomac, Maryland. I started playing table tennis when I

(00:23):
was very young in Chinese school.At eleven twelve years old, I was
introduced to the sport table tennis ora coach that was teaching tableheads at our
Chinese school. So I got intothe competitive side of the sport. And
I went to high school at ChurchillHigh School, and from there I started
a tablehnis club. We got somekids together to compete in Montgomery County and

(00:48):
then after I went to Hopkins,same situation. There's no table tennis activity
that's organized at the school either,so decided to start a table tennis club
at the school. And one ofthe requirements is that we had to do
a fundraiser. So we decided torun a tournament and we ran a regional
tournament under USA Table Tennis and fromthere there were four hundred players that came

(01:14):
to compete in this tournament. Thatgave us an opportunity. That gave me
an opportunity, Hey, there's potentiallya business that we can put around this
for table tennis. It's always beena passion of mine to compete, but
what I found in the US isthat really it's not a competitive sport for

(01:34):
most people. It's a sport that'splayed in the basement. And so one
of the mission statements that we hadat that time was to try to connect
the professional and directions recreational side ofthe sport. So that was nineteen ninety
eight. We worked through We workedwith several sponsors for table tennis, and
in two thousand and six we wereapproached by Yola. We actually talked to

(01:59):
him about sponsorship, but they turnedit around on us and said, we'll
sponsor you, however, we wantyou to help us distribute our product.
Yola is a German company. They'vebeen around since nineteen fifty two and the
Yola was a sponsor for the ninetysix, two thousand, two thousand and
four Olympic Games. So at thattime, really they had a lot of

(02:21):
momentum, but they just didn't havea good partner in the US, so
we decided to take it on andfrom that opportunity, we started to reach
out to multiple friends and partners.We started to work with a group in
New York City to kind of sponsorsome of their parties, and with those

(02:44):
activities, we got introduced to RobStone from The Fader magazine and then you
know, he loved table tennis,and then his friend Doug Allen, which
was a producer in Los Angeles,introduced us to the possibility of doing a
show with him on Entourage, Sowe were lucky to have a couple episodes

(03:08):
where he featured table tennis. TheYola brand was on there. And the
next step that happened was we gotintroduced to the Buyer at as Sears.
The Buyer series absolutely loves Entourage.He at the same time was looking for

(03:29):
a change for the brand that wasbeing carried in Sears. So we met
them and a few months later we'renow selling in series. There's a huge
opportunity for us as a brand,and then before that, we actually already
had gotten an opportunity to do businessat Amazon. One of the first brands

(03:50):
to sell in Amazon for the sportinggoods category, and all this is happening
through the twenty tens. So bytwenty nineteen our business has already grown bigger
than the German company. So intwenty nineteen, the previous owner, Michael
Bockler, he wanted to exit.He's looking to retire. So after multiple

(04:15):
conversations and discussions, we came toagreement to acquire the Yola brands. So
in twenty nineteen that all happened,and we're making plans to rejuvenate the brand.
We come up with a new logo, we're ready to launch early twenty
twenty, and then the pandemic hits. So, just like any other business,

(04:36):
everyone's freaking out, what are wegoing to do? Houses going to
affect their business? And over thenext few months we found out that this
was a huge opportunity because everyone's stuckat home and you know what do they
do well, they can play tabletennis, So a lot of people bought
table tennis tables. During that timeour business grew quite a bit. However,

(05:00):
for me personally, I just didn'thave a chance to play table in
this anywhere. So my my myhead of sales and I decided to finally
give pick a ball a try.We've been thinking about pickaball for many years,
but we just never tried playing it. The first time we go out
to play are at the courts behindKing Farm. There's there's a there's four

(05:21):
courts set up there that are rightbehind our offices, and the first time
we go to play, there's thesetwo guys that are like hitting at a
super fast pace. They're wearing uniformsand we asked them, Hey, are
you guys professional pickaball players and theysaid, yeah, my name is Ben
Jonson is my brother Colin Johns.We have no idea who they are.

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We finally go back home google whothey are and find out they're the number
one player, uh number one uh, you know, doubles team in the
US. So it was just ahuge shock to see someone the first time
we go out there to play,and I made us really curious about the
sport. So we decided to takeapart the paddles and kind of see how

(06:05):
it was constructed, and we foundout, hey, we feel like we
can make a better paddle for moreexperiences in table tennis, and from development
and manufacturing, we really felt likewe could do something better. So we
started to do start up our Rand D and over a few months we

(06:27):
developed our first prototype, tried itout and said, hey, we need
to get in touch with Ben Johns. So at the same time I was
taking lessons at the y Inpathesda.My coach Eric White said hey, I
can introduce you to Ben Johns.So I said, hey, let's line
this up. So he tried thepaddle. He's like, hey, I

(06:48):
think you really have something interesting here. I have a few minor adjustments,
but let's meet again in a fewweeks. So we went back to our
team and we made those adjustments thatbeen wanted, and then finally he said,
yeah, I think I can useyour panel. At the same time,
he was looking for a new sponsor, so we were finally able to

(07:13):
come to the deal. In Apriltwenty twenty two, Yola launched into the
pickleball world. So at that sametime, the whole entire sport of pickaball
has been going crazy. I mean, the momentum for the sport has been
growing. Today there's over forty fortyfive million people playing the sport already,
and we were just we were inthe right place at the right time to

(07:36):
jump into the sport of pickaball.All right, well, listen, thanks
for sharing all of that. There'sa lot to digest there what you've done
over the last decade and a half, and I know it's got its peaks
and valleys. Let's do this foreverybody, just for a little education for
our listeners that are being introduced toYola for the first time. Richard,

(07:56):
if you could, you know,kind of tell us just overall thirty thousand
foot view of what you do,because we've talked about paddle sports and you
know, not only domestically but nowinternationally. You know, of course it's
being played all over the world asyou mentioned, and it's right at its
peak, and I imagine that you'regoing to talk about some data later on
an interview where it continues to growexponentially, which is really cool. Not

(08:18):
to mention the paddle sports are inthe Olympics. Everybody's been playing them since
a kid, whether it's table tennisand other racket sports. But now paddleball,
as you mentioned, in the lastfive years, has also grown exponentially
because celebrities are now involved, athletesare involved, there's a pro league.
But if you were to tell somebodyto thirty thousand foot view about what you
do, what would that be.We are a pickleball lifestyle brand, so

(08:43):
we are bringing products to people whoare just starting in their table tennis or
pickleball journey, and we provide productsand services throughout that whole entire journey.
So what does that mean. Youknow, we do make the paddles and
the clothing and the shoes and theequipment, but we also are creating services

(09:03):
for them. Because when you're cominginto the sport, you also are trying
to learn the sport, So howdo you play it? How do you
play it safely? So we havean e learning platform called Infinity, which
is available on the app stores forboth iOS and Android, but there you
can learn about how to play thesports. We are trying to have players

(09:28):
get involved in the sport and sofor us as a company, we look
at the customer journey and see howwe can be involved in the entire pathway
of their journey. Let's talk aboutproducts, because I know that's a big
deal, and then I'm going totalk about differentiating yourself because I'm just going
to assume that it's a very competitivebusiness. But with all that said,
when it comes to products and thedifferent kind of things that you offer,

(09:52):
you kind of listed a couple,but maybe we can get into the weeds
a little bit to just running onceagain, educate our listeners of all the
products that you do offer, whatare they? Uh. We started in
table tennis, so as as Eolastarted, it was a table tennis brands,
very well known for its tablehenness tables. And along with tables tables,
you need table tennis rackets, youneed clothing, you need shoes, balls,

(10:20):
so everything for the table tennis player, from from top to bottom,
we have that. For the sportpickleball, we've taken the same approach.
Uh. Definitely. We started outwith the paddle, but today we're also
in clothes, we're in bags orin the shoes. We have sunglasses coming
out soon. We also have apartnership with pick a Roll where we're going

(10:43):
to be creating movable pickaball courts.So imagine you can roll out a court
anywhere in the country, anywhere,Uh, and you're in the street and
you can start playing. Yeah,so you know we're in we're in equipment
for the entire sports of table tennisand pickleball. Cool. Now to the
next question, and this is abig one, and I know a lot

(11:03):
of businesses have to deal with thisall the time. There is competition out
there, whether it's domestically or internationally. So how do you differentiate yourself from
all the competition out there? Yeah, it's always a tough one, but
we've positioned ourselves to be the numberone brand and it's been. It hasn't
been easy, but the partnership withBen Johns has definitely helped quite a bit.

(11:24):
So anytime you jump into a newsports and we're into a new product
category, how do you convince othersthat you are a brand worth trying.
So as we jumped into pickleball,we're thinking, okay, well, i'll
read just another commodity brand where anyother product is going to be similar to
ours. How do we specialize ourselves? So when we had the partnership with

(11:48):
Ben Johns and we really had apaddle that was much better than other paddles
on the market, you know,that created a perfect storm for us to
jump into the sport. So youknow, when we jumped in, we
had Ben Jones as our lead player, we had a really good product,

(12:09):
and then we did everything we canto make sure that our brand is cohesive
so that everyone can see, allright, you always here as a serious
player. So you mentioned a coupleof things of interest, and I think
we should start talking to future entrepreneursand business people about this because you had
product and you were very clear thatyou had a great product, but also

(12:31):
a brand that you could sell too, with a clear mission about that.
But I think the other thing istoo as hard as you and your team
are working, Richard, that itwas fortuitous to whether it was Ben or
Doug or people that you ran into, whether it's happenstance or you set up
something that you could grow the brandand get with people that could extend that
brand with you, that was reallyimportant, wasn't it to have those kind
of things happen in your business?Absolutely, the partnerships and friendships that we

(12:54):
built out there have been fantastic,and it's all about networking and to know
people. Just to get to knowpeople. You never know which which friend
or which partnership that you made isreally going to pan out for you.
So I learned very early on inmy career that you never want to burn
any bridges. You try to makefriends as much as you can, you

(13:16):
your network just to meet people andthat's all. If it works out to
be something that you can collaborate on, something great. If not, hey
you have a you have a newfriend at least, right So it's just,
uh, it's just kind of goingalong for the ride. And you
know, when when opportunities come,you've got to find a way to grab
them. Of course, I'm tellingyou about all the great things that happened,

(13:37):
but in any any entrepreneurial business whereany new kind of direction you're trying
to take, you're you're filled withopportunities where things that happen that are failures
and you've got to take those faresas they come and you know, continue
to move forward and find a wayforward. Well, let's talk about that
a little bit, because, asyou mentioned, it's not always you know,

(13:58):
unicorns and rainbows when you run abusiness all the time, even a
successful one like you're doing right now. Maybe for specificity, what kind of
current challenges are you dealing with thatyou hope to get past, but right
now that they happen to be maybesome roadblocks or things that you didn't necessarily
plan for, but they're happening.Yeah, so it's a good problem I'm

(14:20):
having right now. So sometimes theyare the bad ones, but right now
it's some of the good things thatare happening. We're trying to scale our
business and we're going from a teamhere in the US of about thirty some
employees to about ninety employees now andanytime that happens, you have communication issues,
you have scaling issues, and youhave team members that at one point

(14:43):
were strong in certain areas and nowthey're specializing even deeper, and sometimes they're
not just not there for that.So a lot of times it's really hard
to try to build up the teamto where you need it to be.
So that's are current my day andday out stresses that I'm trying to really

(15:05):
build up the team well understood.And if I could maybe just have you
expound on that a little bit,because this is one of my favorite questions
to ask leaders of any companies whenthey expand and there's teams, whether they're
in a different city, they're ina different country, but there's a lot
of people you don't have access tothem all the time in front of you
and you, obviously, Richard,have a vision and you have this great

(15:28):
brand and this great company, andyou want to make sure that you're handing
it down to your managers and thento the staff that same vision. But
like telephone tag, it can loseits way. So as a leader,
how do you make sure that yourvision is imposed properly while you're also keeping
a good work life balance for yourcompany and your people, but also they're

(15:48):
following your vision. How's it done? Yeah, it's not done very easily,
and it's about kind of splitting upwhat leadership and management looks like.
Leadership oftentimes, how I view itis about vision and direction is making sure
that you can give your team thedirection of where we're trying to accomplish,
not going to the little details ofwhat that every day looks like. It's

(16:14):
up to managers in direct reports totake that vision direction and convert that into
actionable items that are deliverable. Andwhat's very important to us these days is
accountability to make sure that everyone furtherdown the chain knows what that vision direction
is and knows what they're part in. Our future looks like, let's talk

(16:37):
about the future, maybe some goodthings, because I know as a leader,
you're always looking ahead, whether it'stwo, five, even ten years
down the road, we don't knowwhere pickleball is going to grow go,
but it certainly is growing right now. I mean it's on television all sorts
of different media platforms. It's playedworldwide, but it's real popular in the
US right now. So with allthat said, as you look down the

(16:59):
road little bit and things that you'dlike to do to get to the next
level, what kind of things arewe looking at? Yeah, So the
sport is enormous here in the US. I think it's surpassed tennis as participation
sports with over forty forty five millionplayers. The last statistic was that there's
about one hundred and fifty players perbuilt pick of ball court. So if

(17:21):
you imagine, you still have somuch pent up demand for more courts here
in the US. So the sportisn't recognized by the Olympics yet, but
where it is today in the US, it doesn't need to be. It's
already very well commercialized here in theUS with several pro tours. You know,
people plant every day, There's clubspopping up, you know, all

(17:42):
the time. So the sport isin a very healthy place. The difference
for sports overseas is a little bitdifferent where a lot of times professional sports
that are linked to Olympics are kindof partnered up with the government, where
the government is helping support the playersand getting them to the Olympic level.

(18:02):
So Olympic adoption, which we don'tsee happening for maybe ten plus years,
is still going to be important forthe sports international growth. We do see
some of that sport growing internationally,but we feel like it'll grow a lot
faster with recognition by the Olympic movement. Yeah, I would agree with that,
and I'm going to make a predictionas a sports guy, it's going

(18:25):
to be an Olympic sport eventually.It's just going to I mean, break
dancing is in the Paris Olympics sixyear, which is great, by the
way, and why not. Imean there was one time when we saw
the X Games, and now thoseX Games are in the Winter Olympics,
so it's going to happen richer.I'm just going to make my prediction right
now that that's going in within thenext decade. Let's do this because I
know it's really important to you philanthropicand charity work. I know it's about

(18:47):
giving back all so as busy asyou and your team are. When it
comes to those kind of things,what do you like to be involved in?
So we definitely want to take whatwe're doing in the sport and try
to share it to even more morepeople. So one of the things that
we're doing right now is we're workingwith Montgomery County Public Schools here in Maryland.
We spoke to doctor Sullivan, who'sa superintendent sports at Montgomery County Public

(19:11):
Schools, and he reached out actuallyand said, hey, we're going to
start varsity pickleball in the fall.It's fantastic and I mean, I think
it's the first one in the countryto do that and right in our backyard.
So I'm super excited. Where we'redoing a lot of things to help
them get launched. We're also supportingthem with a lot of equipment, and

(19:34):
you know, we're doing even more. I think there's another group in San
Francisco also another school system that isinterested. There's also the collegiate side.
You know, it's a club sportright now. It's going to be a
few more years until you know,NC DOUBA will recognize it as a as
a real sport. But I thinkthat's how we want to give back.

(19:55):
We want the next generation of folksto really learn about the sport and maybe
start a little bit earlier. Iwish I could have played it a lot
earlier, or have found it earlier, but it's it's just a great thing
to get people moving. You know, this game started more as a seniors
game, and you know it's agreat way to get some great exercise.

(20:15):
So whatever we can do to giveback to local communities, you know,
whether it's donations of equipment or justmore information about the sport, we're always
happy to go to work together.Well, as you were talking about that
about any age can really play,Richard, and that really is true.
And I've got some Canadian roots andheritage, and I've told everybody because I

(20:36):
grew up with curling that actually curling, the reason why it's so worldwide popular
is that any age can play it, throw a rock and sweep on the
ice. Right, It's easy forany age to do. Same with pickleball,
and that's why I think it's justgrowing so big, is that anybody
can play it, which is wonderful. So you're obviously in the right business.
Let's do this. As we wrapup our conversation. I've really enjoyed
Richard, and maybe just a coupleof final takeaways you when it comes to

(21:00):
the company and your thoughts about whatyou're doing in the future as we wrap
up everything. But the floor isyours. Yeah, I appreciate it.
Yola is growing extremely fast where we'veadded about eight subsidies worldwide, so we're
really looking out for the sports growthinternationally. But I think most importantly this

(21:21):
is an American sports. You know, it was It was introduced in the
seventies by Americans, and I thinkwhat we need to do as a brand
and how we can also expand onthe sport is to look at exporting this
sport worldwide. It's just such afun sport. I really hope that everyone

(21:42):
gets a chance to play more pickleball. You know, originally we are a
table tennis company. Already, wedon't see ourselves as the table in as
company. It is our heritage,but today we're a pickleball company, so
we're really proud to be involved inthe sports as much as we are today.
Well, you're a great lesson foreverybody out there about coming up with

(22:04):
an idea being sustainable. But thenyou pivoted to something that's even more extraordinary.
And that's always really cool when yousee people start companies and grow them
into something even more special. Ifanybody wants to check out more about your
company and or the products of wherethey can get them. How do they
all do that? You can visitour website. It's Eola dot com.
That's spelled jo La dot com.Richard, thank you so much. A

(22:30):
local kid doing well man. Ilove to see lifers doing stuff like this,
and and I know that you mentioneda couple of times an interview.
There are peaks and vallees, andthere are to every business, folks.
It's just not perfect and it's noteasy. But if you have a great
idea, and if you have abrand, and if you have great product,
no matter what it is, withsome hard work and good team members
and a little bit of time andand luck, it can all come together.

(22:52):
And Richard has proved that. Richard, thank you so much for joining
us on CEOs. You should knowcontinued success than our community part M and
T Bank supports CEOs, you shouldknow as part of their ongoing commitment to
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bank for communities. M and Tbelieves in dedicating time, talent, and

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