Pulco’s breath of fresh air for padel apparel
Pulco, the padel-specific apparel brand
The Bandeja roving reporter Minter Dial speaks to Joe Middleton, founder of apparel company Pulco, the first padel-specific clothing brand to be stocked by world-famous British department store Harrods – another milestone for the sport and symbol of its arrival on the world stage. Pulco takes its name from Acapulco, the home of padel.
Minter Dial: Joe, let’s start with who you are and your background.
Joe Middleton: I grew up playing sports at a pretty high level – top amateur cricket and also field hockey to junior international level. This led me to Loughborough University which is great for sport. I originally wanted to eventually work for Adidas, even learned German as part of my course, but ended up by accident working for Levi Strauss & Company. I spent 25 years with Levi’s, moving from London to San Francisco, then Auckland, Stockholm, Amsterdam and finally Brussels, running EMEA as President of Europe, Middle East and Africa. After Levi’s I became the global CEO of Canterbury, the rugby brand from New Zealand. Then I retired, or so I thought.
MD: How did the Levi’s experience shape your approach to brand building?
JM: Levi’s had more than 100 years of history and was still owned by the same family, passed down generation to generation. The most important thing was that culture comes from leaders and flows down – if you’ve got the right values it makes the workplace a wonderful place to be. The core principle was simple: treat others as you wish to be treated. We worked in all cultures around the world and I never sat in a meeting where there was any bad stuff. It just was the way it was.
MD: What brought you out of retirement?
JM: It’s a funny story. I have three kids and we get together every two weeks for Sunday lunch. I was sitting next to my son-in-law, Jamie, who asked me a favour. He and his friends were founding a padel club in central London called Padel Social Club – they wanted it to be ‘the Soho House of padel clubs’. He asked if I could get some shirts for the bar staff. I’d never heard of padel. When I looked into it online, given my background, all I could see was the clothing. What I saw disappointed me – they all looked terrible, in fact, they all looked different. There was no look. Why was there no distinctive padel style?
MD: What was your eureka moment?
JM: I realised that in my lifetime I’d seen three or four significant new sports come along – surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding. Each one developed a culture, and an associated look – and big clothing brands. You can recognise a surfer from 100 yards away, a snowboarder versus a skier from one end of a slope to the other. Skateboarding gave birth to streetwear, which is now the major influence in fashion at all levels. It quickly went from problem to opportunity in my mind. I thought ‘I bet in 10 years’ time, somebody’s going to look back and say ‘Do you remember that brand that started back then around a dinner table and now they’re the world’s leading padel brand?'”
Brand, culture, products
MD: How did you approach developing the Pulco brand?
JM: First we listened to consumers – what problems they had that needed solving. It all came back to sweat. Padel is an aerobic game played largely in hot climates or indoors where it’s equally warm and humid. You get this thing we call ‘cling’ – garments get wet with sweat and cling to the body like a wet T-shirt. The best example is Rafa Nadal’s constant shirt-pulling, which became such a habit it turned into his pre-shot routine. We invested heavily in technical innovation, working with mills in northern Italy that are the most technically advanced in the world. These small, often family-owned mills specialise in supplying very technical kit to the cycling industry. We developed what we call the Aircon fabric – the best product I’ve seen in more than 30 years to deal with moisture management.
MD: How does Pulco differentiate itself from tennis culture?
JM: We use the tagline ‘it’s not tennis’ quite a lot. What it means is we’re not doing men’s white collars on polo shirts like Fred Perry or Lacoste, nor white pleated skirts for ladies – the uniforms of the classic American country club. We do crew neck playing shirts for men, lead with leggings for women, and put hoods on lots of products. I’m on a crusade to make it de rigueur for people to play in shirts with hoods.
MD: What do you think drives padel’s addictive quality?
JM: There’s something extraordinary about this sport, it’s the only one I can remember where people consistently use the word ‘addicted’. I’ve become addicted myself. There’s a magical cocktail of emotions, the satisfaction when you middle a ball, the constant improvement, team spirit and level of competitiveness that’s just right. Unlike golf, where even amateurs get too frustrated, padel players want to win but not at all costs.
Pricing and distribution
MD: Given your experience at Levi’s, how do you handle pricing across different markets?
JM: From my Levi’s experience, where prices in Europe were significantly higher than in the US, I learned that if you have more than a 15% price discrepancy you’ll create a black or grey market. At Levi’s Europe we sold about 10 million pairs of 501s directly through our stores, but in parallel had another five million coming in through grey market channels. It’s expensive to fight with law firms, but necessary to protect the brand. Your brand is defined by its product, advertising and channels of distribution. If you over-distribute, you hurt your brand. If you get into the wrong places, there are legal constraints where you can’t later get out. You have to be careful and not be greedy.
MD: Tell us about your distribution strategy at Pulco.
JM: We don’t sell in too many high street stores, but we want to be in a select few for prestige and image building. A couple of months ago Harrods called us – they wanted to get into padel, had found us somehow and ordered from us.
MD: That’s impressive. Who’s your target client?
JM: We target a metropolitan person who would go to work in a suit, get changed in the office toilets, then cycle to the padel club on an e-bike. They need everything to fit in a bag – their work clothes, padel kit, waterproof gear for cycling in all weathers.
Pulco’s plans for the future
MD: How are you approaching international expansion? Is the UK your primary market?
JM: The UK isn’t actually our primary market – we’ve gone global from day one. We’ve signed distributorship deals in North America, across Europe, India, and most recently China. This is a frontier market, the wild west, and first-mover advantage is going to be huge. The opportunity will be gone in five years. We use a city strategy rather than a country strategy, focusing on places that are early adopters of new trends – London, Paris, Miami, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai. Mumbai’s got the hots for padel. It’s becoming every professional sports person’s second favourite sport. In India, cricketers are gods, so that’s powerful.
MD: How can people connect with Pulco?
JM: If you’re interested in buying, go to Pulcostudios.com or Google Pulco padel and you’ll find us. For distributors and ambassadors you can reach us through the website, Instagram DM, or find me on LinkedIn. We welcome all sorts of inquiries. The first thing we’ll do with the right people is send them an Aircon shirt and once they’ve tried this, there will be no going back. We’re looking for people who understand that padel deserves its own look, its own culture, distinct from tennis but capturing that addictive and disruptive quality that makes this sport so special. The same approach that our inspiration, Enrique Corcuera, took back in 1969. 🎾
