Introducing Babolat POP, the wristband totally dedicated to tennis, at only $90. Pair your POP with a smartphone and play connected with any tennis racquet. Babolat POP collects exciting data about players’ performance in real-time, and allows them to challenge and interact with friends via social and gaming features.

• Implementation

The project started in partnership with PIQ, a french startup specialized in sensor technologies. Thanks to a set of hardware/software features ready to be implemented industrially, we chose a fast time-to-market approach. This allowed us, at the time, to focus on the features that really matter for tennis beginners and to reduce drastically production costs.

• Timeline

February - April 2015: product and brand positioning strategy

May 2015: brand/product identity + UX/UI design

June 2015: wristband sensor design + app development

June - September 2015: Industrial production

October 2015: Babolat POP launch on the US market

• Placement and scale

The app was promoted on the App store and Google Play store. The wristband was sold in sports and generalist retailers -Amazon, Tennis Warehouse- in 15 countries.

14 000 new players downloaded the app during the first month (October 2015).

90% of these players became members of the Babolat Community.

80% of the Babolat Pop inventory was sold out just 4 months after the launch (between October 2015 and January 2016)

90 000 sessions were played, resulting in 100 000 hours of tennis or 30 000 000 shots.

We deep dived into Babolat connected tennis database to analyse and identify play behaviours from real players using the connected racquet. The study revealed that not only pro players were interested in recording their tennis data: less regular, less performance-oriented players were also eager to track their performance.

Additional discussion with players and experts at Babolat showed how difficult it was to stay motivated all by yourself.

So we decided to design a service more suited to them: focused on playful challenges to stay up the motivation curve, showing progress in real-time to keep the fire burning, with a simplified and colorful interface to make data feedback more enjoyable.

Mobile was the perfect technology for visualizing a player’s progress in real-time and connecting members altogether.

In 2014, Babolat created the first ever connected racquet, bringing invaluable insights for semi-pro and pro players to perfect their game, tracking data that neither they nor their coach could see.

But beginners have a more basic issue: tennis is difficult to start and to keep up.

Compared to putting shoes on and going out for a run, learning tennis takes a lot of unrewarding practice.

Sometimes beginners abandon even before playing starts being fun!

Babolat had opened a new market, that competitors Zepp and Sony invested later with products at prices from $110-$200.

On our side, we came to the understanding that an accessible price was crucial.

How can Babolat open up connected tennis to help beginners stay motivated and enjoy practice?

• Objectives

The objective was to introduce connected tennis to a wider audience with an affordable service that will give them extra reasons to keep playing.