Eric Babolat is the youngest President and CEO of a major tennis manufacturer, serving at the oldest one (131). The seemingly dichotomous principles of tradition and innovation have been successfully intertwined at the French company, whose mission is to "build a new generation of players using a new generation of products." Babolat players have won Grand Slam titles every year since 1877. Mr. Babolat will join Rafael Nadal, Robbie Ginepri and Andy Roddick at the TENNIS Magazine Grand Slam event at New York City's Grand Central Terminal on Aug. 25.

For more than a century, Babolat's business was string. Only recently did you make the move into racquets and then shoes. How do you stay relevant to the market?
We are focused on one thing, which is tennis. We are not a global sport company, we are a specialized tennis company and that is an important point. From the beginning of our history we are always concentrating on the player and his equipment, and the innovation that can help him to play better and to win. That has been the case for years with strings, and that was also the case when we entered the racquet business in 1994. Being in the business for so long, and being a family business, helped us to think with a long-term view and to take the time to build these things correctly, and be able to wait for the results to come in.
Innovation and competition are always the keys. You need to have a good product and good innovation, but you need to have the best players win with it. It's the best way to say, "Our innovations are good."

What was your angle entering the shoe market?
Up to now players were not paying that much attention to the technological part of the shoe and weren't thinking the shoe could improve their performance. We wanted to bring innovation to the shoe business, and we wanted the best partner to help us with this. We are very proud to be the first product with the Michelin name outside of the Michelin product line.
They have a lot of common values with Babolat, not only being a family business, but they know what competition, in terms of racing, and innovation means. Those common values made for an understanding even though neither Michelin nor Babolat had made shoes before this. With Babolat as the tennis expert and Michelin as the experts with the link to the ground, together we wanted to make the first ever tennis shoe dedicated to tennis from the beginning.
Whatever way you play tennis the soles rub a lot and wear a lot on the ground, so you need to have something that's strong and that's a guarantee we have with the Michelin product. This is very similar to what Michelin faces with car racing. The road can be hot, so it's something they understand quite well, and they offer a lot for performance in this way.


Your strategy of providing product to juniors has served you well. Babolat counts Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick and Kim Clijsters among its endorsers; and you've worked with Roddick since he was 15 and Clijsters since she was 12. With such success among tournament players, Babolat is known as a performance brand, but what does that mean for recreational players?
That is more a question of brand image than products. We have products that are fulfilling all types of players' needs. We are equipping a lot of very young ones, from four years old to the oldest. I think in the U.S. we have an image that is very focused on competition and top players, and we are less visible to the club players who may be saying, "Oh, I'm not much of a competition player so probably there is no product for me."
But we have product for them. It's a question of time for them to test our product and see the new technology we are bringing, like the Smart Grip and the Cortex System, to bring the best comfort to the racquet dedicated to the club player.
And, we are selling more VS string to club players than to competition players. First because pro players are breaking too much string and it is a big expense for them. But the VS string is typically a string that is good for club players. Andy is using it, as well as club players, because it is the best performance, comfort string that lasts long in terms of performance.
We are not only competition-oriented, but I think it is the most important part of the game and we talk a lot about that. From the technology we develop for the highest level of competition, from this we can focus on what is best for the club player, which is not everything.

The top racquet companies have made lots of technology breakthroughs in recent years--Wilson's nCode, Prince's O³, and Head's Flexpoint, to name a few--but no one has fooled around with the shape of the grip as you have with the Smart Grip. Usually radical changes--like first 135-sq. in. head by Weed Racquets or the double-strung Blackburne racquet or the oddly shaped heads by X-45--are taken to market by upstarts, not established companies. But you have ventured there. Why?
It is true, most racquet companies don't take big risks. It's a big challenge and it's something very new. The first wooden racquet had a wooden grip--not even leather--and the shape had not changed in years.
It's surprising that in 130 years in the history of tennis, nobody worked on this. It seems so simple. It's just that nothing has been done in that direction, and we all asked, "Why?"
We looked at similar products, from the pen to the tool, and discovered that everything you put your hand on has evolved and added some ergonomy in the years--but not the tennis racquet, which was very surprising.
We started meeting with people in universities and clubs to look at the position of people using one hand or two hands on the backhand, the service, the toss.
We very strongly believe that this is where the others will be in the future, but now we need to convince and to have the people test it.
The effect is always surprising--most of them are saying, "How could I play without that before?" It's so natural, you don't think about it. The position is so natural that when you come back to a traditional racquet, you are really missing something, even if you play just a few minutes with the Smart Grip.

As someone who travels the world and has spent his life in the tennis industry, how's the state of tennis looking to you right now?
I think tennis is doing better than in the '90s when tennis had a lot of difficulties. That was when we entered the racquet business, so a lot of people thought we were crazy. Tennis is competing with television, video games and other sports, so it's always the same story. And, of course, tennis is difficult. You cannot play tennis in five minutes, you need to learn it. Everybody wants something you can do right now, and this is not really the case with tennis, even if we must consider what all the federations are doing is a lot better than in the past.
I think we are on a more positive and dynamic evolution today than a few years ago. The most important thing is the appeal of the competitive players. Now we have champions from many countries and the players are challenging themselves, not staying 15 years at the top. If you are exciting, if you have good characters, nice people who are showing they like what they do and bring some intensity into the game, then everything goes smoothly in the clubs and the business of tennis.
There are tennis stars like Rafael Nadal or Andy Roddick or Kim Clijsters who are not only good players, but they are nice characters and they are also good for tennis, bringing more appeal to the sport, which is important. It's quite motivating for the people, and this is more than whatever you can do (as a manufacturer) in the game itself.

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