The Move

It’s like trying to change a tire while the car is still moving…

PickleballCentral successfully relocated its offices and warehouse operations this last weekend. Moving can be stressful. Finding that perfect friend with a truck willing to work for pizza and a cold beverage is tough. But, we did it. And for anyone who has moved recently, we apologize for increasing your level of (vicarious) stress as you read this blog.

We started the business on the dining table of our home. That was over 10 years ago. Almost 5 years ago we moved into a 5,000 square foot facility with offices, a warehouse, and enough room for one court. Over the years, we grew, and grew.

We went from carrying only around 100 products to carrying over 2,000. We grew from just 3 employees, to over 20. And sometime during 2016 we just ran out of space. The way we finally convinced ourselves we had to move again was when the pickleball court ended up becoming the storage space for incoming pallets of merchandise.

Moving a business in Seattle isn’t easy. The commercial real estate market here is very tight, and we literally looked at dozens and dozens of spaces. It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears – except, we found that dozens were too big, dozens were too small, and almost none were “just right.'

But literally right around the corner from our existing offices, we found a wonderful new facility – over 18,000 square feet of space. Enough space for our staff, our 2,000+ products, and most importantly, our court.

Not only do we have room for one court, we actually have room for four courts! We hope to be opening the courts to the public by the end of the month, and stay tuned to this blog for more details about this exciting development in our business.

We are also honored to be the location for The Pickleball Museum. We also hope to have this open to the public by May 1^st. Stay tuned for announcements and details!

The move could not have been accomplished without the incredible leadership of our Co-Founder & President David Johnson, and the entire staff here at PickleballCentral. As most of you know, we go to extreme measures to make sure our customers are well served.

Moving this operation so that we could operate at our old offices through Friday evening’s orders, and then being able to open for business on Monday morning without missing a beat was tough.

We had to move over 100,000 pieces of inventory – luckily some of that we could pre-stage on pallets at the new location. We had to move 20 team member’s offices. We had to tear down our shelving, and set it up at the new location, and move all the products stored on those shelves.  But with a lot of planning, and incredible work, we were  able to do it. And by 6:00 AM Monday morning, we were operating business as usual, shipping pickleball equipment to customers all over the world. It’s like trying to change a tire on a moving vehicle – but somehow, we did it.

Take a look at the time lapse video that started on Friday evening and ended Monday morning. You can see how much a small team of people can accomplish in one weekend if we all work together.

As I sign off – I want to express a special thank you to our team here at PickleballCentral – we are blessed to have what we think is the best team any business could have. They work hard. They play hard. And now they have courts to play on…

Stop by and visit us in a few weeks when we have The Pickleball Museum, the Pro Shop and courts up and running!

Our new address is 22330 68^th Ave. S., Kent, WA 98032

- By Anna Copley, Partner