Tennis Nets Her Another Profitable Line
Young tennis stars on the way up have something to look forward to when they’re old (mid-30s) and retired.
If they follow the example set by Evonne Goolagong, the two-time Wimbledon champion who is now 36, they can enjoy careers as pitch people long after they put their tennis rackets down.
Goolagong’s five-year association with Sears, marketing women’s activewear called Goolagong Sport, priced from $18 to $70, is healthier now than it was when she was playing tennis, she says.
Market researchers might take note that the collection doesn’t include a single garment for the game of tennis. (Tennis clothes were never big sellers in the collection and were dropped after one year.)
Although neither Goolagong nor Sears would give figures, their collaboration results in “steady increases each year” in sales, according to Mary Lou Bilder of Sears; and the association, said Roger Cawley, Goolagong’s husband and business manager, will be intact “probably for the rest of our lives.”
Goolagong and Cawley were in Los Angeles this week from their home in Naples, Fla., on a national tour on behalf of Sears. The trip ends in New York in mid-September, when Goolagong will compete professionally for the first time in three years, in an over-35 doubles match at the U.S. Open.
The champion, still all muscle, obligingly posed for photographs in a royal-blue-and-white warm-up suit while volubly proclaiming that “this is the type of clothing I wear every day--and sometimes at night.”
And she added: “They’re so easy to wash out.” (Most of the garments are made of polyester/cotton blends.)
Goolagong said she “loves clothes, just like any woman. Shopping was my favorite hobby when I was on tour. Particularly if I did well. So I guess that’s a real good basis for getting involved in a clothing line.”
Nevertheless, she said, she steers clear of the design process--”my expertise is mainly in tennis”--but sometimes offers pointers on fabrics and styles she is comfortable in. Still, how to explain her success as a fashion star? “It’s a proven thing in sports that people will buy what they see on their heroes,” noted Cawley, “but with Evonne, it’s grown into something totally removed from tennis.”
If you want to look truly hip at your sports club, wear stretchy capri pants with a leotard or crop top. If you want to look ultra, ultra hip, wear pedal pushers.
The distinction is subtle (capris end just above the ankle; peddle pushers end just below the knee), but it isn’t lost on Bonnie August, the designer who has made a career of dressing women for their exercise workouts, first as chief designer for Danskin and now under her own Bonnie August label, available at the Broadway.
August’s most reliable market research continues to be the gyms she frequents whenever she tours the country. In Los Angeles, her best style barometers are the Sports Connection on Santa Monica Boulevard and Jane Fonda’s Workout; although she said the new Sports Club on Sepulveda Boulevard made a particular impression on her.
