Tennis’ bottom line

The underwear was his idea. One day as Katie Guerrero was dressing for a tennis match, her husband looked at her tennis panties and jokingly said: “Hurry, put on your skirt.” She had to admit, the undergarment did look like something Grandma would wear and couldn’t flatter even the fittest physique.

An idea hit her like a power spin. Guerrero, 43, of San Juan Capistrano, and her friend Zara Cerni, 46, of Laguna Niguel, had talked about going into business together. Both fitness nuts, they knew they wanted to launch an exercise-oriented company, but they hadn’t realized they were, as it were, sitting on a hot idea.

“It struck us that every other type of fitness wear looked great and fit well except for tennis pants,” says Guerrero. “They all had these high waists and uncomfortable elastic; they rode up and they ballooned.” To add insult to injury, someone (probably a man, she figures) designed the pocket for balls right on the hip where no woman wants an extra bulge.

So the pair set out to create tennis underpants (which they call an underskirt) that “moved with you, didn’t bug you and looked great,” says Guerrero. They first enlisted fellow tennis players young and old to test-drive “hundreds” of designs. Guerrero and Cerni gathered feedback and kept tweaking the skirts until they were satisfied.

“We listened to what women wanted,” says Cerni. The wish list included full coverage in the behind, a little length in the leg so it wouldn’t roll up, a waistband that didn’t pinch, and, well, it had to look good too. They expanded the elastic in the traditional panties from one-eighth of an inch to a full inch, so it would lie flat, and dropped the waist.

While designing two styles -- a boy cut, like small shorts, and a French cut with a high leg -- they modified the backside so women wouldn’t have to give away too much advantage on a power serve. Some styles include a bit of lace around the leg. Finally happy with their design in 1998, they were ready to launch. “The hardest part was persuading buyers to try something new,” says Guerrero. “The tennis industry likes the status quo. They’re reluctant to take a risk on a new product.”

Eventually, many did. Today Kan Goodz products -- the underskirts are packaged in tennis ball cans -- are in more than 300 retail outlets, including tennis pro shops, country clubs and sporting goods stores. The underskirts retail from $22 to $32, with a growing percentage of the company’s sales coming from Internet orders (www.kangoodz.com).

In 2000, the partners launched a second line called Bag o’ Goodz, which costs a little less -- from $14 to $28 -- and comes in a bag. “The higher-end line,” says Cerni, “has a little better fit and a little more fashion, but the more moderately priced line is still better looking and wearing than a lot of what’s out there.”

Still, it’s a niche market. Bike-short athletic styles from Adidas, Nike and other makers have become much more popular for women on the courts than the traditional tennis skirt, says Maureen Lloyd, who with her husband owns Hank Lloyd’s Tennis, a chain of Southland tennis stores that carries Kan Goodz.

The underskirts, available in size petite to 2X, come in seasonal colors, stripes and prints (including snakeskin and leopard), as well as black and white -- the strongest sellers. Shimmering bronze also has a surprisingly strong following, says Cerni.

Although both women were new to the worlds of business and fashion, Cerni says what they did have going for them was that “we live, eat and breathe tennis.” The two plan next to market their undergarments to the cheerleading and drill-team uniform industry. They also have prototypes for sports bras, a tennis skirt, jacket and bag.

“The best part now,” says Guerrero, “is when we play tennis at different clubs and someone introduces us as the women who designed those underskirts, all these women start lifting their skirts to show us they’re wearing our product. No one would have been caught dead doing that before.”