If you check out any of the product reviews about Geau Sport on YouTube you are certain to find some witty comments from viewers about the higher price of our Axiom series tennis bags. Here are just a few:
“With that price I expect to find at least a Pro Staff CV inside LOL”
“Definitely need to get that price down. Maybe $120 max.”
And perhaps my favorite:
“At that price… that’s a NO GEAU ”
We have a healthy obsession with end-user feedback, so we pretty much have read it all – the positive and the negative. A lot of those comments have had a huge impact on the new line of tennis bags that we are currently developing. Please – keep the comments coming. The premium price is consistently the most common obstacle mentioned from tennis players when considering our tennis bags so I’d like to take a moment to address that.
We pride ourselves on delivering a great product at a fair price, but it’s not cheap creating a premium tennis bag with better features, better quality, and better materials. In our opinion, a “no Geau” would be to create a tennis bags that last only a season or two and are cheaply mass produced to serve as a walking billboard for a racquet brand.
So, what specifically drives the price of our tennis bags:
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A tennis bag with more organization and more features costs more. When defining the vision for Geau Sport’s Axiom series of tennis bags, the highest priority was placed on designing the most organized tennis bag in the market. More pockets result in more fabric, more zippers, and more cut & sew time. Within the Axiom 9-Pack Tennis bag, the benefit of being able to move our modular internal shelves into any position you want requires a more expensive fabric to be used throughout the entire interior of the main compartment. The wet storage pocket uses a completely waterproof material that won’t let your wet gear leak into the main compartment.
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A tennis bag that lasts longer, costs more. Much of my inspiration for the Axiom series of tennis bags came from my experience using and developing outdoor gear. Anybody that is familiar with outdoor packs knows that the better ones are quite expensive. Just like premium outdoor packs, we use more durable fabrics and premium zippers. Even the padding in the shoulder straps is more substantial and higher density for years of comfort.
3. Obsession with product excellence costs more. You might be surprised if you were sitting in on one of our design reviews in which we obsess about the tiniest details to achieve excellence in both form and function. Our Axiom 9-pack and Axiom 12-pack tennis bags went through 20 iterations of 2D concepts, 12 iterations of prototypes, dozens of samples, and many of those samples were shipped to all corners of the map for real world product testing. Product excellence takes time and money.
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Quality control costs more. Our tennis bags are made in small batches by a carefully chosen factory with multiple QC checks before, during, and after production. More time goes into each bag because of this meticulous quality control.
During Geau Sport’s launch, I had plenty of naysayers, but I also had plenty of passionate supporters. It’s polarizing and I think that’s a good thing because it means we’re doing something different. I’m perfectly fine with saying that Geau Sport is not for everyone. Ultimately, we have chosen a path of product excellence. This is not an easy path nor is it an inexpensive position to take.
Our mission statement is not just lip service. It drives our long-term vision and our day-to-day decisions.
At Geau Sport, we believe that what you choose to protect and organize your gear should be coveted as much as the gear inside of it. Everything we make reflects our obsession with product excellence.
So, to answer the question of why our tennis bags cost more – the retail price of our tennis bags simply reflects the cost of creating a better product. The old saying of “you get what you pay for” applies to tennis bags too. We could start to cut costs and lower prices to be in line with all the other big brands, but we would end up with just another big floppy abyss of a tennis bag and that’s not how we go about our business at Geau Sport.
To those that have decided to join the Geau movement and no longer accept inferior tennis bags – welcome to our community. We have big plans for the future, and we want you to be part of it.
We’d love to know if this added any clarity about our pricing and how we operate as a business. If you have thoughts please share them, and we’ll keep the conversation going. Thank you.
Chris Pageau
Founder – Geau Sport
Dennis and Tim – are bags are manufactured overseas with a boutique factory that I have a long standing relationship with. They treat their employees very well and do great work. As far as manufacturing bags in America – we did look at that option but the cost would surprisingly double because of the amount of labor that goes into a highly technical bag.