Born from the simple joy of childhood games, Recess Pickleball aims to bring fun back into the sport of pickleball.

Childhood friends Maggie Brown and Grace Moore started Recess to capture the carefree spirit of playgrounds and share that joy with the growing tribe of pickleball lovers everywhere.

The brand focuses on creating high-quality paddles, clothing, and accessories that make the game approachable for players of all ages and skill levels.

With a colorful range of fun-loving designs, the brand strives to make pickleball a sport and a source of joy and connection. 

The company has expanded from pickleball accessories to apparel and other racquet sports.

“The brand doesn’t take itself too seriously,” allowing it to capture the essence of fun associated with playing pickleball.

“Many pickleball companies out there didn’t have much going on. I wouldn’t even call them brands; they were just companies with designs that didn’t make sense, almost like copy-paste. The founders wanted to create something that appealed to a broader audience, so they founded Recess Pickleball to bring fun back to this adultified world.”

— Mason Ezell, Vice President of Operations at Recess Pickleball

The challenge: Pickleball’s rising popularity vs. operational growing pains

Recess started to face operational challenges as it gained traction in the ever-growing pickleball community.

With the rapid increase in demand for their products, the company needed a more efficient way to manage its inventory and processes.

The team’s love for the game and commitment to quality products was undeniable, but staying ahead of logistical challenges meant switching to more robust solutions.

Initially, Recess dealt with a disjointed operational setup—relying on multiple systems—including Katana for manufacturing and ShipHero for fulfillment operations.

The problem?

These two systems did not talk to each other.

With their website hosted on Shopify, fulfillment details had to be pulled from ShipHero to Shopify. It was all good until they began to scale, and the growth soon exposed the limitations.

We spoke to Mason from Recess Pickleball, who pointed out how this fragmentation resulted in bottlenecks and subsequent slowdowns—particularly as the company began adding more vendors and product variants.

“We were using a WRP and an MRP, and we needed something to capture all of it, and of course, another 10 Google Sheets, at least.”

Here’s what Recess struggled with:

• Inventory bottlenecks: As demand surged, so did the complexity of managing inventory levels and forecasting product needs.
• Limited visibility: They needed more real-time insights into product availability, making it harder to meet growing customer expectations.
• Scalability issues: Their existing systems couldn’t keep up with the fast-paced growth of the business, leading to recurring snags and delays.

The team sought a way to consolidate data and streamline inventory management processes, which is essential for effectively scaling their business.

The solution: Establishing a single source of truth with GoodDay

Recess discovered GoodDayOS^TM through a mentor referral.

Mason shared how GoodDay addressed several key operational challenges right from day one.

“The most immediate problem it solved was that it saved time and helped reduce information loss across the organization.”

GoodDay brought advanced functionality to the table, which none of the other tools they worked with offered.

GoodDay facilitated the integration of Recess Pickleball’s siloed data systems—creating a unified solution that allowed the company to manage its inventory smoothly.

The ‘blocks feature’ within GoodDay enabled the team to organize and track purchase orders (POs) more effectively, which was previously a time-consuming and logistically complicated process.

“GoodDay was helpful... You only input each data point in the system once, and it will retain and update that information throughout.”

With GoodDay, Recess is primed for next-level operational efficiency:

• Centralized inventory management: GoodDay has enabled Recess to centralize all inventory-related data into a single system to provide a clear overview of its inventory at any time.
• On-the-fly intelligence: The real-time visibility feature enabled them to track product levels more efficiently, which helped reduce stockouts and overstocks.
• Scalable solutions: As the business has grown, GoodDay’s flexible and growth-ready features have adapted quickly, ensuring that operational hang-ups were a thing of the past.

These improvements made managing a growing network of suppliers and products a breeze, boosting operational accuracy like never before.

The impact: Growing without logistical headaches

GoodDay supercharged the entire inventory management process for Recess, delivering peak performance across multiple aspects of operations.

PO creation time was shortened by half, delivering an impressive 50-70% reduction in the time taken for raw data input.

The team at Recess benefited from the following:

• Improved stock management: Reduced stockouts to ensure customers always get their favorite paddles.
• Increased fulfillment levels: Streamlined their order fulfillment process, reducing shipping times significantly.
• Better forecasting: With up-to-the-minute accurate data, they’ve improved their demand forecasting and are better positioned to stay ahead of customer demand.
• A reliable, single source of truth: While Shopify was a central hub for all things product and ShipHero, for all things inventory, GoodDay created a single data powerhouse, preventing process breakdowns during peak times and dramatically improving data management.
• Smoother operational workflow: Enhanced supplier relationships by providing a formalized PO structure that clarified terms and conditions—and further streamlined communication and accountability across teams and suppliers.

Recess’s partnership with GoodDay significantly improved its inventory management processes, allowing the company to focus on growth and innovation within a highly competitive market.

As Recess Pickleball continues to expand its product offerings and scale its operations, the foundation laid by GoodDay will be instrumental in driving future success.