E-RACKETS.COM
is a division of The Racket Doctor, Inc., a small non-public
corporation still headed by its founder, Randy Kramer,
and still maintaining its brick-and-mortar store in the
very same Los Angeles location where it began. The Racket
Doctor, Inc. offers a huge selection of racket-sports
apparel, court shoes, accessories, and of course rackets
representing all major brands at very competitive prices.
Since
the very start, our brick-and-mortar store has drawn a
clientele that drives in from as far as San Diego and
Santa Barbara, but those drives have become more difficult
for some, and over the years, some of our valued customers
have moved out of driving range. E-RACKETS.COM is the
latest incarnation of what originally was a telephone-based
mail-order system we established to service our far-flung
customers. Today, our reach is global.
A
Short History: How We Got Here
E-RACKETS.COM, The Racket Doctor, Inc., The Racket Doctor
Express, and The String Surgeon are racket-sports entities
created by Randy Kramer, and grew out of his addictions
for the sports of tennis and racquetball.
Randy’s
first contact with tennis was at the age of fourteen in
the summer of ’62. Just before summer vacation,
his track coach gave him a Jack Kramer tennis racket and
said, “try this, you may like it.” Soon Randy
was picking up balls for a local tennis instructor in
exchange for lessons. Then Randy swung a deal with the
owner of a local pro shop: Randy would help out on afternoons
in exchange for equipment. Soon, Randy had a job.
The
tennis shop at Griffith Park was owned by Mr. Fred Moll
and was a long-standing favorite among Southern California
tennis players. The shop was known for the selection of
tennis goods and its expert stringing. In ’62, Jack
Kramer Autograph rackets sold for $29.99 and a Victor
Imperial Gut string job was $18.00.
Soon,
Randy was working full-time for his mentor. The wage was
$1.25 per hour, but the learning experience was priceless.
When the summer of ’62 ended, Randy went back to
school, but continued to work part-time at the shop, and
full-time during summers, until he graduated from high
school in 1967.
Randy
joined the U. S. Marines for three years and served on
the staffs of CINCPAC commanders Admiral Sharp and Admiral
McCain. He spent his final year of duty in Viet Nam in
a rifle company as a Sergeant [0311] with the 1st Marines.
Discharged
in 1970, Randy returned to the Griffith Park area, enrolled
in courses at a local community college, and started a
business in his spare time by driving to local tennis
courts and stringing rackets out of the back of his car.
While making his route one day, Randy spotted a van bearing
the logo, “The Rug Doctor.” Right then and
there, Randy knew the name for the store he’d been
dreaming about. The Racket Doctor was born. Soon after
came Randy’s first slogan: “Your Gut is My
Business!”
Randy’s
next step was renting a tiny room in the back corner of
a retail store in the Atwater Village neighborhood of
Los Angeles. He paid $50 a month, and customers could
drop off their rackets with the shopkeeper while Randy
was in school. Randy would come in and string the rackets
at night—often all night—and customers would
pick them up from the shopkeeper the next day.
Soon
customers were asking for other items. They wanted shoes,
rackets, balls, and clothes.
Randy developed relationships with suppliers, and the
selection and inventory grew as his profits grew. From
the very beginning, Randy developed an extremely loyal
clientele—so loyal that at a time when Randy was
putting every penny back into the business and didn’t
have the credit record to get small business loans, his
regular customers and other members of the community offered
to help him with small loans to grow his business. And
for as long as he has been in business, Randy has started
each day with the goal of earning and returning the loyalty
of his customers by offering the best products and service
at the best prices, and advocating for trade practices
that benefit the consumer.
Randy’s
business quickly grew out of that little back room and
into half the building, and before long he put in an offer
to purchase the building. You can still visit The Racket
Doctor brick-and mortar store today at 3214 Glendale Boulevard
in Los Angeles. Look in the back right corner. Most of
the walls that once divided up the building are now gone,
but the little room where it all started is still there.
The racket-sports industry surged in the ‘70s and
early ‘80s as baby-boomers discovered the joy and
health benefits of tennis and squash, and racquetball
mania swept the United States. The Racket Doctor, then
a new corporation, drew customers from a radius of over
a hundred miles. They came for the promise of an unbelievable
selection of products, unbelievable service and unbelievable
prices. And they came for Southern California’s
first “while you wait” appointment stringing
service—a service the store continues to this day.
The
Racket Doctor’s semi-annual sales in February and
October evolved into rituals with customers lining up
around the block. Though the store has always advertised
here and there, it always has relied more than anything
on word of mouth, and in the ‘80s, that word went
national. The staff grew to nearly 50 employees servicing
a seemingly endless local clientele, as well as tourists
and traveling business people who stopped in to visit
the store that was becoming known as the best in the nation.
In the back office, staff juggled telephones keeping up
with orders coming in from around the country and overseas.
And the place was bursting at the seams.
The
national racket-sports market slowed in the late ‘80s.
Competition intensified among retailers. In this atmosphere,
many got out of the business, and even seemingly invincible
“big box” retailers drastically reduced or
eliminated their racket-sports equipment and apparel offerings.
But The Racket Doctor, which had always been competitive,
continued to thrive.
The
market correction of the late 80s sent retailers and manufacturers
into a panic. Retailers who had not built their business
models to include competitive pricing, or do did not want
to be competitive, put pressure on manufacturers to do
something to protect them. And manufacturers, lacking
faith in the resourcefulness of the consumer to find the
best products at the best prices wherever available, acted
out of fear that fewer retailers in the market would result
in a continued decline of the market. The result was the
emergence of Minimum Price and Minimum Advertised Price
(MAP) policies. Those are the nice words for what in other
words is vertical price fixing. (Click
here for more about these policies.)
Manufacturers
began exerting extreme pressure on The Racket Doctor and
other competitive retailers to maintain minimum prices.
Methods used could be described with words like harassment,
sabotage, or extortion: demand of maintaining and advertising
minimum prices with the threat of a cut-off of supply
and termination of the account, late and “lost”
orders, rules prohibiting if and when The Rackets Doctor
and other competitive retailers could order new products
if they refused to maintain a minimum price.
The
Racket Doctor didn’t play ball. All of the major
manufacturers at the time cut us off: Prince, Wilson,
Head, Dunlop, Pro Kennex, Yamaha, and others. From 1989
to 1993, we received no rackets directly from the manufacturers,
and instead had to buy through other retailers and distributors.
This meant The Racket Doctor was paying a higher wholesale
price than anyone else in the market, but, because we
ran an efficient business, because we believed in the
free market and competition, and because we were determined
to maintain our trust with the consumer, we continued
to sell our rackets at among the lowest retail prices
in the country. This squeezed our profit margins to almost
nothing. In many cases, we were retailing rackets at literally
pennies more than we were paying for them. It was brutal,
but we survived and continued to grow.
Randy
became involved with Consumer’s Union and, with
a group of retailers in a variety of markets, he got involved
in a national movement to support free enterprise and
price competition.
The Coalition against Price-Fixing was formed, and with
its members, Randy lobbied congress for the passage of
s.429, The Consumer Protection Against Price Fixing Act
of 1991. The Coalition was successful in the Senate, but
the bill did not become law. This was a terrible blow
to consumers and many hard working retailers such as The
Racket Doctor.
The
Racket Doctor survived the early nineties by continuing
to buy wholesale on the open market while still reselling
at retail prices below the prevailing price levels of
the market.
In
the mid ‘90s many racket manufacturers softened
their policies and began to sell directly to The Racket
Doctor, Inc. again with restrictions on advertising only.
Tennis rackets could be sold in your retail store for
any price as long as you did not advertise the price on
traditional mediums such as newspapers, TV, Radio, Flyers
and so on. (Some policies did not permit showing a price
in your windows or quoting a price over the phone).
Today,
consumers have less opportunity to benefit from price
competition because price and advertising policies prevent
true competition. Corporations now have their own stores,
both retail and outlet, selling direct to consumers at
their “suggested price.”
More
efficient retailers who like to pass the savings along
in the form of lower prices are having their supplies
restricted and terminated altogether for not complying
with the “NEW” generation of manufacturers’
restrictive policies.
Babolat,
Adidas, and Head are three companies that recently have
terminated The Racket Doctor, Inc. for refusing to raise
prices on their products to “their suggested price”.
The
Racket Doctor, Inc. has never needed to sell tennis rackets
for full suggested retail prices. As long as our customers
continue to vote with their dollars for our offering of
the best service and products at the best prices, we’ll
continue to offer just that. We’re not getting as
rich as some of our competitors, and we’re working
harder than any of them, but we sleep well knowing that
we didn’t shake down our hard-working customers
so that we can be lazy and greedy.
We
may have gone global in the scale of our business, but
at the heart of it, we’re still that little shop
in a back corner trying to do right by our loyal customers.
On Thursday, June 28, 2007, the United States
Supreme Court in an absurd 5-4 ruling reversed a 96 year
old ban on PRICE FIXING!
The Consumer Federation of America and 37 states Attorney
Generals were strongly opposed to any change in the almost
century old law knowing in advance that it would result
in significantly higher consumer prices and less competition
in the market place.
This decision, based on fuzzy economics, now gives more
power to manufactures to dictate resale prices and greatly
restricts the flexibility of discounters and many small
merchants such as The Racket Doctor, Inc.
Contrary to the Court's majority opinion PRICE FIXING
never promotes competition and cannot ever benefit the
consuming public.
We
thank you for your support.
