About Pickleball Effect
our story
How We Started
Pickleball Effect was started in 2019 by pickleball enthusiast, Braydon Unsicker. Braydon was on the hunt for a new paddle but didn’t like the information that was available. There were so many paddles that all seemed to have the same description. Braydon started doing in-depth, unbiased paddle reviews to help educate the market and inform players on how to find the best paddle for them.
Braydon never would have guessed the positive response he’d get from the pickleball community. There was an obvious need for more transparency and help around paddle research and selection. After doing paddle reviews for two years, Braydon partnered with his brother, Riley, and decided to turn his review site into a pickleball paddle retail site that was different from everything else out there. With the aim to be transparent, educational, and helpful, Pickleball Effect’s retail site was born to help you find the best paddle for your game.
HOW WE ARE DIFFERENT
We Are Not Your Typical Pickleball Paddle Retailer
We believe there isn’t one paddle that is right for everyone, but there is one paddle that is right for you. Our mission is to help you find that paddle. We do this by adding transparency to our paddle descriptions through honest reviews, offering paddle buying guidance and selling fewer brands and paddles on purpose.
Transparency
Not every paddle plays with the perfect blend of power and control. We play and review every paddle so we can be descriptive in our paddle overviews and provide informative details on how each paddle actually plays and not just how brands market their paddles.
Honest reviews
We do honest, in-depth reviews for two reasons:
1) Provide helpful information for your paddle research
2) Decide which paddles we want to carry
We don’t sell every paddle we review, just ones we liked and know are legit. For ex. we didn’t like Franklin’s Carbon STK. There was a lot of hype around this paddle but we reviewed it and it wasn’t great. So we don’t sell it.
Fewer brands on purpose
There are too many brands to mention with literally hundreds of paddle options. Other retailers like Pickleball Central carry 20+ brands which makes it confusing and hard to find the right paddle. We only carry brands we have tested, vetted, and know are legit. When you buy a paddle from us, you know you’re only getting the best.
Paddle buying guidance
With Braydon’s experience reviewing so many paddles and fitting hundreds of players to paddles, he developed a paddle fitting quiz with his own algorithm. 1000s of people take our paddle quiz each month to point them to a paddle that fits their game.
Who we are
Our Team
Braydon partnered with his brilliant brother, Riley, to help manage core business operations while Braydon leads the paddle reviewing and content side of things. The team has grown to include other friends and vendors to manage the many things required to make a customer focused business. At our heart, we are just a bunch of pickleball junkies that love the sport and want to help others find joy in the game like we have.
