Friday, Sep 2, 2016
Mark Mason ’71 has led his independent tennis boutique for 41 years
by Adam Grybowski
Around 2003, Mark Mason ’71 began to notice more professional tennis players gravitating toward a new line of racquets from France called Babolat, including an up and comer named Andy Roddick. Mason's Tennis, the independent tennis boutique in midtown Manhattan, had always thrived because of his sharp eye for new products.
Spotting a business opportunity, Mason inquired with Babolat about carrying its brand at Mason's Tennis, and he struck a deal with the company to be the exclusive dealer of its tennis racquets in New York City for three years. “I bought the whole line,” Mason says.
Not soon after, Roddick won the Championship at the U.S. Open and, soon, Babolat would become one of the top tennis brands in the world. When that happened, “Even the biggest stores couldn’t carry the line in New York City,” Mason says. “Everyone came to me, and our clientele grew even bigger.”
For 41 years, Mason has pursued the same strategy of identifying brands overseas and arranging for his store to be the first to carry them in the U.S. Mason's Tennis sold brands like Asics and Monreal before most fans knew they even made products for tennis.
Ahead of the 2016 U.S. Open, Mason says he is preparing for an influx of customers from around the world, including Brazil, Turkey, Dubai, Mexico and Pakistan. “We turn into the United Nations of tennis,” says the 68-year-old proprietor whose shop has survived in a volatile retail environment for more than four decades.
Contemplating the major changes over his long career, Mason says none have been more dramatic than the advent of the internet and the creation of a new, fiercely competitive retail environment. Once as common as crosscourt winners, Manhattan tennis boutiques have dwindled in number in the age of cheap internet prices and free two-day delivery. While technology wiped out much of the local brick-and-mortar competition, Mason knows he and his staff will always be able to provide something to customers that websites cannot.
“If you’re buying on the internet, you don’t have guidance,” he says. “That’s a big advantage we have. We have customers who will complain about tennis elbow, and we can send them to the right doctors. We don’t stop at selling a product, we get involved with the entire tennis experience.”
Though he no longer works the sales floor as he once did, Mason still sets the broad strategy for Mason's Tennis. The shop embraces some aspects of the digital world. It has a big presence on Google and active social media accounts that banter about news in the tennis world and the world of Mason’s Tennis. But the essence of the store remains the personal interaction between his staff and their clients, and that synergy is one reason Mason remains optimistic for brick and mortar stores.
“You can make it if you have a great niche, but you have to put your heart and soul into it. You have to know your market better than the competition does and you have to know your competitors and their weaknesses,” says Mason, who still plays doubles tennis once or twice a week. “In a lot of ways, it’s like playing tennis. You have to find a way to exploit your opponent’s weakness.”
Mason grew up in Plainfield in northern New Jersey and originally enrolled at Syracuse University. He stayed there for three semesters before transferring to Rider, attracted to several features that still draw students to the University. “Syracuse was too big of a school, and I realized I function much better in smaller classes,” he says. “I knew I liked business. Rider had a wonderful reputation for its business school.”
After graduating with a degree in finance, Mason considered pursuing graduate studies in psychology before realizing his passion lay elsewhere. He had always loved tennis and played on his fraternity Zeta Beta Tau’s team, winning the championship each year, he says.
Around that time, a boom in professional tennis was coming into place in the U.S. Professional players were allowed to compete in the Grand Slam tournaments for the first time in 1968. Afterward, television networks began broadcasting the tournaments, another first. Those moves increased the sport’s competition and exposure.
“Tennis was becoming a big business,” Mason says. “Everyone had to watch tennis and the sport’s great American players. All the celebrities played tennis.”
Later, once he opened a shop of his own, Mason would rub shoulders with several celebrities. He says he even competed with a few on the court, including Robert Duvall. But his entrance into the world of tennis retail began when, in 1972, he spied an ad for a job at Feron’s, one of many tennis shops then located in New York City.
He worked at Feron's for three years, learning firsthand the fundamentals of customer service. “Being a good boutique retailer requires you to be very hands on and work the floor,” Mason says. “You have to know every customer and what they want.”
With those lessons, Mason quit Feron’s and decided to open his own shop. “In 1975, I opened up a store with $25,000 on 7th Avenue between 57th and 58th streets," he says. "I was working 14 hour days and paying $1,000 a month in rent. Back in the early ’70s, you could get deals like that. I had little inventory, but the first year we made a profit. I put it all back into the business.”
Mason’s, which moved to its current location near Madison Avenue in 1999, sells racquets, shoes and clothing, but the key to the shop’s early success was identifying and embracing fashion trends. In the 1970s, sportswear brands like Ellesse, Tacchini and Fila, which was founded in Italy, became popular streetwear in the U.S.
“I was one of the first in America to jump on that,” Mason says. “We got a reputation for having an incredible fashion sense. My timing was good. The store wasn’t even in a retail area but I made it into a destination.”
Soon, he was catering to a much bigger audience than strictly tennis players, including celebrities like New York Knick All-Star Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and New York Yankee legend Mickey Mantle, who at the time was often spotted at his namesake restaurant nearby on Central Park South. “Mickey would buy six or eight tracksuits at a time,” Mason says. “He would wear them to the baseball card shows to sign autographs, where he was making most of his money.”
While success may have tempted others to expand, Mason was steadfast in staying small, a decision he praises. “I always wanted to stay as one store that I could make great and have full control over and operate with the best staff,” he says. “Two stores means twice as many headaches. For boutique retailing, smaller is better.” Pointing to the bankruptcy of retail giant Sports Authority, Mason says, “We can change direction faster than big box stores.”
One thing that rarely changes at Mason's Tennis is its staff. Its core staff of four averages 10 years of experience each at the shop. “We provide a personal touch and an experience that people come back for,” Mason says. “Our philosophy is that we want those strong relationships with customers, and we do everything possible to make them happy.”
Mason’s daughter, Dana, has worked at the store for 12 years, and he hopes when he retires that she’ll take over the business — not that retirement is on his radar. “I think if you love what you do, retirement is probably not in the cards,” he says. “I’ll probably work fewer hours in the coming years, but the beauty of having your own business is that you can work as much as you want.”