This week on The Marketing Factor, I talked with Amanda Greeley, founder of Spence, a racket sports brand that's been seven years in the making and is one of the more interesting brand-building stories happening right now. Amanda's been in the creative and brand space for over a decade, with stints at Serena & Lily, and two previous brands of her own before Spence.
Her work sits at the intersection of sport, culture, and identity, and the conversation went deep on DTC fundraising, brand positioning, and what it actually takes to build something with staying power when the easy money is gone.
You can catch the episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple.
Why Racket Sports Are Wide Open - Spence's Amanda Greeley on Brand Building & Designing for Culture
Early on, investors told Amanda the tennis market wasn't big enough. Her response: what was the TAM for yoga when Lululemon launched in 1998? Best estimates put it around 15 million Americans. Before Nike, recreational running was fringe behavior. The brands that built those categories didn't serve an existing market, they expanded one.
If you're building something with real cultural energy behind it, category size at launch is often the least predictive metric.
The racket sports space has been split between legacy performance brands and heritage aesthetics that stopped feeling current decades ago. Nobody's done what surf and skate figured out, that counterculture creative direction, rawness, and real people build more durable loyalty than aspirational tropes. That gap is what Spence is going after.
What is the future of brands in the tennis space?
The brands that win in sport and lifestyle aren't showing you who plays the sport. They're showing you who you could be.
Amanda was candid about this. A lot of people want to start a brand. Very few want to do the actual work of running one. The version of DTC that made it look glamorous, big valuations, fast growth, VC enthusiasm for consumer, is over. What's left is execution, staying power, and a much more honest relationship between brand and capital.
If you can build something in this climate, it's more likely to actually last. That's the trade.
For years, Amanda ran Spence as founder, operator, and creative director simultaneously. She was clear-eyed about the cost of that, when you're underwater keeping the train running, you can't do the thing you're actually best at. Finding the right operating partner, even recently, changed what she was able to see and do.
Most creative founders wait too long to get this right. The business that runs you isn't the business you imagined.