PDHSports
How we grew PDHSports' peak revenue by 59% through doubling down on Padel.
- +59% Peak revenue YoY
- +296% Padel category revenue YoY
- 20+ Marketing Efficiency Ratio held while scaling
Strategy overview
PDHSports are one of the UK’s leading online racket sports specialists. They offer squash, padel, tennis, badminton, racketball, pickleball and fitness equipment at the best prices.
Padel was the fastest growing racket sport in the UK heading into peak 2025, and PDH’s hero category. Its growth brought a specific challenge. A wave of first time players and racket sport transitioners were entering the category through lower priced, entry level rackets. These carried lower margins and lower average order values than PDH’s established lines.
We were not tasked with just running peak ads. We were tasked with growing peak revenue and padel revenue while holding efficiency and protecting margin. We also needed to avoid the stock and fulfilment bottlenecks that had forced ad pauses during peak 2024. That meant influencing PDH’s commercial and supply chain decisions months in advance, alongside the paid media and on-site work.
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The brief
The padel category already had demand, and PDHSports had built up it's authority over time, so the job was never about creating interest from scratch. It was about turning a fast rising market into profitable revenue at peak, keeping stock available and conversion strong, and doing all of that without letting efficiency slip as we put more money behind the accounts.
Key objectives
- Grow overall peak revenue by 35% YoY
- Double padel category revenue
- Maintaing marketing effciency as spend scales
- Improve stock forecasting and sell-through rates
Project highlights
Before we changed anything in the accounts, we researched what was driving padel’s growth. The audience data pointed to a new group of buyers. First time players and racket sport transitioners, skewing male, aged 25 to 60, affluent and health conscious, concentrated in the South East and spreading nationally as more courts opened. We needed to reach this group and help them get started, presenting the products they needed rather than assuming knowledge of the sport.
We knew from peak 2024 that the right stock, across the right brands and price points, would decide success. We analysed padel sales by price point and found the vast majority of volume sat in entry level products bought by first time players. We set specific racket objectives by price band, then planned purchasing with PDH’s buying team in spring 2025 to match forecast demand.
We integrated margin data into Google bid strategies through conversions with basket data, so the account optimised toward higher margin items. We structured campaigns by product type and experience level, from beginner to advanced, to ring fence budgets where the algorithm might otherwise chase volume at the expense of margin.
Entry level buyers were pulling AOV down, so we reviewed creative, on-site merchandising and basket functionality. Our marketing, design and development teams built a racket selector quiz across product detail pages, replicating PDH’s in-store showroom experience so customers could find the right racket for their needs. We added add to basket cross-sell functionality to promote relevant products like bags, balls and grips alongside rackets. Launched in July, these changes helped return AOV to strong levels by November.
To feed demand capture through Google, we launched PDH on Meta Ads following an early 2025 trial, scaling reach toward peak. Padel, squash and indoor shoe campaigns ran alongside platform native UGC and partnership creative, including work with brand ambassador and padel influencer Harry McKenna. This built demand ahead of time that we could capture during peak trading.
Order volumes during peak had previously outpaced PDH’s small team, forcing ad pauses. We forecast demand, planned purchasing well in advance and aligned campaign pacing with the ops team’s capacity, so growth did not outrun PDH’s ability to fulfil it.
Why this worked
A Shopify Growth team laser focused on delivering against their clients' objectives.
The results came from planning the whole campaign around the audience and the commercial reality, not just the ad accounts.
We influenced what PDH bought and how it was priced months before peak, launched Meta and invested in partnerships early to build demand, and rebuilt the on-site experience so a newer, less experienced audience could find the right product with confidence.
When peak arrived, the demand and the stock were already in place, and the campaign captured it efficiently. That combination generated hundreds of thousands of pounds in additional revenue for PDH Sports.
