A deal at a Swedish auction site. Two racket collecting tennis geeks living within a reasonable distance from each other. Instead of sending the item, their conversation went into agreeing they should meet on a gloomy winter Monday late 2020. Coffee was consumed, tennis rackets were being viewed and discussed, and at the end they both said it would be great to have a racket brand of their own.
Mikael and Teo, both environmentalists, went digging deep into the historic craftmanship of old wooden tennis rackets, and by then they even didn’t know how this was about to be realised. However, they quickly agreed on some crucial points for the project. This should be a modern racket, and also a sustainable piece to as far extent they could take it.
A simple workshop was setup and the prototyping begun hands on. We both had moderate knowledge on how to even make a tennis racket, neither did we have any wood working experience other than ordinary home carpenting. A lot of different materials was up for discussion but wood was the material closest to our hearts. Could there be a chance we could realise a modern wood racket?
Intense messaging and sending pictures, making sketches and trying our methods at the workshop went on. And already by our 3rd time meeting our first prototype came about. That was a huge moment of goosebumps. Of course it looked like shit. But we had made a tennisracket. The sense of accomplishment was immense.
Since our first meeting in 2020, to be honest, this project has been grinded by us 24/7, and now we can present a playable gorgeous looking sustainable tennis racket to the masses.
The Company DL Racket Makers (Dahnberg Ludvigsson AB) saw the light of day in 2021 together with a run of prototypes, each providing their own significant information to bring us forward towards the epok #1. But even though we now are able to present it, we’re not done yet by far. A Racket Makers job is never done.
The EPOK name for our racket became as natural as its components. The core of wood that signals history and craftmanship, beyond the tech talk and components harmful to the environment, it comes down to this. The very essence of a tennis racket. It is time for sports equipment to become what it was meant to be, good fun and at the same time cooperating with our planet earth. There are not many left for us to come by and we need to start making it reasonable to go on in some way. Innovate solutions and create the society we want to participate in.
This is a new EPOK. The racket that let You keep playing tennis with a cleaner and clearer conscience.
The global environment is an issue to us all. Our creed is to make tennis as sustainable as possible.
