WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL: A Rockville-based manufacturer of pickleball and table tennis equipment will more than triple its footprint when it expands into a new headquarters over the course of the next year.
Joola has inked a lease for 35,000 square feet at 915 MeetingSt., in North Bethesda’s Pike & Rose mixed-use development. The company currently operates out of 10,000 square feet at 2101 Gaither Road In Rockville. It is expected to open a portion of the new office by year’s end, and complete the move by the first quarter of 2025.
Richard Lee, CEO of Joola, told me the company’s “long-term presence” at Pike & Rose, owned by Federal Realty Investment Trust (NYSE: FRT), will also include Joola’s first pickleball retail location, where it’ll sell paddles, apparel, shoes and other accessories.
“[The business] has been growing really fast so that’s where we see the need for additional space,” Lee said. “Our headcount is growing at an extremely fast pace right now so we definitely need to plan for the future of where we’re going.”
Lee said he plans to have about 110 employees working out of Pike & Rose on a four-times-per-week hybrid basis upon final move-in, up from the 40 people who currently work for the company locally. Joola today employs about 200 globally across offices in the U.S., Brazil, China and Germany.
Proximity to the North Bethesda Metro station and a moreurban-like setting with retail and entertainment amenities will suit the company and its workforce better than that of its more suburban headquarters in Rockville, Lee said. He said Montgomery County and the state of Maryland offered various incentives to keep Joola within its borders as Lee said he shopped around the country for other deals during the company’s expansion hunt. He declined to provide a specific dollar amount, but said Joola would receive support for job creation and building out the new space.
“The work-life balance is even better for everyone,” Lee said on relocating to North Bethesda. “It’s a good central location for us.”
Joola, founded in 1952 with a focus on table tennis, caught on to the pickleball frenzy in 2022. Its history in a racket-sport, Lee said, gave the company a competitive advantage as it jumped into the immensely popular activity.
“[When I] found pickleball and when I looked at the equipment, I was like ‘Hey, we can from our experience as a manufacturer, we could do an even better paddle,’ so we quickly developed some new stuff and jumped into the market,” Lee said. “The business has been growing extremely fast.”
Joola’s first retail location will be located at 915 Meetingbetween Bouboulina, a new restaurant concept from the founders of Cava Group Inc., and a One Medical facility. The retail space, which fills out 915 Meeting’s retail footprint, will also offer a pickleball studio, where customers can get a feel for a new paddle and other accessories.
The 276,000-square-foot office building is about 80% leased to date and touts Choice Hotels International Inc. and Sodexo among its tenants, the latter of which recently received public money for the second time in a decade to stay put in Montgomery County.
