About Us
Most workday evenings, there's a pallet or so of boxes waiting at our warehouse door destined for a Primary or Secondary School somewhere in the UK.
The box contains rackets, balls, net systems and coaching aids. If it's an Early Years or Inclusive pack, it might contain more specialised kit; we design equipment to enable the teaching of tennis to the very young, and to learners who have difficulties with movement, sight or hearing, too.
We were chosen as the Tennis Foundation's provider of equipment to their massively successful school project in 2008, and we're hugely proud of its success in introducing teachers to coaching tennis in a school environment, and donating equipment to schools across the UK to allow the coaching to happen. We see the Foundation course tutors in action, and they're awesome. Over 20,000 schools have now received free tennis coaching packs.
Those are far from the only boxes going out. We supply to sports coaches, clubs and families across the UK, and across the world. Our coaching equipment is specialist, grass-roots, hard-working, designed to do the job. Our range of coaching aids is innovative, and if it's here, you can be sure it will do the job it's supposed to do.
Who are we?
We developed our first innovative tennis coaching equipment in Japan, where founding partner Jeff was Director of Coaching at an elite tennis academy.*
We exhibited our colour-coded graded-stage strung Mini Tennis rackets, high-density foam ball and 'transition' low-compression tennis ball for a 3/4 court as 'Step Tennis' in London in 1990. Strung? Back then, Mini Tennis was played with plastic rackets. Over the next couple of years, we added the first felt-covered Mini Tennis ball, the world-wide patented portable net system we called the Zsignet, and coaching aids such as our Throw Down Lines and Spots. Returning to the UK, Jeff ran 'Tools of the Trade' courses for the BTCA to introduce coaches to this new equipment, and Zsig was established.
We manufacture our expanded range of Zsignets (portable sports nets systems) ourselves, in the UK. This way we make sure materials and quality are the best they can be, and the re-design and development process is ongoing.
Our range of balls for tennis coaching is the most comprehensive around. (There are a lot, so get in touch if you'd like help in deciding which will work for you.) Our felt Mini Tennis balls are all tested and approved by the International Tennis Federation, and we supply Mini Tennis balls internationally for the ITF, too.
Encouraging hand-eye coordination in the under fives with age-appropriate specialised equipment has been a feature of Zsig since the beginning, and our Kickstart range continues to expand.
We're fans of great design and creative ideas, so we also bring you our finds - products which may (or may not) have a life outside coaching but have both in spades.
Thanks for visiting us, and we hope you enjoy your stay!
Team Zsig
* Players included Kimiko Date, who travelled with Jeff to her first Grand Slams, Ko Iwamoto, now Japan's Junior Davis Cup captain, and Natsuo Yamanaka, who is now producing top Japanese players and has been instrumental in the success of Kei Nishikori.