Michael Manglardi, co-founder and VP of Operations at Diadem Sports, shares insights into the company’s evolution and focus on the booming pickleball market. Diadem Sports takes pride in its innovative paddle designs and emphasizes its “live to play” philosophy.
Diadem’s mission is to grow pickleball globally by supporting everyday players, juniors, and grassroots efforts. Learn about Diadem’s exciting initiatives, like their traveling yellow truck and quarter-million pickleball giveaway, all aimed at introducing more people to the sport.
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting, this episode dives deep into the future of pickleball and what makes Diadem Sports stand out in a crowded market. With your host Rico Figliolini
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – All About Diadem Sports
00:01:17 – The Rise of Pickleball: From Tennis Roots to Booming Sport
00:03:39 – Pickleball’s Booming Industry and Diadem Sports’ Innovative Approach
00:05:57 – Hush Paddle a Quieter Pickleball Experience
00:09:31 – The Evolution of Pickleball Equipment
00:13:21 – Embracing the Playful Spirit of Pickleball
00:17:20 – Spreading Pickleball Joy with a Yellow Truck
00:20:58 – Pickleball’s Rapid Growth and Youth Development
00:26:09 – The Rise of Competitive Pickleball
00:28:18 – The Challenges of Rapid Growth
00:34:09 – Exploring the World of Pickleball Sports
Podcast Transcript
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Pickleball Grit and publisher of Atlanta Pickleball Magazine. Appreciate you all being with us. This is going to be a great podcast. We’re going to be discussing pickleball, and pickleball is always a great subject, right? But we’re going to be talking about a special business out there, Diadem Sports. So we have a great guest here with us, Michael Manglardi, who’s the co-founder and VP of operations of the company. Hey, Michael, how are you?
00:00:27 – Michael Manglardi
Rico, I’m good. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here and as always, excited to talk pickleball.
00:00:34 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. Good. I appreciate you being out here with us, although this is remote. So we’re in Atlanta and you all are in South Florida, right?
00:00:42 – Michael Manglardi
We are. We’re in South Florida, where it happens to be pouring rain right now. Which is fine because we have an indoor pickleball complex. Rain is never a bad thing here in Diadem land.
00:00:55 – Rico Figliolini
You built one of the first indoor pickleball courts in South Florida, I think, right?
00:01:01 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, we were the first in South Florida to have an indoor facility. It was through a partnership with Bowery College. So yeah, we have a nine-court indoor facility right down the road that’s teaching people how to play and having a lot of laughs along the way.
00:01:17 – Rico Figliolini
Cool. Well, Pickleball is, you know, some people think of it as an old sport. I mean, but it’s obviously not. The demographics have changed swiftly over the last three or four years. And now with PPA and all these other tournaments coming out and regional tournaments and city tournaments, there’s a lot going on. But let’s find out a little bit more about Diadem Sports, the brand that you’re partners in, co-founder, and it was, what, 2015? But things have changed. So tell us a bit about what’s going on there and what Diadem Sports is.
00:01:48 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, absolutely. So we are a performance sports brand. We started in the tennis business back in 2015, and that was where our roots were, and that was how really the infrastructure got started. And for the first several years, we developed this lineup of tennis products that performed really well, especially at the competitive level, like college players and a lot of juniors were using our equipment. And we were able to expand, not just in the products that we were offering, going from strings into rackets, into balls and bags, but also in the areas that we were servicing, making a small Florida-based company eventually grow into something that was national and then global. But then in 2020, the world kind of got turned upside down for everybody and Diadem is included in that. And so during that time, we started to really look more into pickleball. And fast forward to 2024, and we’ve rolled out a line of pickleball products, including paddles and bags and balls, as well as footwear. And we really feel like we’re just getting started with a lot more to look forward to.
00:03:03 – Rico Figliolini
You know, it’s funny. Covid, I mean Covid is not funny, but Covid was a point where everyone had to keep six feet away right? Tennis court was probably one of the better places to do that on. It’s a way bigger court but pickleball, I mean. I play tennis a lot, I play a little bit of pickleball. I’m gearing up to play more. But essentially, pickleball has become such a younger person’s sport than the way it originally started. And part of that, I think, is because they’re short games, right? 20-minute games. They’re fast games. They’re closer court. I mean, my friends could be eating chicken and having beer like literally 10, 15 feet away from me while we’re playing at some of these facilities where they’re doing social and pickle and stuff like that. So it’s an interesting sport that way. But lots of companies have been coming into this booming industry. Shopify for $24.99 a month has made it so easy for everyone to come in, slap their name on a paddle and say, I got a paddle we can sell here. But Diadem sports is not like that, right? You all have innovation technology that you’re developing yourself that are informing the products that you’re creating. So tell us a little bit about that innovation, about that technology.
00:04:28 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, and we’ve always been proud of the innovation and the uniqueness of many of our products. What’s kind of cool about pickleball is that accessibility, not just as a player, but also for brands. And there’s a lot of brands for customers to choose from. And that’s great. You know, it’s going to make the industry stronger overall, and it’s going to ultimately give consumers options to pick from. But when we look at the product side of the business, we’ve always looked at how we can be just a little bit different or offer something that maybe doesn’t exist in the market. And that goes back to some of our earliest products like the Icon V1 and the Warrior V1 back in 2021. Those were two paddles that were very different from what the market had seen. And so we use that as the foundation of development. We give people a reason to want to try whatever product it is we’re developing. And then our plan is to retain our customers through great customer service and a brand that they want to be a part of and obviously an enjoyable experience from start to finish.
00:05:36 – Rico Figliolini
One of the products that you all developed also is the Hush Paddle. It was kind of interesting being in Atlanta and in small communities and stuff. I always hear people talking about the sound of those paddles. Some people just can’t get over it. But so tell us a little bit about that Hush paddle and how it addresses that noise issue.
00:05:59 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, so the Hush is one of our newest paddles that we’ve launched. And it’s definitely one that we’ve been excited about because it addresses a core issue in the sport. When you boil it all down, pickleball really has two major issues in the sport that are limiting even more explosive growth than it’s already had. One of them is the number of courts and the second is the sound that the sport makes. And it’s beautiful that you can drop a pickleball court in the middle of a neighborhood, but you can ask the neighbors, and they’re not so happy about the dropping of pickleball courts everywhere. So what we did with the Hush was we tried to make a paddle that still performed like a high-end paddle, but was able to play quieter and more noise-friendly for those communities that were sensitive to the sound. And so that was a fun one for us because it gave us the opportunity to experiment with some different materials that really hadn’t been used in paddles before, like the ETP face and some of the foams that are incorporated into that paddle. But ultimately, what you end up with is a paddle that’s 40% quieter than a traditional pickleball paddle, but still plays really, really well. And it’s going to be powerful and explosive and arm-friendly because you don’t have the same harsh vibrations that a traditional paddle would give you.
00:07:27 – Rico Figliolini
Right. So going on to that, there’s this honeycomb paddles right as well I guess. Tell us do you all do the same honeycomb type interiors to those paddles?
00:07:41 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah so, the core of most of our paddles is made up of honeycomb, and that’s what has become the standard for a lot of, really all pickleball paddles in recent times. Of course, you have wood and you have other materials that have been used in the past, but your traditional high-performance paddle is going to have some element of honeycomb paired with carbon fiber. And then brands like ours and others have started to introduce the use of foam injections, foam cores to help minimize vibrations. But a lot of our early paddle development stemmed from the tennis infrastructure that we had already built. So we were already pretty sophisticated in our carbon fiber molding processes and our injection processes because it was things that we were doing in the tennis business as far back as 2018. And so when we saw the opportunity to get more involved in pickleball, we thought we would take some of the best technologies that we had on the tennis side and see how we could introduce that into a paddle. And the end result was a number of paddles that have played really well for people over a number of years and have given us a starting point for future developments.
00:08:57 – Rico Figliolini
So being that you all were in tennis too, strings, right? There’s straight strings, there’s wavy strings, there’s different texture strings to make either, to be able to play differently, soft, hard, to be able to get the ground stroke stronger, I guess. So grit’s been introduced, right, at some point to pickleball over time. I’m assuming you experiment with that as well and some of your paddles do that too. I mean, it’s changed so much over the last, just the last two years, I think, in the industry.
00:09:30 – Michael Manglardi
It has. Yeah, it definitely has. You go back to 2020, 2021, and you were seeing, you know, paint surfaces and grit got very popular. And then from there, you moved into what the industry has called etched carbon fiber, which is that like raw carbon fiber that’s very, very popular. And then more recently, you’ve had a couple of different new developments, one that we’ve spearheaded and taken the lead on, which is our 18K technology, which introduces a triaxial weave. So basically all of the directions of the carbon fiber are woven at multiple angles so that you’re going to generate spin no matter where the contact point is. So if you’re hitting an unconventional shot, or basically you got caught out of place and you’re having to hit a recovery shot, you’re not going to compromise all the spin that you might have to with a more traditional paddle phase so we definitely prioritize coming up with things like the 18k. And when we launched the warrior the thickness of the warrior was something that really changed the sport as far as how paddles were made. It’s fun for us because we’re, we’re equipment geeks over that, but it also helps, helps give people options. It helps shape the industry, which is something we want to be a part of and continues to push the sport forward, which is ultimately our number one goal.
00:10:58 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. Well, I think that’s important, especially when you have so many companies trying to enter this space to sell things that aren’t made from scratch. They’re basically taking all the people’s paddles and slapping their names on it because there’s a lot of those companies. But what are the other pieces of equipment too? I mean, you all want to do head to toe, it seems. You’re putting out a special shoe footwear that works too. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that and that brand name. yeah so
00:11:27 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, so we are Diadem Sports. We’re not Diadem tennis or Diadem pickleball and the reason for that is we set out to be a sports company. We wanted to be able to be much more than just a string company or a racket company or in the case of pickleball a paddle company and an opportunity that we saw to do that was through the footwear business. And so we spent about a year and a half developing our first court shoe that we launched in January of this year. So it’s been out for about nine months now. But that was a huge step for the brand because shoes are a different animal when it comes to product development and the resources that you need to successfully make a shoe. But then it also gave us an opportunity to reach customers and players and say, hey, maybe you don’t want to use a Diadem paddle right now, and that’s okay. But have you tried the Diadem pickleball shoe have you tried the Diadem pickleball and just really becoming a 360 brand rather than just having products.
00:12:33 – Rico Figliolini
In the patent space that makes sense. You all design everything in the usa right? Everything’s usa designed but you’re sourcing from different places also, I would imagine.
00:12:45 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, exactly. So we have our headquarters here in South Florida, and that’s where our design team sits, and that’s where a lot of the product development takes place. And then we have our team in Asia that works with all of our manufacturing partners to make sure that quality control standards are met and that we’re staying cutting edge with the technology we’re putting out.
00:13:07 – Rico Figliolini
Cool. So, I mean, to move away a little bit from the technology part and product, the company likes to talk about ‘Live to Play’, this philosophy there. You don’t pay pro players to use your product. You’re looking at actually a younger generation moving up into the sport. So tell us a little bit, what does that mean, ‘Live to Play’? What type of philosophy is that and where are you all going with that?
00:13:38 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, and I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know, but pickleball is uniquely beautiful because of how accessible and how fun it is for people and we recognize that it’s a sport that young, old, athletic, non-athletic, anybody can play and really if they wanted to anybody could be decent at. You know if you put in enough hours to train. And so this ‘Live to Play’ philosophy that we really leaned into and are promoting as the focal point of Diadem has to do with connecting players to whatever it is their passion might be. I’m an athlete. A lot of the people in the company are athletes. And to us, the word play equates to win. The word play equates to compete. It equates to like having that edge and really being like a greedy competitor. But to a lot of people, that’s not what play means. Play means fun or it means laughter or it means getting in better shape or dealing with stress through sport. And so our goal as a brand is to be able to connect people to whatever that playfulness is to them and support them on their journey. And that starts with, of course, the equipment, paddles, shoes, ball, but it also moves into some of the other initiatives we have like facilities and teaching people how to play and introducing the sport to somebody new. Because our goal is to grow pickleball and if we can grow pickleball it’s going to make sure that Diadem is in good hands. It’s going to make sure that our facilities are in good hands and everybody’s going to rise as the sport grows.
00:15:18 – Rico Figliolini
I mean I can see the fun in it. I mean, in what you do, Michael, because I can see the joy over there. It is a terrifically different sport than tennis. It is a unique sport in and of itself. And like you said, anyone young or old can play. And anyone can, if they put enough hours, can actually compete to a degree in various. I mean, there’s tournaments all over this country. There’s, besides the PPA Tour and some of these other larger tours, which by the way, I mean, some of them, one of them was here in Peachtree Corners in Atlanta, Georgia, just this past week or two at Lifetime, which is a big company throughout the country. They have, they’re known mainly for their tennis, although they just converted quite a few tennis courts into pickleball courts at this facility. They have now 24, I think 14 indoor and the rest outdoor. So there are companies moving, not just franchises, but there are companies that have been having a tennis of snap moving towards and pickleball courts as well. There’s just a lot of movement out there, and for Diadem to want to become a leader in this industry makes sense to be able to be out there. So I know that you all are doing some fun things too. You’ve got some yellow truck traveling all over Florida, it sounds like, throwing pickleballs out the window at people. Tell us a little bit about that.
00:16:50 – Michael Manglardi
If you’re going to get hit by a drive-by ambush, it might as well be a pickleball, right? So going in line with that live-to-play philosophy of trying to figure out ways to activate communities rather than just service a core small demographic of players. We found this big yellow pickleball truck. I mean, that’s what it is. It’s a box truck that we wrapped in bright yellow and we loaded up with gear. And basically what we do is we travel around South Florida and we do demo days. We do activations. We’ll do pop-up courts. We’ve done some pop-ups in parking lots of big retailers and at the Florida Panthers pickleball night. And so we’re using that as a way to service our existing partners and customers and making sure that they’re really able to connect with the Diadem brand. But it’s also just a great way to introduce people to the sport. If you see the yellow truck driving during off hours, they may be throwing a pickleball at you as well. So you never really know what you’re going to get, but it is great visibility and it’s an awesome driving billboard for us. So that’s been a fun wrinkle to the local South Florida marketing that we’ve had this year.
00:18:02 – Rico Figliolini
That would be great to end up throwing one out and then someone actually pulls out a paddle and smacks it back.
00:18:09 – Michael Manglardi
In South Florida, I wouldn’t be surprised. Everybody down here is a pickleball player, which is just so cool to see. And we are certainly appreciative of the industry that we are in, but also just the market that we’re in. South Florida is just phenomenal for tennis and pickleball.
00:18:26 – Rico Figliolini
And you all are doing an initiative of, was it 250,000 free bowl campaign or something? 250,000 pickleballs just going out there. So tell us a bit about that because I can’t even imagine what that would look like.
00:18:39 – Michael Manglardi
So when we made the commitment to live to play and we told the story of what we are trying to do and connecting players with their passion and empowering people to play more you know that in itself is a nice story but there needs to be you know action that follows that. And we believe that we needed to practice what we preach so that was how we spun off a couple of different verticals like the facility that we have, the big yellow truck, and then initiatives like our quarter million pickleball giveaway. So we do that through a number of different activations. One is throwing them out of our truck at people as they walk by. But then the other is sponsoring tournaments around the country, working with facilities and making sure that they have a high quality ball that they and their members can use. And then we started this campaign earlier this year called Free Ball Friday. And that’s a really fun one for us because every random Friday, it might be every four weeks, every six weeks, every 12 weeks, but one random Friday, we’ll go on social media and we’ll say, it’s Freeball Friday. Here’s what you got to do. And if you do it, we’ll send you a free three pack of balls. And that’s been a fun way to really reach the everyday player because maybe they aren’t tournament champion or even club champion. Maybe they just have an Instagram page and a pickleball passion, and we’re still able to reach them and help build that pickleball relationship with them.
00:20:09 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. We were talking just before the podcast about the fact that you all don’t, you know, you don’t pay pro players to play because you’re really looking at the younger generation coming up. And we were talking about juniors playing and how you guys support them with the dynasty team and what that means about college. A lot of colleges here in Atlanta, I’ve noticed several colleges now have pickleball teams that they’re playing either intramural or within a system. And there’s club sports at some of the high schools with pickleball. It’s not quite accepted yet. And it’s a high school team but it may be a club team so you know. How is that working for you the dynasty team and working through that through those levels of juniors junior play and stuff?
00:20:56 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah. What’s really exciting to me is that pickleball has grown so much in the last five years. And I believe that it’s still just scratching the surface of its potential. There’s still so much growth to be had. When you just look at the number of facilities that are opening up across the country, that alone shows you the investment capital and just the demand for the sport. Then you start looking at the international level of pickleball and some of the things that are happening in Europe and Asia. And then, like you said, you look at the junior market and all of these kids that are learning pickleball at a really young age that are just, they’re going to be phenomenal. A lot of them already are phenomenal, but by the time they’re 17, 18, 19, 20, they’re going to be some of the best players in the world. And so that’s very cool for the sport to see such a young group having the opportunity that they have. Our philosophy really isn’t anything that’s against the pros. That’s not why we don’t pay pros. But we have limited resources, just like every brand and every budget has its constraints. We believe if we’re going to spend money growing the game and supporting athletes, we want to support the everyday athletes, starting with the juniors, moving into the collegiate club level of pickleball and even like the high school club level of pickleball, and then going into the everyday players. You know I think there’s a lot of serious tournament level players but there’s you know way more people that are just going to the park and playing pickleball with their group of friends who don’t necessarily know what it’s like to compete at an ultra high level. So we want to empower the young players to build out that dynasty team just like we’ve done with tennis and really just speak to the everyday player. You know, the guys that are going out there just to have a fun time and bring somebody new and grow the sport.
00:22:53 – Rico Figliolini
You guys have a partnership also with the local college, Broward College, in the indoor pickleball complex. I mean, is that the beginning of doing it like with other places as well?
00:23:05 – Michael Manglardi
We would love to. We put together a really great partnership with Broward College. I mean, their team was really creative and great to work with on this initiative. Basically, we took their whole auditorium where they had a couple of basketball courts and a performing arts stage. But it really wasn’t being utilized a whole lot. And we worked with them to demo the basketball courts, put nine indoor, beautiful, championship-level pickleball courts in, and introduced a whole lot of new players to the sport. As of a couple weeks ago, we had introduced 1,250, because we celebrated it, 1,250 new players that learned to play pickleball at the DPC. And that was just in our first 13 months of being open. So that’s one of the things that gets me really fired up because it’s showing how many new people are still out there that haven’t seen how great this sport can be. But to go back to your question, yeah, we would love to open facilities around the country that work, that are affordable and accessible for players. And if they’re not Diadem facilities, that’s fine, too. We want to help support anybody that’s trying to open a facility because all of us working together are trying to grow the sport.
00:24:24 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, it makes sense. There is so much going on out there. I mean, between the – I forget how many franchise companies there are, building, wanting to build courts, you know, a dozen courts here, a dozen courts there, and then the larger ones that want to do bigger facilities. Even the city of Peachtree Corners here in Atlanta, a small city north of Atlanta. It’s 40-odd thousand people. They were thinking of developing their own, I think, 25-court facility until Lifetime, which is also in the city, decided they were going to put 24 together themselves. So things are moving fast. You have companies like Painted Pickle, like Pickle and Social. There’s quite a few places open. ITA here in Atlanta, you know, providing like open play. And then you got the county parks and the city parks doing their stuff. So there’s lots out here. People are just even that PPA tour that was here a few weeks ago. Yeah, they had, like you said, they have a small amount of pros playing but they had a thousand other people going through the back side of it that they paid their fee to play in competition to win a little medal or something because you know it’s fun doing it and anyone can do this and you know you can be at a certain level. It doesn’t matter. So, yeah, there are quite a few people getting into it, it seems.
00:25:48 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah. People thrive off of, I think, that sense of competitiveness. And like you said, they’re paying their fees and they’re traveling just to get a little bit of a medal or, you know, a plaque. But people naturally want to be competitive and see where they match up. Like, hey, how good am I when you take me out of the one park that I play at every week? So it’s been cool to see the demand for the amateur level at these pro events. And just how many people travel and set up for a weekend to not just watch the pros, but also to play themselves. And that’s going to be a part of the sport that I’m sure will continue to develop with all of the publicity that they’re getting and the investment dollars. And I’m excited to see how that side of the sport really plays out over the next couple of years.
00:26:42 – Rico Figliolini
I mean, we just did an article about Weekend Getaway, and we talked about different places within a driving distance of Atlanta that have dedicated pickleball courts. You could go there, enjoy yourself, and also play pickleball. But there’s also ships in the rural Caribbean, some of these other ships have dedicated courts. I mean, it’s just like, you could play pickleball anywhere in the world. It’s so fun.
00:27:03 – Michael Manglardi
It’s so fun. It’s so fun. And what’s really fascinating to me with all of these facilities is that they’re all very different. I mean, like you look at these thousands of facilities opening up around the country. Some of them have, you know, massive restaurants and bars. Some of them have no restaurant. They’re just pickleball. Some of them have, you know, high ceilings and championship level sizing and other ones are like kind of squeezing into warehouse space and dealing with lower ceilings. So I don’t know that anybody has the right answer yet because it’s just too new and too young to say this is definitively the right way to own and operate a pickleball facility. But it’s going to be cool to see how different markets shape up and which of the models really take off as like a mainstream model and which of them maybe become more specialty.
00:27:53 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. I know that within this area of the Southeast, I mean, there are businesses coming in that are willing to, within 51 days, they’ll have a 12-quart setup in a converted office building. Because the way commercial buildings are working today is they’re having their own issues as far as people working remote and stuff. So there’s more space to convert, apparently. And you get more players out there that are working remote that can go take a lunch break maybe and go play pickleball for an hour. Do you find, Michael, any challenges? Are you foreseeing any challenges over the next few years or any changes, any trends coming up that you foresee that you all are seeing in what you’re doing?
00:28:41 – Michael Manglardi
There’s definitely some challenges for the industry as well as for any growing business in sport. On the business side, there is a lot of competition. You recognize that. I think everybody recognizes that. And so one challenge that all brands have is how do you stand out? How do you do something that is going to set you apart from the 1,600 other brands that are out there? And so that’s why we put such an emphasis on the innovation and the tech, along with that lifestyle and that philosophy of live to play and being a brand that stands for something more than just great product. We want to also have personality and really ignite something from within the customers. When you look at the industry as a whole, I think there’s some challenges, but there’s a whole lot to be excited about. When you just look at how small Pickleball still is globally, the sky’s the limit with how big this thing can get. The two problems problems like we talked about earlier still are the number of courts available which is being addressed by all these facilities that are opening and cities and parks that are converting courts. And the sound is a real problem. You know the sound is a real problem not because of the decibel or noise pickleball creates, but because of the pitch level of the ball. And that’s a question for people in much higher positions than me when it comes to the foundation of what pickleball is. But an easy way to change the sound would be to change the ball. To change the ball, then you’re substantially changing the sport so it opens up an entirely new can of worms but yeah we’ll have to see, you know, what the governing bodies and leading associations do to address some of those challenges.
00:30:41 – Rico Figliolini
Didn’t they just change the paddle? What’s acceptable for pro level in one of the tours? I forget which tour it was. That’s another interesting question.
00:30:53 – Michael Manglardi
There were some changes. There’s some changes, yeah. And there’s a couple of different governing bodies for approval processes, depending on what tournaments you’re playing in and where you’re playing so that’s been an area in the sport that’s seen a ton of change just in the last 12 months and it has to do with what’s an acceptable limit for a pickleball paddle. And so right now the approval standards for a pickleball paddle control how powerful the ball is going to come off the paddle face and how much spin you can create and what the response or rebound time is going to be. And all of those things are limited to protect the integrity of the sport. The reason people love pickleball and have seen so much growth is because there’s not a giant learning curve or skill gap. But once you change those approval standards and you do start to open up what the limitations are of materials you can use and power you can create, well, now the pros are going to become much, much better. And the difference between a 4-2-5 and a 4-0 starts to feel like it’s just a little bit wider than it does now. So again, that’s a delicate situation because I know that there’s a lot of people that want to see the pro level of the sport accelerate. And one way to do that is to allow the best players in the world to do the best things their bodies and their equipment can do. But if you go down that path then you run the risk of the sport losing a little bit of what makes it so special. So for sure, all of that’s going to have to be addressed and it’ll probably, you know, change a few times over before it ends up settling to wherever it will be for the rest of time.
00:32:49 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s like I think it was baseball, the ball was the same for a while but only recently began changing the way they manufacture the baseball also. Yeah so I mean we’re still, it’s still a young sport, even as old as it is in the scheme of things. Did we, have we covered everything? I think that, I know I covered everything. Is there anything you want to share with us Michael that we haven’t covered?
00:33:20 – Michael Manglardi
No, we want to get more people out and more people playing pickleball. So if you found this podcast and you’re listening to it, thank you for being here. Go grab a friend. Go grab two or three friends and get some pickleballing because it’s a sport that literally is changing lives. And it’s really reimagining what active socialness can be for people. So it’s just fun to be here. And I appreciate you having me.
00:33:45 – Rico Figliolini
Sure. No, this was great. I love talking business. I love talking about the sport. Where can people find out more about Diadem Sports?
00:33:54 – Michael Manglardi
Yeah, they can head over to diatomsports.com is our website. We have all of our socials, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, @DiademSports, as well as @DiademPickleball. If you guys want to chat more, you’re more than welcome to hit me up on LinkedIn. Always love talking pickleball and business and everything else that’s happening in this crazy fun industry.
00:34:17 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. And we’ll have notes. We’ll have show notes on this. And if you’re watching this on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter, certainly leave comments and I’ll make sure Mike will get, I’m sure if you tag it, he’ll get them. If you listen to this on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple, leave a review about this podcast. We’d love to have that as well. And if there’s any other, if you see something you all want me to change up, just let me know. Otherwise, we’re doing this regularly. Check out atlantapickleballmagazine.com and you’ll find out more about what’s going on here in Atlanta and some of the feature stories, the lifestyle stories that we’re talking about and such. But Michael, I appreciate you being with us. Thank you so much.
00:35:06 – Michael Manglardi
Thanks a ton, Rico. It was great talking to you.
00:35:08 – Rico Figliolini
Same here. Hang in there. Everyone else, thank you again for being with us and share this with your friends and we’ll see you next time.