Tennis DuJour: Curated Lifestyle Brand Builds SEO‑Powered Growth
Founder Melissa Brady builds Tennis DuJour, a curated tennis lifestyle brand that blends apparel, vintage collectibles, and editorial storytelling. She turned a passion project into a high‑intent e‑commerce destination by leveraging SEO, Pinterest, and strategic collaborations. This interview dives into how she creates demand, builds brand equity, and plans for AI‑powered search.
In this edition of the Ecommerce Authority Playbooks series, we dive into how
Tennis DuJour grows, retains customers, and prepares for the future of search in 2025 and beyond.
The interview
1. What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?
Melissa Brady: Tennis DuJour began as a passion project rooted in a lifelong love of tennis and the culture surrounding it. I’ve played tennis for decades, and I felt there was a gap between traditional performance gear and true lifestyle brands that reflect the elegance, heritage, and personality of tennis—on and off the court.
What makes Tennis DuJour different is curation and context. Rather than competing on volume or discounts, our brand focuses on a highly curated mix of apparel, accessories, vintage collectibles, and editorial storytelling. It’s positioned as a lifestyle destination, not just an ecommerce store, built with the same brand and customer-experience discipline I’ve applied for more than 25 years in my corporate marketing career.
2. Since launch, what have been the 1–2 real turning points for your brand-specific decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability-and what did you learn from them?
Melissa Brady: The first turning point was leaning into brand collaborations tied to culturally relevant moments, particularly a US Open–timed social giveaway that positioned Tennis DuJour alongside established brands serving the same affluent, tennis-adjacent audience. Beyond awareness, the goal was first-party audience growth. The visibility of a global tournament paired with aligned partners accelerated credibility, follower growth, and direct brand engagement faster than paid promotion alone.
The second turning point was committing early to SEO-first content and category authority alongside paid search. Treating content as a growth engine—not a future initiative—shifted discovery from pure demand capture to demand creation. Founders who scale paid media without building brand equity end up renting growth. The long game requires both.
3. Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now (for example SEO, paid social, email, marketplaces, influencers), and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?
Melissa Brady: Google paid search currently drives the largest share of revenue by capturing high-intent demand from customers actively searching for tennis-related products and gifts. Direct traffic is also notably strong, which I attribute to brand-led discovery through content, PR, social, and word-of-mouth—even if attribution isn’t perfectly clean at this stage.
While many brands position Pinterest as a secondary channel to Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Pinterest has emerged as a strong fit for Tennis DuJour’s niche. Its visual, discovery-driven format allows me to showcase both the curated product collection and the editorial content behind the brand, blending inspiration with intent in a way that aligns naturally with how customers discover lifestyle brands.
4. How are you thinking about search in 2025 – Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What, if anything, have you changed in your content or site to stay visible as AI search grows?
Melissa Brady: I’m thinking about search less as keywords and more as visibility across intent, inspiration, and context. That means continuing to invest in strong SEO fundamentals—clear category pages, structured content, and authoritative storytelling—while also ensuring the brand’s point of view is legible to AI-driven discovery.
I’m actively watching and evolving alongside emerging standards and signals, including developments like llms.txt and other ways sites communicate structure and intent to large language models. Practically, that’s meant strengthening evergreen content, internal linking, and product and editorial copy that clearly communicates who the brand is for and why it exists. As AI search grows, brands that articulate authority and perspective are the ones most likely to surface.
5. What do you do to turn first‑time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well for you?
Melissa Brady: Tennis DuJour is still early in its lifecycle, so repeat behavior is an area of active focus rather than a fully solved system. The foundation for us starts with experience: thoughtful packaging, strong product storytelling, and a consistent brand voice across every touchpoint. We want to delight at every stage and touchpoint.
I’m also investing in editorial content, email, and social channels that reinforce lifestyle and community—not just transactions. We approach this brand as tennis players speaking to tennis players, serving up (nice unintended pun) what’s actually important, helpful, and meaningful to people who love the sport. That shared perspective builds trust and connection, which is what ultimately brings customers back and turns them into advocates.
6. If you had to write a short playbook for an ecommerce founder one stage behind you, what would you double down on over the next 12 months – and what would you stop doing entirely?
Melissa Brady: I’d double down on brand-building in parallel with performance marketing, especially content, partnerships, and owned audience growth. Even modest investments in storytelling and authority compound faster than constantly chasing incremental paid efficiency.
What I’d stop doing entirely is over-optimizing too early. Not every channel needs to scale at once, and not every experiment needs immediate ROI. Focus on what fits your brand and customer—and give those efforts time to mature.
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