Shift Concept Racket Showcases Wilson’s New Release Strategy

Wilson calls the new Shift tennis racket a “concept.” It’s a concept the public can weigh in on with the racket’s next development step an early February Shift release.

Born from the brand’s W Labs near its Chicago headquarters, Wilson is embarking on a unique approach when it comes to testing the Shift and exposing it to the public. Traditionally, Wilson has featured two development pathways for new rackets, either working on an established franchise and bringing a new iteration to life via traditional channels or spending a long time in development on a brand-new project—think Clash—before presenting it traditionally.

“This time around we wanted to work on the way we can innovate and bring products to life,” says Michael Schaeffer, Wilson senior product manager. “The idea behind W Labs is we can work on something we are excited about and think has legs and get it out to a broader audience than if we would do traditional product development and play testing. Shift is the first product we have used this strategy for, and it is kind of a necessity based out of the pandemic.”

Creation of the Shift racket was ongoing when the pandemic made playtesting difficult—whether sending the same frame around to multiple people or gathering groups together to test. So, Wilson went public with the design much earlier than usual, before even finalizing technical specifications.

In October 2022, Wilson shipped 1,000 concept rackets to play testers around the world, from Europe to Asia. The racket itself includes a QR code to allow play testers to both learn about the frame and give pointed feedback via a survey.

“The feedback was super strong,” Schaeffer says. “We were thinking this product has legs, but we already have a pretty established stable of rackets so how can we test it a little bit more and get it into market to ultimately test if it will improve the player experience?”

Meet the next step in the W Labs concept racket effort, a “broad limited edition” release of Shift on Feb. 3. “Early in our play testing journey, we felt there was a lot of demand for the racket,” Schaeffer says. “We wanted to bump up production to allow this racket to get out to more players. We are releasing the W Labs Shift concept racket to a broader audience, for sale on a global scale. I would call it a broad limited release.”

The rackets launching in February are the same as the first 1,000, complete with the QR code. Schaeffer says the team hopes to gather even more feedback before potentially working on a final iteration that joins Wilson’s mainstay lineup.

“If this racket failed in our initial testing, we wouldn’t be talking,” he says. “We feel confident about it, so we are bringing it to a broader audience.”

The fresh approach to releasing the racket shows a stark difference from the brand’s most recent releases, updates to key franchises the Blade, Pro Staff and Ultra and the initial 2019 release of the Clash. Shaeffer notes that the Clash technology was in place for five years before they released it, unsure how the market would respond (it nearly immediately became one of the best-selling rackets in the industry), questioning “should we go, should we not go?”

“The W Labs platforms gives us an opportunity to test rackets and really interact with consumers directly to understand how they perceive it.” Schaeffer says. “I am confident if we launched Clash in this way, it would have come to market much earlier. At the end of the day innovation is our goal and this is a way to accelerate innovation.”

The Shift Technology

The new Shift features patent-pending technology and the “core technology is really in the design and shape of the racket,” with the unique way it bends driven by the frame’s design.

Schaeffer says control-oriented players gravitate toward Wilson’s Pro Staff and Blade lines, but they must provide their own power. Players today, especially the next generation, are asking for “controllable power” and trends include players dropping weights of frames to play with faster racket head speeds. The Shift features a new bending profile allowing it to bend in any dimension, inviting additional spin potential.

“The goal is to allow for controllable power to hit heavy balls deep in the court,” Shaeffer says. “That is how we see the game developing.” The Shift’s design allows the racket to bend laterally as players swing more vertically. The racket bends with them for a higher launch angle, but the Shift’s traditional stiffness rating falls in line with the Ultra while having a lateral stiffness more akin to the Clash.

“We feel that we have all of these levers to pull to create a racket with different bending profiles,” Schaeffer says. “We can use these measurements as specs the industry hasn’t measured to better target players for their playing type. We feel at Wilson we have unlocked additional specs the industry has never really measured.”

Schaeffer says the testing—both pre-launch and in recent feedback—showed tournament players responding favorably, but that any player looking to add the benefit of spin, increased launch angle and depth to their game is enjoying the Shift. “We see it as a racket that spans quite a wide player type,” he says.

The W Labs concept release includes both the Shift 99/300, a 99-square-inch head weighing 300 grams, and the Shift 99/315, the same size head with 15 additional grams of weight. The lighter racket features a 16×20 string pattern and the heavier an 18×20.

Aesthetically, the Artic Prism color offers a white-based paint meant to look like ice or snow when the sunlight hits it, a color-shifting design like the Blade and Ultra. As a work-in-progress racket, the team has made other changes. The traditional Wilson script logo on the frame’s side isn’t a solid decal, but a half tone that looks like dots up close and then script lettering from farther away. The QR code sits next to that. It also has the W Labs logo on the inner throat, the grip and the butt cap.

“We really see the excitement behind this project, where our engineers can innovate without any restrictions,” Schaeffer says. “Now we have the ability to bring a racket out to the world and let consumers tell us if it can live or not.”