reString NYC Pop-Up Review
Juan
After four years of running reString online, our first NYC pop-up gave us five days to meet the players who use our strings.
We told you what we had planned before the doors opened. But we didn’t expect anywhere near the amount of love and support you showed us.
Here is how those five days went and what they meant to us.
How Did the Pop-Up Go?
More Rackets Than We Expected
Before we had officially opened on the first morning, there were around 50 rackets waiting to be strung We were excited that so many of you had heard about the pop-up.
Roughly 200 people came through the door that first day, far more than the 50 or 60 we had expected across the whole pop-up.
After the first morning rush, things settled into a rhythm, with somebody new walking in every few minutes. Most people stayed for 15 or 20 minutes to talk through what they wanted from their strings. A fair few stayed more than an hour.
We had underestimated how much time people would want to spend talking about strings. Those conversations turned out to be the part we enjoyed most.
What Did We String?
About half of the rackets we strung used hybrid setups, a different pattern from what we see in our online orders.
Our most popular hybrid, reString Zero x reString Sync, came up regularly, along with reString Slap x reString Sync and reString Vivo x reString Sync.
We returned each racket with a card listing the player’s setup, including the main strings, cross strings, and their tensions. That way, they could have the same setup recreated at home or at their usual stringing shop.
Plenty of visitors arrived using other strings. After talking us through how they play, they left with something from our lineup in their racket for the first time.
String Finder
< 2 minsYou know your game, we know our strings. Answer a few quick questions about how you play, what you string with, what tension you string at, and we'll match you to the right string in the reString lineup.
What the Week Meant to Us
What stayed with us most from the week was how many people already knew who we were before they walked in.
Some had played with our strings. Others had heard about them from someone they hit with or watched our YouTube channel. Quite a few asked for us by name.
We had expected to spend much of the week introducing reString, but we almost never had to. One player told us he had been using reString Zero since 2023.
reString Zero
Best sellerOur flagship string. Designed to deliver maximum bite, explosive spin, and our signature long-lasting snapback, Zero lets players dominate the baseline with raw power and blistering pace.
Our co-founder Nick put it best afterwards.
reString started with one string and a very basic online store. Four years later, people were queuing in New York to have us restring their rackets.
It can be hard to appreciate how far you have come when you are caught up in the day-to-day work. That week gave us a chance to see it for ourselves.
Inside the NYC Pop-Up
The display everyone gravitated towards was the Signature Snapback board.
It showed how the snapback treatment is integrated throughout the string. Seeing it explained visually made the idea much easier to understand.
Valldoreix deserves a special mention too. Sharing the space with them gave visitors more to explore and made the pop-up feel more varied.
Behind the counter, things were a little less organised than they looked.
There were ten of us working the floor, and several days ended at midnight. On the first night, we ate dinner sitting on the ground at 11:30pm.
We celebrated with a cake on our last night, also marking four years since the reString website went live in September 2022.
The pop-up came just a few months after our reBrand, giving us another reason to reflect on how far we had come.
Will We Do It Again?
Yes, we will do another pop-up, and it will almost certainly be in New York again.
The city worked well for us. With so many players and fans in New York for the US Open, the pop-up was in the perfect place at the perfect time.
We recognise that we still have a long way to go as a string brand.
The pop-up was a great milestone, but there is plenty more work ahead to catch up with more established brands.
The week showed us what an event like this can mean to us and the players who come through the door. We are not waiting another four years for the next one.
Thank you to everyone who came down, trusted us with their racket, or took a set home to string later when we ran out of time.
If you missed the pop-up, Instagram is where we will announce the next one first.
