Tennis retailers and club pro-shops all over the world carry the latest fashions and designs for their most important clientele: adult tennis players. Females tend to buy significantly more tennis clothing and so the racks are filled with ladies fashions and accessories. Apart from the ever changing designs for your latest Nike, Reebok, Sergio Tacchini and Fila fashions, nothing outrageously new ever comes in front of tennis players in those stores. Meet Joe Durica. His “Stick It Wear ?!” tennis fashions are a refreshing new wave making inroads in Southern California and around the country.
All photos about Stick It Wear?! are uploaded and available as slideshow. Please click on the picture that says Slideshow to see the photos.
Joe Durica is a man of many talents. Tennis is one of them. Born in Chicago, coming from a Slovak background, Durica became interested in tennis in 4th Grade, played in High School, and continued to advance his skills to Open level as an adult. After a difficult shoulder operation because of osteoarthritic build-up, he is confident to play tennis again tennis very soon.
Creativity is another one of Durica’s talents. With a 1992 Bachelor in Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, painting pictures and drawing designs all come easy to him (see his page on AbsoluteArts.com). The ex-Creative Director for a company manufacturing rifle telescopes was on a visit to Prague when he saw a girl with a great t-shirt design and decided to get into that business in 2008. He named his company Stick It Wear?! and started to use his creativity to design fashion wear for the tennis player.
“I came up with the name Stick It! since I wanted a playful, sassy way of giving attitude to stick figures,” says Durica. “Then at an early brainstorm meeting with friends someone added the Stick It WHERE and I changed it to Wear as in clothing. Later I added the '?!' punctuation as a logo and to add to the double meaning of the name and brand.”
Even the supporting tagline on the website, From Hero to Icon plays with meanings. Durica adds, “I am taking Heroes and turning them into graphic Icons as well as depicting them as being iconic which is the next step up from being a immortalized Hero.”
His big break came at the 2009 BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. His collection was featured with three racks in the main sports fashion tent. The success came with Tennis Warehouse adding his line and selling it real well. Sales on his own Stick It Wear?! web site started to grow as well, and he’s been back exhibiting in Indian Wells both in 2010 and 2011.
Durica has now added more product to his line of tennis shirts, and expanded into shirts for other sports, like golf. His future plans include capturing market share in hockey and soccer. Some of the more remarkable items he’s now producing are performance shirts, women’s Boy Shorts and Hoodies, and cute little fashion items for kids and toddlers called Sticklets!Kids.
Sales are brisk at main online sports outlets, like Tennis Warehouse, and Golfsmith, and to a lesser extend Tennis Express. With TW giving Stick It Wear ?! huge exposure and great sales, Joe Durica would like his designs to become known as a great fashion brand on and off the court.
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