LET Turns Used Tennis String Into Apparel, Partners With WSO

LET apparel is made from recycled tennis string.

LET

When stringers at the Winston-Salem Open pull used string from rackets this August, instead of tossing the string in the trash it will get sent to LET, a new company recycling used polyester tennis string and turning it into tennis-specific apparel.

Founded by former Division I tennis players Jakob Esterowitz and Jonah Dickson, LET launched its first lineup of product July 21, offering three colors of the Core V.0 Shirt created with used string. Partnerships with the Winston-Salem Open and clubs across the world give the pair hope they can build a unique tennis-centric brand.

“Our circular system transforms material from the game itself into every product we make, creating apparel that is truly made by tennis,” Dickson tells me. “Sustainability is part of how we achieve that connection, not the reason we exist. Our mission is to create the best-performing, best-designed tennis apparel in the world. If the product isn’t exceptional, nothing else matters.”

LET sources post-consumer polyester tennis string from anyone willing to send it. That currently includes more than 5,000 points across five countries, including local clubs, home stringers, college programs, major tournaments and now the Winston-Salem Open. The brand then uses that to more deeply connect players to the sport.

More than 25 million pounds of polyester string is thrown out each year—string takes 400 years to decompose—and LET hopes instead of going to a landfill, that string comes to them. Every time a stringer fills an old cardboard box with used string, whether from a case of tennis balls or their latest Amazon delivery, they can go to the LET website and enter the box’s weight and dimensions to get a prepaid shipping label, sending the string to the LET processing facility.

From there, the string is sorted and sent to a recycling partner to break the string down into raw material and turned into yarn. That yarn then becomes fabric before it is cut and sewn into a finished garment. “The process really begins with the stringers,” Esterowitz says. “They are the cornerstone of our system and one of the most important, yet often overlooked, parts of the sport. No one steps onto a tennis court without a racket that has been strung. They are the silent link that keeps tennis moving.” Now stringers are even more connected to the players.

“The goal was never just to make apparel,” Esterowitz says. “It was to create a system where the sport itself becomes part of the product.”

Sourcing the raw material offers the biggest logistical and financial challenge for LET, especially as it takes roughly 15 rackets to make one shirt. Esterowitz says that as the company’s collection network grows, the shipping and production costs will decline, making the model increasingly efficient at scale. Still, he says the first product launch is already profitable.

The tournament partnerships provide not only a chance to recover one of the largest concentrations of discarded string in the world, but to tell a story. Winston-Salem Open named LET as its official tennis string recycling partner, the first pro tournament to name a string recycling partner. During the tournament, all used string will get shipped to LET and they will create apparel for next year’s tournament.

“A Winston -Salem Open garment isn’t a Winston-Salem Open piece because we printed the logo on it,” Dickson says. “It’s a Winston-Salem piece because it’s made from the string that was played there. We love the idea of taking material once destined for landfill at a tournament and returning it to the shelves the following year as high-performance apparel.”

Jeff Ryan, WSO tournament director, tells me that the tournament is always looking for ways to improve both sustainability and connection to the community. “Partnering with LET gives us a practical way to reduce waste by giving thousands of feet of used tennis string a second life,” he says. “Every tournament is looking for ways to create a fun and memorable experience that extends beyond the matches themselves. Partnerships like this give us another story to tell and another way to engage fans.”

Each shirt produced by LET is for tennis, Dickson says. The fit, fabrication and functionality comes from the world of competitive tennis and LET’s recycled polyester preforms identical to virgin polyester. And if a customer is ever finished with their LET shirt, they can send it back for another round of tennis-specific recycling.

Dickson says launching the first wave of shirts makes the concept tangible, a way to prove they can make premium performance apparel without compromising on quality. They next plan a complete tennis lineup with essentials for training, competing and living the game, including long-sleeve shirts and shorts. The founders have a vision to build a brand “where the products are literally made by the game itself, creating a deeper connection between players and the sport they love.”