Today we’d like to introduce you to Phyllis Du.
Phyllis, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up, table tennis was a central part of me and Henry Hu my husbands’ childhoods. It’s a national sport in China, and in our school, every kid learned the basic strokes and basic sport strategy. When we moved to America, we quickly realized that “ping pong”, as it’s more commonly referred to here, isn’t regarded as a serious sport, even though it’s an Olympic recognized sport. We call it a “basement sport” here because lots of people may have ping pong tables in their basement, but they play it recreationally and treat it more as entertainment. We wanted to bring table tennis into more communities and show people that table tennis is a technically demanding sport that provides a rigorous workout.
Has it been a smooth road?
It definitely has not been a smooth road, and the biggest two challenges we’ve faced had to do with the two fundamentals of our table tennis club: finding a facility and bringing people into our club.
When we were scouting facilities for our club, we knew location was important. The club needed to be conveniently located to our members, and the space itself also needed to have high ceilings, ample floor space, and a long list of other specs. We were at our first location for only 3 months when we had to relocate due to facilities complications. During this hiatus, we needed to find a suitable place to store tables, meanwhile also searching for our current location, which took us around 6 months to find. Luckily with help from our clients and students, we were able to move into the location we’re at now, and we’ve been very happy here for the past years.
Our second challenge was around club member diversity. Because table tennis is a tremendously popular Asian sport, our initial club goers were working age East Asian and Southeast Asian immigrants. We loved providing a space for our members to play table tennis, but we also wanted to introduce the sport to folks who may not have much exposure to it. Through word of mouth marketing and some social media, people of all walks of life started to show up. Right now, our youngest member is 6 years old, the oldest is 80 years old, and we host beginner players all the way up to national level players.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Mastiff Table Tennis Club story. Tell us more about the business.
Mastiff TTC is a pay as your play table tennis club, and we also provide group and private lessons. We have open gyms three times a week: Wednesday and Friday evenings, as well as Sunday afternoons. We have bi-weekly Saturday League tournaments at the club, where we welcome players of all levels. Most other clubs in the Greater Boston Area have annual membership structures, and the members are all fairly experienced. We’re known for being very player friendly, as we’re an open gym that welcomes players of all levels. We’ve hosted social events in our space, where we’ve rented out our equipment and venue for birthday parties, church socials; on the more informal side, a lot of dates during regular open gym hours. Our gym provides people with an added level of flexibility since they don’t need to be a member to drop by.
We’re most proud of our students at Mastiff TTC. We hold lessons, providing newer players with a safe environment to ramp up their skills, and we help our more seasoned players’ fine tune their skills. We start our students, who are newer to the game, with the fundamentals of table tennis: basic stokes and footwork, all to build up the players’ concepts for speed, power, spin, and placement. Once our students master the basic forehand and backhand skills, we’ll guide them along the more advanced concepts. We not only teach our students the basic table tennis skills and how they can practice techniques by themselves, but we also try to help them understand their own approach to the game. All our students have the opportunity to practice what they’ve learned in training matches, but they’re also encouraged to play at tournaments too. Table tennis is as much of a mental game as it is a physical one, so we also try to equip our students with the right game mindset. Table tennis is all about maximizing the synergy of a player’s mental, physical, and technique in live matches. We design programs to fit each player’s unique style, and our classes are as diverse as our students.
Who else deserves credit – have you had mentors, supporters, cheerleaders, advocates, clients or teammates that have played a big role in your success or the success of the business? If so – who are they and what role did they plan / how did they help.
Our client members definitely deserve credit for the success that Mastiff TTC has had. The club really started because Coach Henry’s table tennis students wanted more opportunities to practice their skills, and they needed a full time place to practice.
We began seriously considering the endeavor after seeing the need for a gym in the South Shore. We decided to fill that gap, and we haven’t looked back since! Our students were all hugely supportive of the idea of us opening up our own table tennis gym, and they’ve been a huge help in finding our current facilities, as well as spreading the word to new members.
Pricing:
- $8.00 per day ($6.00 for 18 years old and under and 62 years old and over). No membership requirement or initiation fee.
Contact Info:
- Address: 123 High St., Dedham, Massachusetts
- Website: http://mastiffttc.weebly.com/
- Phone: 508-505-7166
- Email: mastiff.ttc@gmail.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MastiffTTC
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/mastiff-table-tennis-club-dedham
- Other: http://mastiffttc.tumblr.com/
Image Credit:
Phyllis Du
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
