Yoni Malchi of The Fifth Set: Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Launched My Business or Startup

An Interview With Doug Noll

Iterating on prototypes in the apparel industry will have relatively long turnaround times, but getting the right design and materials is paramount. Be prepared to spend a good portion of your time upfront getting the product just right.

Taking the risk to start a company is a feat few are fully equipped for. Any business owner knows that the first few years in business are anything but glamorous. Building a successful business takes time, lessons learned, and most importantly, enormous growth as a business owner. What works and what doesn’t when one starts a new business? What are the valuable lessons learned from the “University of Adversity”? As part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Yoni Malchi.

A former aerospace engineer with a passion for tennis, Yoni Malchi is CEO of The Fifth Set, a tennis-apparel company that provides patented “SweatRoute” technology to keep tennis enthusiasts dry, comfortable, and at the top of their game. Since co-founding the company with his wife Danielle in March of 2020, he is responsible for driving the product’s research and development from concept to market, while furthering The Fifth Set’s strategic direction to achieve overall business goals.

When he’s not on the court, Yoni is a management consultant with a passion for driving Fortune 500 enterprises to become more data-driven and analytics-focused. After earning a B.S and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Union College and Penn State University, respectively, he started his career at The Aerospace Corporation, where he served as a Combustion Specialist for The United States Air Force and NASA, performing predictive analytics on rocket-propulsion systems.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Tennis is my passion. I love the mix of physicality, mental strength, and strategy that goes into every match. It is a fantastic workout that allows me to work up a great sweat. The sweat, however, has caused me issues out on the court my entire life, and I am not the only one!

There was one particular match that stuck out in my mind that drove me to start this business. It was a hot and humid day in South Florida and both my opponent and I were dripping. About 45 minutes into the match he took the ball out of his pocket, bounced it three times, tossed it up, and blasted a serve. Once that ball was hit, all I could see was a huge spray of sweat. As it traveled over the net towards me I could see the sweat tsunami coming my way. It was gross! I realized at that moment what it must be like for people on the other side of the net from me. Having wet tennis balls was always annoying, but being sprayed with someone else’s sweat was the tipping point!

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

One of the hardest things we faced at the beginning of our journey was the supply chain delays caused by COVID. We were just wrapping up all of our prototyping and testing, and felt really confident in the design and materials. We were getting our budget ready to make the first big order and then we got the news that our textile manufacturer was seeing 8–10 month delays on their materials due to the supply chain mess. We couldn’t start a business and have delays like this out of the gate. We would have lost the trust and patience of our customers. As we all know, you only have one chance to make the first impression!

We had to make the tough decision to put a pause on production and wait until the issues cleared up. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was the right one. In January of 2023, we got our notice that the patent had been awarded, and it was about the same time the textile company was able to deliver products in a reasonable time. The stars aligned, and we started the production process back up. Because we had such a long pause, we did have to go back through the prototyping and testing process again. Some of the cut-and-sew companies we were using had gone out of business, and we had to ensure new ones could recreate the shorts at the same level of quality. After all was said and done, we ended up with an even better product and a patent to go to market with.

So, how are things going today? How did grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?

Currently, things are going very smoothly! We have a design that we love and materials that bring our patent to life! We ran a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $9,000 and had 70 pairs of shorts pre-ordered before we even had them onhand! The grit and resilience we had during the supply chain delays led to us finding an even stronger manufacturing process, and we grew closer as a team having to grind through tough decisions. Now we are going full-throttle with our PR and marketing efforts, and look forward to continued customer satisfaction and business growth!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Throughout the prototyping process, we were iterating with the manufacturer on different designs and materials, and testing the shorts with beta testers. All of the prototypes were made from a nice navy blue color material that we wanted to be one of our production colors. When we finalized the design and materials, the manufacturer sent us the final prototype for us to approve. We ensured the measurements, materials, sizes, and colors were all correct, and approved them. Importantly, the navy blue color was what we wanted.

As we went into the manufacturing process, I flew to Medellin Colombia to see the first production shorts come off the line. To me, everything looked right and I was excited to get the first lot of shorts. When they arrived and we opened the box, my wife looked at the “navy blue” shorts and said, “These are not the right blue!”. I looked at it again and it looked right to me, but when we put them up against the approved navy blue it was definitely different! I couldn’t believe I flew to Colombia to ensure quality control and I missed something as obvious as the navy blue color being wrong!

At the end of the day, the shorts were still good and the lighter blue was actually nice, so we decided to keep them and use them as a limited edition color for our 2024 Valentine’s Day gift packs. We were able to have the manufacturer make the navy blue color shorts as they were advertised so our customers got the color they were promised.

The main lesson I learned is to not leave any stone unturned when it comes to quality control with vendors, even if you think it’s the most obvious thing!

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

The tennis apparel market has been dominated by large players forever. For me, their shorts were fine, but I never felt like there was a focus on the unique needs of tennis players. They felt like any other pair of shorts I would wear for any other sport.

What makes The Fifth Set stand out is our laser focus on designing tennis shorts with the game of tennis in mind. We may branch out into other areas in the future, but for now, we are putting all of our efforts into crafting the best tennis shorts on the market.

In particular, we were focused on the pockets. Tennis is unique in that it is the only sport where you use your pockets regularly throughout the match, and you are using them to hold the most important thing in the game, the ball. When players sweat, the ball can get wet as it sits in the pocket during a point. This completely ruins the flow of the game and the pockets become useless.

I did some research and found several articles and tennis forum posts where this problem of sweaty pockets was discussed. This is the major challenge we are going after to differentiate our shorts from all of the other larger players in the market. It is what we got our patent on, and what we think will attract tennis players to our brand over all of the others!

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

Don’t try to boil the ocean. The apparel market is saturated with different companies large and small and finding a niche where you are differentiated will be a challenge. It can be tempting to try to appeal to everyone with different products and different variations on each product. Pick an area you think you can be really different from the competition and do that really well before you decide to branch out into other areas.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

When my wife and I started this company, we knew it would be a challenge to separate our work from our personal lives. Disagreements in business happen all the time, but when you are married it can be challenging to keep your disagreements professional. In addition, neither of us had experience starting a business and building a social media presence. When it was just us, we found ourselves hitting roadblocks we just couldn’t get past. This is why we brought in our CMO, Zach Stampone. Zach has been a lifelong entrepreneur and he has a very calming, logical, and patient personality. He helps Danielle and I get through tough decisions and disagreements by bringing a sense of rational thinking and if we need it, he can “break the tie” to allow us to move forward on a decision. In addition, Zach has a background in film-making and has helped several companies build a social media presence. All of these aspects made Zach the perfect missing piece to The Fifth Set’s puzzle.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

We are based down in Parkland, Florida, which you may remember was where the unfortunate school shooting happened back in 2018. It is a tragedy beyond comprehension to be in a town where something like this happens. In response to this, the parents of one of the victims started a non-profit called Make Our Schools Safe (https://makeourschoolssafe.org/) and we have been fortunate enough to participate in several fundraising events they have put on. This year we sponsored both their golf and tennis events, which felt fantastic to be a part of. Their mission is to empower students and staff to help create and maintain a culture of safety and vigilance in a secure school environment. Since their founding, they have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to create groundbreaking programs at schools all around the country. We look forward to continuing to support this great cause as we build our business in this great town of Parkland!

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first launched my business,” and why?

1 . Iterating on prototypes in the apparel industry will have relatively long turnaround times, but getting the right design and materials is paramount. Be prepared to spend a good portion of your time upfront getting the product just right.

2 . Once you get the product right, it all comes down to marketing and PR. Be ready to double down on getting the word out in the most efficient way possible.

3 . Live feedback from friends, customers, employees, etc. is key to building confidence that you are creating something people want.

4 . Everyone will have an opinion on how you should run your business, always listen, but at the end of the day, you need to trust what you think is right.

5 . Mistakes will happen, learn from them and have fun along the way!

Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?

It is important to keep an even keel at any point in time while building a business. It is a process that builds on itself and can only be learned through experience. When you are grinding away on something to move the business forward it can feel like you are taking one step forward and two steps back. It can be exhausting! What has helped me is to stop at times and reflect on where I am today vs. where I was at this point three months ago, six months ago, and a year ago. Every time I do that, I realize how much progress we have made and how much we have collectively learned along the way. I then start to think about what it will be like three, six, and 12 months from now and I get motivated to keep on plugging away!

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Our company’s mission is to free athletes from the distractions of sweat while they perform at their highest levels. Sweat is part of any sport, but it can lead to many challenges from wet tennis balls, to sweat in the eyes, to cramping. We are starting this movement focused on sweaty tennis balls, but will hopefully expand by alleviating these sweat issues in other areas as well!

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Check out our website at www.thefifthset.com and follow us @thefifthset on Instagram and Facebook!

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

About the Interviewer: Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA was born nearly blind, crippled with club feet, partially deaf, and left-handed. He overcame all of these obstacles to become a successful civil trial lawyer. In 2000, he abandoned his law practice to become a peacemaker. His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels. He is an award-winning author, teacher, and trainer. He is a highly experienced mediator. Doug’s work carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts. Doug teaches his innovative de-escalation skill that calms any angry person in 90 seconds or less. With Laurel Kaufer, Doug founded Prison of Peace in 2009. The Prison of Peace project trains life and long terms incarcerated people to be powerful peacemakers and mediators. He has been deeply moved by inmates who have learned and applied deep, empathic listening skills, leadership skills, and problem-solving skills to reduce violence in their prison communities. Their dedication to learning, improving, and serving their communities motivates him to expand the principles of Prison of Peace so that every human wanting to learn the skills of peace may do so. Doug’s awards include California Lawyer Magazine Lawyer of the Year, Best Lawyers in America Lawyer of the Year, Purpose Prize Fellow, International Academy of Mediators Syd Leezak Award of Excellence, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals Neutral of the Year. His four books have won a number of awards and commendations. Doug’s podcast, Listen With Leaders, is now accepting guests. Click on this link to learn more and apply.