Elliott Richards and Aaron Green will become the UK’s youngest padel operators when their first venue opens in Bedfordshire in May.
Elliott, 21, and Aaron, 23, met at Luton Airport where they are both aircraft engineers. Elliott is in the last year of an apprenticeship.
Each summer, they get four months off when all the planes are in operation, and in 2024 they spent this extended break on holiday together in Portugal.
There, they discovered padel and hatched a plan to build their own courts back home as a sideline to their aviation careers. Almost two years on, that plan is finally about to come to fruition.
Their company, Padel Warehouse, will begin work on two uncovered courts at Tilsworth Golf Club near Leighton Buzzard in a couple of weeks’ time. Further projects are planned at two nearby schools and a bigger project at an undisclosed location is in the planning stage.
Two and a half years ago, Elliott and Aaron’s odyssey began, fuelled by some savings and inheritance money, hope, bags of enthusiasm and (they admit now) equally hefty amounts of naivety.
“We pooled our resources and took a risk”
“We could’ve married our girlfriends and bought the golden retriever but instead we pooled resources and took a risk,” Elliott tells The Padel Paper.
The pair sent over 100 cold emails with bespoke business plans to owners at potential venues all over their native Bedfordshire and further afield — and received just two replies.
One of those was from Nick Webb, who has owned Tilsworth Golf Club for over 20 years. His wisdom and experience was to prove vital for the two tyro padel entrepreneurs as they got their debut project off the ground.
“Nick has become a mentor to us, we’ve been so lucky to find him,” says Elliott.
“We went in bright-eyed thinking, ‘Let’s make loads of money,’ and he brought us down to earth. That really helped and grew us into the business people we are today.
“We’ve learned there is a lot of money to be spent before you make a single court booking, so many hoops to jump through and so much graft to be done. The padel industry is working out regulatory compliance as it goes along and we’ve done the full journey.
“It was a massive trial and error process with the owner but we wouldn’t change a thing. We’re 100% compliant and we have a mentor for life.
“We’re taking everything we’ve learned from those negotiations into our talks with other owners. They are now going much more smoothly because of what we’ve learned from a patient club owner.”
“It was a massive war of attrition!”
Elliott laughs when admitting that Padel Warehouse’s deal with Tilsworth Golf Club “bears absolutely no resemblance to what we first proposed” at the start of negotiations.
“It was a massive war of attrition!” says Elliott. “We’ve negotiated revenue splits, rental agreements, licenses to occupy and hired solicitors to deal with contracts.
“Even though padel is booming, most of the owners of sports clubs are from a different generation. You’ve got to appease owners and members. Bringing change to a heritage golf club is not a quick or easy process.”
But, eventually, they have succeeded. Tilsworth Golf Centre‘s padel facility will operate on a revenue share agreement, staffed mostly by the golf centre with discount deals for golf club members. Padel players will get full use of the golf centre’s clubhouse facilities.
Aaron (an LTA-qualified padel coach and county tennis player) will deliver coaching programmes including kids’ summer camps.
The courts are second hand and imported from Sweden. They will rest on stilts made by a German steel installation company, which will require no groundworks.
Resin laid on top provides a flat playing surface without touching any of the land below, which eases the planning permission process with regards to biodiversity stipulations.
“There’s no drilling or digging so no effect on current hard-standing land,” explains Elliott.
“Our company’s selling point is we build padel courts on the premises but owners can advertise it like it’s their own investment. Their members will appreciate an extra offering on-site, and we have an existing footfall from day one and don’t need to blow a marketing budget.”
By the end of 2026, Padel Warehouse are aiming for a portfolio of three clubs totalling 10 courts.
“Our goal is for this to take us out of our full-time jobs. It will take a lot of outlay and stress but that’s our aim and we’re determined. It’s a risk but the guys at the airport are right behind us, and if we want, we can always go back to the hangar!”
