Frasers handed 23-year-old Alexei Hamblin the job of reviving Slazenger

Slazenger, founded in 1881, was once an elite British sport brand with deep Wimbledon and racquet-sports ties. But by the 2020s, under Frasers Group, it was widely seen as cheap, often poor-quality sportswear — a brand younger generations never knew as a powerhouse.

Frasers CEO Michael Murray had been restructuring to elevate the group's own brands when he encountered Alexei Hamblin, a 23-year-old designer who had built a big TikTok following by reimagining old sport brands as modern luxury labels. Murray's team was receptive to new ideas, and Hamblin was put in charge of transforming Slazenger.

Hamblin's approach was to start from the present, not the archive. He immersed himself in the brand's history, dug through decades of adverts and documentaries, and rebuilt the identity around Gen Z culture: knitwear led, heritage reframed digitally, and a push into padel. He said the new vision focused on the symbolism and sentiment the brand once had and how that same feeling would look today.

Repositioned a lapsed 140-year-old sport brand through a new identity, knitwear led by streetwear and a padel-club expansion

The brand was seen as cheap and past its prime, so a clean redefinition was needed, not a retro re-run

Giving a Gen Z designer the reins let the brand speak credibly to his own generation

TikTok gave a direct-to-consumer channel to gauge demand before manufacturing at scale

Padel — one of the UK's fastest-growing sports — provided a modern sporting platform

Frasers' scale and the CEO's appetite for its own-brand elevation supplied resources and support

A heritage brand rebuilds fastest when you hand it to the generation you want to serve and let them speak to their peers

Hamblin's first visible output was the nine-piece Slazenger Off-Court menswear collection, launched in spring 2026 with Flannels, blending tennis heritage with streetwear. The brand also pushed into padel with plans to open more than 10 Slazenger Padel clubs across the UK in 2026, around 150 courts nationwide, plus a presence at the Hexagon Cup in Madrid. A statement summer 2026 campaign aimed to put the brand back on the sporting and cultural map.