Building an empire: Coco Gauff merges tennis, fashion and business as she takes control of her career

World's highest-paid female athlete of 2024 last week launched a collection with New Balance and Miu Miu as one of her many commercial ventures

Coco Gauff, sporting her New Balance x Miu Miu apparel, plays a forehand to Magda Linette in Rome. AFP

When Coco Gauff launched a shoe with New Balance in the summer of 2022, she was the first female tennis player with her own signature sneaker and only the second overall, alongside Roger Federer.

It was a groundbreaking move in tennis performance footwear, and it came as no surprise that it was an 18-year-old Gauff who was making it.

Gauff exploded onto the scene at 15 when she marched to the Wimbledon fourth round, as a qualifier, knocking out seven-time major champion Venus Williams along the way.

Four years later, she rose to a career-high No 2 in the world rankings and won the 2023 US Open wearing her New Balance Coco CG1.

At the 2024 Australian Open, Gauff wore an iteration of the CG1 inscribed with inspirational messages, including a quote she’d heard from her father Corey since she was a young girl: “You can change the world with your racket.”

Gauff has always taken those words to heart. From a very young age, she understood the power of having a voice, and a platform, and she never shied away from using them.

Whether advocating for social justice in the US, or speaking up for the innocent lives lost in Gaza, Gauff has always tried to do her part, in whatever capacity she felt she could.

Now 21 years old and ranked No 3 in the world, Gauff has taken new steps towards taking ownership of her career by parting ways with her long-time representatives Team8 and creating Coco Gauff Enterprises, which is being represented and supported by WME.

The announcement was made last month, in which Gauff said: “I’m excited to build something that allows me to take greater ownership of my career while also creating opportunities that extend beyond myself as I continue to grow as an athlete, entrepreneur, and changemaker.”

Gauff topped Forbes’ list of highest-paid female athletes in 2024, with estimated earnings of $34.4 million ($9.4 million on court, $25 million off court) over the 12 months.

She was named one of Time’s Women of the Year and attended the gala wearing custom Prada. She was the cover star for the magazine’s May issue.

In July, she was Team USA’s flag-bearer at the Paris Olympics, alongside LeBron James.

In a recent interview with The National, Gauff said she always imagined blazing a trail, ever since her first days in the sport. The idea of setting up her own company to manage all her ventures was something her father suggested. She felt that now was the right time to get this plan in motion.

“It was ultimately up to me if I wanted to do it. My dad has great ideas and I was like, ‘You know what? That's pretty cool’,” she said.

“I have other interests outside of tennis. And I want to get on the foundation side and starting the process of building that.

“And it's just a lot of things that I want to be able to do off court when my career is over. But I think I just want to start the process now so that when my career is over, it's not so much of a starting from the beginning type situation.”

Among Gauff’s other interests is fashion. This week in Rome, she made a huge splash by debuting a match kit created for her by New Balance and Miu Miu, who have teamed up in a one-of-a-kind collaboration that includes clothing, footwear, and co-branded accessories Gauff will wear at three WTA tournaments this season, starting with the ongoing Italian Open.

Miu Miu, an Italian fashion house and sister brand to Prada, first collaborated with New Balance on a shoe in 2022, but this venture into tennis, centred around Gauff, takes their partnership to a whole new level. Not since Serena Williams’ collaboration with Off-White has a fashion alliance made this much noise in tennis.

And given how extensive this New Balance x Miu Miu collection is – with on-court performance gear, off-court activewear, footwear and accessories – it’s fair to say Gauff has inspired an unprecedented fashion statement in the sport.

“I'm very lucky,” said Gauff. “We were really pushing for it. Sometimes it's harder to get these big designer houses on board. Obviously, New Balance is a go for anything I want to do. So, yeah, it was really exciting.”

There are three colourways in the collection, one for the tournament in Rome, one for the tour’s grass-court event in Berlin, and one for the WTA’s stop in Cincinnati.

Gauff said she was “pretty involved” in the design process, and chose from a selection of patterns and colours presented to her by the designers. She ultimately decided to “go for the more simple aesthetic”, to match the “timelessness” of the world of Prada and Miu Miu.

“I wanted to create a timeless outfit. And I feel like when you're working with a big designer house, I don't want to do anything too crazy,” she added.

“Because I feel like with New Balance already, we've already done crazy cutouts. We've done literally game emojis on my shirt. So, I was like, I want to do something timeless that everyone can wear.”

For Gauff, this collaboration is more than just a tennis outfit. The Florida-based player is a fan of mixing culture with sport, and has been at the centre of that crossover.

Whether it’s through a cameo appearance on a popular TV show – like the one she did on All American: Homecoming – or attending the Oscars in custom Miu Miu, or getting a shoutout from Tyler, the Creator on his latest album, Gauff is keen on popularising tennis among the younger generation, as well as bringing culture into the sport and vice versa.

She feels she can help achieve some of those things with this new high-fashion collaboration.

“I think one of my goals, I always said as an athlete, was to bring culture to the sport – not that it's not already there. But I guess bring more culture to the sport,” she said.

Coco Gauff models her New Balance x Miu Miu collection.

“I feel like fashion, especially in Gen Z, is very important now. With TikTok trends and all of that. So, I feel like trying to bring that fashion to tennis can bring more people who maybe never heard of the sport, or heard of it but never knew any players other than Serena or Roger.

“So just getting them to know more niche players. That's, I feel like, my job on the court. And obviously, just doing the best I can. But I like to dress up. So I'm just trying to bring what I'm interested in and hoping other people will be interested as well.”

With 1.8 million followers on Instagram, and another 800,000 on TikTok, Gauff’s influence on the younger generation continues to grow.

Conversations about the New Balance x Miu Miu collab began at the end of last year, and it was admittedly an ambitious and quick turnaround for everyone involved.

Evan Zeder, New Balance’s director of global sports marketing for tennis, says that as challenging as it was, they all knew it was worth it.

The collaboration was seen as an “opportunity to do something that transcends the sport, to elevate your athlete, to elevate all of the brands,” Zeder told The National.

I feel like trying to bring that fashion to tennis can bring more people who maybe never heard of the sport, or heard of it but never knew any players other than Serena or Roger.

Coco Gauff

“I think that it was so unique because it hasn't really been done this way before. And so for us, it was an opportunity to speak to where we are as a brand, to speak to where Coco is in her career and to speak to the strength of our partnership with Miu Miu.

“And ultimately, there really is no better athlete than Coco to do that with.” Gauff’s relationship with New Balance started when she was 14 and it’s a partnership that has gone from strength to strength.

After debuting the Coco CG1 at the Atlanta Open in 2022, Gauff and New Balance dropped the CG2 last summer and launched a more accessible Coco Delray shoe at the Miami Open in March this year.

“We were ambitious, but not frightened at the fact that Coco was going to be the first female tennis player with a signature shoe,” said Zeder. “For us, there was a commitment when we signed Coco to tell her story and do it in an authentic way.

“And I think that this is Coco evolving. When we signed Coco, this wouldn't have been an opportunity. We've evolved, Miu Miu's evolved. And so I think that timing is everything when you have things like that, they come together so beautifully.”

Zeder added that New Balance “are unbelievably pleased with how the CG has performed” but acknowledged this is just the beginning of what he believes will be a long journey with Gauff in this space.

“We have to remind ourselves that we're still at the start with her. She's still only 21 years old. And even though we've built this incredible foundation with her, this is just the beginning,” he said.

While forever impressed by Gauff, Zeder admits he stopped being surprised by her many years ago.

Growing up with strong family values and parents who encouraged her to develop her own, outspoken, character, Gauff is making moves in the business world, and setting up Coco Gauff Enterprises, seems like a natural evolution for a woman who has long voiced her ambition to become “the greatest of all time”.

“She's always had confidence, but I think that her experiences continue to build confidence in making harder decisions at a younger age. She was thrust into the limelight at 15 years old at one of the biggest stages in all the sport. And that's really hard. And I think she's handled it with incredible grace,” said Zeder.

“She's involved in everything that she does. She's very aware with what's going on, not just with tennis, but outside of the sport. And she sees success and she sees how people make an impact in the world.

“We put it on the CG1, ‘You can change the world with your racket’, the quote from her dad. And I think that that still holds true.

“Like when you have that mindset at such a young age that doesn't leave you, it only gets emboldened over time.”