The 43-year-old company, which declared bankruptcy last year and emerged with a new owner, says it has learned from its mistakes and has a strategy to rebuild its brand. It’s a saga that has played out many times before in business: an iconic brand loses its way and has to struggle to regain its position in the market. For Prince, at stake is the future of a company that once had more than 130 employees and now is looking to add to its current staff of 50.

Its strategy includes expanding its product line and bringing back some old favorites, being more active in social media, and continuing to help develop the next batch of top tennis players.

Ballardie cited a number of factors that pushed Prince­ into bankruptcy last May, when the company had $55.2 million in assets and more than $77 million in liabilities.

“It really was the perfect storm,” said Ballardie, a 10-year Prince executive who previously led Eastern Hemisphere operations. “A number of things collided. One thing was we were too insular with our technology.”

In the mid-2000s, Prince introduced its O3 technology, which features oversized string holes, known as “O-Ports,” on the side of rackets. The O-Ports improve aerodynamics and, in turn, racket speed. By the end of the decade, Prince sold only O-Port rackets. Ballardie said tennis players who preferred more traditional rackets were forced to turn to other manufacturers.

The downturn in the economy also slammed Prince. “Prince is, and has always been, a premium brand,” Ballardie said. “Our products are in the upper echelons of the market. Our performance-line rackets, which is what we sell in pro specialty shops, were priced at $250 to more than $300 over the last four or five years. We saw a decrease in the number of rackets being sold across the whole market but an increase in the number of re-strings. People were reconditioning their