Everything for Hockey and More!

It was great news, but no surprise to hear that Sports, Etc. was awarded “Bauer 2019 Retailer of the Year”. Paul Stanton, my brother-in-law, is the hardest working guy I know. He has been with Sports for 35 years and took ownership in 2012. He deserves every good thing that comes his way.

So it was a great honor for me on Thanksgiving when he handed me the hockey stick that Bauer awards every year. He asked me to frame it and completely entrusted us with all the details. And… it proved to be an all-hands-on-deck kind of project.

Marisa and I immediately got to work on the design. And like all good designs it evolved into something more than we first imagined. We settled on a deep toned, mildly-distressed, black moulding that had enough space for the bend of the stick. The real design challenge came with the matting. We needed mats larger than 40 x 60 and unfortunately, as far as colors go, it is slim pickin’s. All white matting was not the look we were going for.

This prompted us to troubleshoot the mat design. We started thinking about incorporating the logo. As luck would have it the logo is flanked by red stripes…allowing us to use the mat colors we wanted. Grey, blue and red really did the trick…tying in the stick and moulding while honoring the colors of the SPORTS, ETC. logo.

Adam played a key role in uploading the logo to our Valiani computerized mat cutter and took a video to show a glimpse of what our CMC can do.

We all agreed the design looked best with the stick lifted off the mat for a cool shadow effect. Marisa, as always, worked tirelessly for perfection. All the effort paid off and it was a fun one to see come together..

Now the stick is right at home over the register of SPORTS, ETC. on Mass Ave in Arlington. It was a pleasure to frame a much earned award for a top notch business.