Snowboards.net: In Celebration of "Sideways Life"

A website featuring snowboards, bindings, apparel and accessories from all the major brands (Burton, O’Neil, DaKine, etc., often at serious discounts) along with video tutorials on everything from How to Properly Size Your Boots to How Snowboards Are Made—along with all kinds of different blogs and over six hundred registered members dedicated to “Sideways Life”—you’d never guess that Snowboards.net is actually a brand-new site. Its growing popularity is a tribute to the vision of its founders, Summit Sports.

As a small but growing chain in southeast Michigan back in the early nineties, it’s a company that had a novel idea—why stay on the Kiddie Hill with more bricks and mortar sports stores, when they could go big and catch some air on the Web? Over a decade later, Summit operates such “go to” niche sporting destinations as skis.com, skateaggressive.com, and wateroutfitters.com as well as ten others—all dedicated to creating an online shopping experience as good or better than that of an in-store visit.

Part of the marketing strategy for Snowboards.net is, of course, snowboard stickers. Since their logo was designed to be in tune with the flashy colors and graphics popular on snowboards, creating a custom sticker out of that distinctive lightning bolt “S/B” was a no-brainer.

“We chose Custom Sticker Makers because we have used them to print stickers for some of our other sites and they turned out excellent,” said Jenna Rickard of Summit Sports. “There was also a time when we had an upcoming event we wanted stickers for, and Custom Sticker Makers went out of their way to get them to us early so we would have them in time for the event. We definitely like to give companies like that repeat business.”

Gallup Journey: Good News for the Southwest

Looking for some good news for a change? If you happen to live in the Gallup, New Mexico/Four Corners area, you’re in luck. The Gallup Journey is a free publication with a focus on the positive, especially as it applies to the local community. Within its pages, you’ll find everything from a story about mountain-climbing with (house)cats to reviews of local restaurants, fiction, and a feature on a 3rd grade karate champ—along with columns on hiking trails, local history, and more.
Founded by Nate Haveman and Chuck Van Drunen in 2004, the publication has grown in popularity over the years, with distribution now at 12,000 copies a month. Key to the Gallup Journey’s promo strategy has been their use of custom stickers, marketing not only their publication, but its underlying message: "Believe [in] Gallup." It’s an eye-catching message that’s been the basis of a guerilla marketing campaign for the publication, appearing everywhere from the McDonald’s drive-thru to stop signs in downtown Gallup.
“I knew Jeff [of Custom Sticker Makers] from years ago, when we ordered some die-cuts,” said Nate. “They were sharp-looking stickers, and well-received. So when we needed new stickers, we went with CSM.”

CSM Offers New Banner Links

Custom Sticker Makers is pleased to announce a series of new graphic banner links, available at www.CustomStickerMakers.com/banners/

These graphic links come in a wide variety of shapes and styles and are designed to give our customers an easy way to link back to CSM. To use them, just copy the code associated with the link and plug it directly into your website. Thanks for your support!

The CSM Team

Campus Scooter: Green Wheels

Around 2005, friends Colin Shellhorn and Tim Soule of E. Lansing, MI, had a great idea: why not get out of the job rut and start a business selling scooters to college kids? As it turned out, their timing was perfect: in 2005, gas was averaging $1.90 a gallon nationally—during the course of 2006, prices would spike up all the way past $3.20 in some areas of the country. In cash-strapped Michigan, that meant the gospel of cheap gas was suddenly appealing to more than just college students, and Campus Scooter took off.

But Colin and Tim’s vision is as much about going green as it is about the bottom line. With an average 80-100 miles per gallon, their wheels make the Prius look like a Hummer—and for every scooter or moped they sell, Campus Scooter plants five trees through the nonprofit American Forests, underscoring their commitment to the environment.

Their best advertising? The scooters themselves. That’s why every scooter they sell comes with one of their high-quality outdoor green bumperstickers, printed through Custom Sticker Makers. With a classic die cut of a scooter, collegiate text and a Michigan State Spartan color theme, everyone on campus knows where the scooters are coming from - Campus Scooter!

“We chose Custom Sticker Makers because of the quality, price and the customer service,” said Colin. He notes that native Michigander and Infamous Network Co-Founder ( CSM’s sister company), Jon Vander Pol, is also a longtime friend. Colin carries Infamous Network's line of Root Concepts stickers at Campus Scooter, "I remember when they were starting out with this sticker business, Jon would come over with new stickers all the time, so when we started Campus Scooter, I looked him up and he told me about Root Concepts. We found that the Root Concepts stickers were a perfect fit for Moped Bumper Stickers and that Custom Sticker Makers was a perfect fit for creating stickers of our logo. We couldn't be any more satisfied with the stickers and the customer service."