First sustainable ultralight hockey stick coming to the market in 2023
Initially, we aimed to bring the first sustainable hockey stick to the market in December 2022. We’re excited to share that we’ve now postponed this date to early 2023. Why? Because we want it to be the best possible product for you and the environment.
Where we started
Walking into a big local hockey shop, looking for an affordable and eco-friendly wood hockey stick for my 5 years old I was soon updated by the salesperson that nowadays they only offer pricy composite sticks also for youth players….this kicked off the idea of bringing a sustainable, affordable hockey stick to the market while not compromising on performance so youth, junior and senior (amateur) players have fun to play their favorite sport. This is what we at Good Wood Hockey are striving for over the last ten months.
As a first finding, we quickly realized that large hockey brands neglect the relevance of their environmental footprint and seem to ignore the rise of eco-conscious consumers as they continue to manufacture sticks in China / Mexico under local labor conditions with long-distance transportation, built from non-renewable high energy-intensive materials — at the same time, mayor factories producing wood and hybrid sticks (wood sticks applying laminates at the sides and/or carbon tapes within) were closing all over Europe over the last decade as demand plunged.
We at Good Wood carry the hope that hockey sticks made from renewable resources, carefully selected local materials and produced under fair conditions in the EU while compensating for Co2 footprint provide a come-back proposition to hybrid sticks in Europe and North America, whilst keeping prices affordable.
After finalizing our high-level sustainability concept (sourcing, producing, packaging, impact) we contacted a small family-run stick manufacturer in the Czech Republic to organize test samples (both player and goalie sticks for all ages) of the product range we had in mind…to our surprise, they accepted the challenge and thanks to their outstanding craftsmanship and 20+ years of experience we ended up with perfectly balanced sticks and a discovery we think will change hockey stick industry norms and sets a new benchmark to hybrid hockey sticks. Additionally, the manufacture turned out to be more environmental friendly than we could have ever expected.
We are about to share an update on our visit, product innovations and testing results. Needless to say we are very happy with the results so far and look forward to starting delivering our sustainable sticks soon.
