Matt Love has been an Ottawa Senators fan for as long as they’ve been around but was never really impressed by official Senators gear. He wanted something with more personality, something that showed the true character of some of his favourite Sens.
He got an artist friend to create the ’stache and it took off like crazy. Soon after, other artists came to him, offering their own designs for Senators players t-shirts, and that’s how The 613’s Boys of Winter line was born.
What was a first a quest to create more appealing sports apparel expanded organically, over the course of a few months. Wanting to support local artists, Love decided to make The 613 – a sort of marketplace where local artists could share their designs. “I’ve got a number of friends that are artists and would love to live off of their art. This is a small way of making their designs available to a larger community.” Love takes on the risk of printing the t-shirts and artists receive commissions based on their sales. Thus far, t-shirt designs by Marc Adornato, Dan Martelock, Andrea Emery and The Joynt are for sale with other artists coming on board shortly. All t-shirts are printed in Ottawa.
Photo courtesy of Matt Love.
“I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment,” admits Love. His apartment’s become a little warehouse and the realtor-by-day turned entrepreneur-by-night “can’t believe how quickly business has picked up.” Surely, the Sens playoff success has had something to do with it, but word of mouth and social media have helped make The 613 Ts a hot ticket. “In the end, I guess Ottawa’s a big small town. Once someone does something interesting, everyone knows about it.” Love and the artists involved have been careful not to infringe on any copyrights. He’s also planning to reach out to the players featured to make sure they support the designs. The initial word on the street is they like what they see, at least Doppelgänger does.
To this day, the great majority of the products Love has sold have gone to Ottawa homes but he’s shipped t-shirts to Australia, the Yukon, Thunder Bay and other unlikely destinations.
If this thing keeps growing, Love is thinking of creating two marketplaces; keep the one focusing on harnessing local talent and another that expands the hockey swag to possibly include other NHL markets. But that’s for the future.
Currently, the Ts are available via The613.com Shopify store, Lieutenant’s Pump and select Canadian Tire locations in the city. However, one lucky Apt613 reader could get a free tshirt! Let us know in the comments which is your favourite The 613 tshirt and we’ll hook you up. Contest ends Sunday at 10 pm.
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