Greatmats Rubber Flooring Accommodates Ice Skates at St. Croix Sports
HUDSON, Wis., December 31, 2019 (Newswire.com) - Hockey is a thing of passion for those living in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It makes sense for someone living on the border of those two states to feed that passion. That’s why Hudson, Wisconsin, resident Sean Coffey started St. Croix Sports in 2014 and equips his retail facility with Greatmats rubber flooring.
This sporting good store offers equipment and apparel for everything from football to baseball, softball to lacrosse. But hockey is the specialty.
“We have a large focus on hockey,” Coffey says, noting that come the fall of the year St. Croix Sports sharpens a lot of skates - up to 100 pairs a day. “That’s a main part of our business in the fall - skate sharpening, skate repair, skate sales, stick sales, apparel sales - from different universities to colleges to high schools to youth programs.”
As is the case in most retail environments, when he set up his business, he found himself with concrete floors. But concrete and ice skates don’t mix.
“You can’t walk on skates on concrete,” he said. “It would damage the steel on the bottom of the skates, potentially even the boot. It would just destroy the steel. So you need a rubber flooring, plastic flooring or real ice.”
Recognizing that those last two options aren’t a good fit for a retail environment, he began price shopping online for rubber flooring and found Greatmats.com to have better pricing than everywhere else and opted for Greatmats' 3/8-inch thick rubber flooring rolls.
“The installation of it was very easy - no gluing, just unroll the mats,” he said.
Coffey also noted, “It doesn’t damage the steel at all.”
An added benefit that he hadn’t considered was the ease of cleaning.
“It was very easy to clean with a mop and soap and water,” he said. “That’s been a big bonus for us. So far, in six years ... it hasn’t changed a bit. It holds up very well to foot traffic and actual kids walking around in skates off and on.”
In fact, it worked so well that St. Croix Acceleration - an adjacent business focusing on performance training for high school, college and professional athletes - including for hockey - ordered the same rubber flooring for its facility in 2017.
“They have kids walking around on it, running on it, standing on skates,” Coffey said. “It’s held up very well. You can’t even notice that people walk on skates. It doesn’t chip away. It doesn’t dent.”
In addition to the great rubber flooring he received, Coffey says Greatmats’ customer service was of equal quality.
“I have nothing but a positive experience with Greatmats,” Coffey says. “Everything they told me would happen happened. It was delivered on time. They said it would be easy to lay down, and I was nervous about that. But in reality, it was very easy to install the flooring on the floor inside my store.”
Source: Greatmats
