Something Inked (asi/466856), an iPROMOTEu (asi/232119) affiliate, is responsible for sourcing, printing and delivering thousands of giveaway shirts for the NBA and NHL, often with extremely tight turn times. “We tell clients there’s nothing we can’t handle,” says Bill Feldberg, vice president of business development. Something Inked first started in 2012 with gameday giveaways for the Memphis Grizzlies basketball team and the NHL’s Nashville Predators, and continued to make in-roads from there.

“Sports is a small world,” says Feldberg, “so once people are promoted and move around, you can piggyback on the built relationship to expand your business. We work with the teams during the regular season and then hope they make the playoffs. You might have quite a few in the playoffs or just a couple, but you have to keep nurturing those relationships.”

Not to mention the company has hundreds of other client orders to be processed at the same time as the playoffs, so they have to be certain those are being cared for as well. “We can’t say to them that they’re less important,” says Feldberg. “We want to keep an even keel all year round.” It helps to have an ownership team – comprised of Feldberg, Todd Schneiderman, David Schneiderman (Todd’s father) and Oliver Landry – that has a shared vision, and Feldberg is quick to credit everyone for the work they’ve been able to do. “We all have a niche,” he says. “It takes a team to do this.”

In recent weeks, Something Inked has been busy printing thousands of NBA playoff shirts with very short turnaround times. Once the apparel arrives at an arena before the match-up, event staff will either hand them out, or, if possible, place a shirt over each seat; while it takes significantly more time and manpower, it creates an arresting effect for spectators as they arrive. One recent order of shirts was arranged in such a way that they re-created the team’s larger-than-life logo on both sides of the arena; another was printed with blacklight ink, creating a striking effect when the main lights were extinguished in the excitement before tip-off.

As they pull on their new apparel and cheer on their team, hyped-up fans often don’t know how much effort went in to making sure those shirts were there waiting for them. “We’ve run into every bad scenario possible, but we absolutely cannot miss a game, so we’ve figured out how to make it happen,” says Feldberg. “If it means renting a U-Haul to drive to a broken-down semi, unloading the shirts and taking them to the arena ourselves, we’ll do it.”

It’s a must-do approach that hasn’t gone unnoticed by iPROMOTEu. Ross Silverstein, president & CEO, first met the owners in 2011. While they were facing business challenges at the time, they showed potential for expansion and affiliated with iPROMOTEu the following year. “Their growth over the years has been unparalleled, more than 500% in just four years,” says Silverstein. “It’s a remarkable success story, and the entire team, especially senior leadership, all have important roles and work extremely well together. iPROMOTEu has always valued Something Inked as an affiliate and we are proud to have helped contribute to their growth and success over the past several years.”