Our campaign reveals the Low-Bow version of our Crown Hockey stick. Supporters can back us to receive the Crown Low Bow as a reward.
We really want to change the hockey industry by updating the level of technology within sticks, our kickstarter campaign is a great way for the passionate players to get behind the Crown movement and become part of the community pushing hockey forward. Please share our campaign as much as possible.
Please take a look below and check out the Crown Low-Bow from every angle in 3D:
As some of you may have seen on our social media we are producing a Crownwear range. This is mainly because we did not feel there was much hockey apparel available, there are only a few brands, in our opinion, that take the apparel side of hockey seriously. There isn't much choice and no brand designs hockey specific clothing (apart from international team's kits). Hopefully we can add a third option, we are keeping the look of Crownwear clean and sophisticated, and as always we are keeping players in mind designing clothing specifically for the hockey market.
We also felt that hockey apparel has been very male focused, which is odd as in most countries the ratio between men's and woman's hockey participation is around 50/50. In England the ratio is 52% ladies and in the USA its a massive 95% ladies. We will have just as many ladies focused items as we will men's.
We will update our website shop page as soon as we can. We will be offering players the option to pre-order some Crownwear (hopefully in-time for Christmas).
SPONSORSHIP
Some of you may also know that we are in the process of adding a sponsorship page to our website. We have always been so focused on the production and development of our Crown sticks that we had not consider sponsorship, however due to an overwhelming number of players emailing in asking for sponsorship we felt compelled to create a sponsorship page.
[please keep an eye out for a change to our website]
At Crown we do not have a marketing budget, instead of spending money on marketing we prefer to spend funds and efforts on continuously improving our sticks, we are very focused on our products. Due to our product lead ethos sponsorship spaces are incredibly limited, we are only going to offer sponsorship to player who are incredibly passionate about hockey and willing to, not just push Crown forward as a brand but also hockey as a sport.
I would like to invite all of you following the blog to apply for sponsorship.
Yesterday we had the opportunity to attend the Advanced Engineering show in Birmingham, needless to say that what we saw filled us with a lot of excitement.
The composites industry in the UK seems to be constantly moving and evolving and we feel that by attending events like these and talking to people at the forefront of innovation, we can continue to put the best technology available into our sticks.
We are always working with people within composites and have discovered how to use materials best for our own applications. By learning about this and conducting research in this area we want to be able to return our knowledge to the industry.
It's interesting to see the kind of things that can be applied to multiple uses and hope to be working closely with some more experts in the future. We all left overflowing with ideas for technologies new and old. It's amazing to be part of a growing field of technology.
A few weeks ago, we paid a visit to Sheffield Hallam Univeristy who were conducting some tests on our Crown sticks. It was great to see the testing first hand.
During testing we used a Phantom high frame rate camera, 2,000 frames a second, to film a slow motion slap shot.
Throughout the last 3 years we have been trying our best to find previous testing reports undertaken on field hockey sticks, frustratingly there are only a handful of published papers regarding field hockey sticks, we need to discover more. We believe that no one has ever seen a slow motion hockey stick hit. And here it is!:
For us it makes for extremely interesting viewing, as we are manufacturing our own Crown sticks in-house we can now make changes to future ranges so that sticks flex in the correct place for optimum power and for comfort.
Apart from the slow motion videos, and the data gathered from these videos, we also collected player feedback as the ball was hit. The feedback was the same as we received during our UK tour, once again Crown sticks were said to be the most comfortable to hit with. By continuing to conduct pioneering research and further testing we believe we can continue to get better and better, it is also extremely rewarding to confirm that all of the care we have taken into the design and modernisation of the manufacturing process is paying off.
We are learning all the time and we will keep you in the loop.
Recently, we've been trying to expand our range, something that has already begun by including two new types of grip. But we want to keep going and add more.
This is why we have started to design a clothing range. We are currently hard at work to come up with some really unique and interesting ideas, as well as trying to keep true to our brand and get as much of it made in the U.K, as possible.
We all like a touch of class here so it'll be interesting to see what we end up with. If you have an item of clothing you'd like to see, leave a comment or send me an email at matt.m@crownhockey.com and we'll try to make it a reality.
We always love working on new projects like this and are excited to see what comes of it.
We have recently been able to add a new shammy grip to our range. We were fortunate enough to get them finished here in the U.K. and got a chance to film the process first hand.
It's always refreshing to see how many experts in their field we have available so close to us and the level of quality we can achieve in our products by being able to interact with these professionals.
Here's a quick clip of the process:
Hope you guys all try them out and let us know what you think!
Matt.M @ Crown
Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Hi All,
Thanks for completing our survey about 'What do you want to know about your stick?' last month. We collected all the responses and put together the results for you to see below:
A Bit about You:
What you would like from Us:
We've listened to your responses so our first priority is getting to know more about what people think of our stick. We'll be doing another Crown Hockey Tour like last season for you to have a go with the stick. If you would like to get your club/school/uni involved send us an email and have a look at last seasons Tour!
We're currently working on how to tell you more about the Power,Vibration and Durability of the stick as our main priorities. We will keep you updated with our progress!
We are very rapidly approaching the production of all the black-carbon kickstarter sticks, needless to say we are extremely excited to see what we have been working towards making this whole time, become a reality.
Spraying the coating on our Hockey sticks
We are fortunate enough to have people all over the world interested in our sticks with some being sent out to America today as well as all over Europe and Oceania. We are currently looking at getting in all the best shops across the world so if you have a shop in mind for your country or region of England please don't hesitate to say and you could see our sticks popping up very soon, email matt.m@crownhockey.com with your suggestions.
Some of the Crown Hockey sticks to be shipped abroad
For the last couple of weeks we have invested some time into describing awesome features of the mid-bow Crown Hockey Stick. Our aim is to make sure you know exactly what you're looking at and to make your own judgments. We know as hockey players ourselves how difficult it is to understand the design features of sports equipment when research online, what it actually means to us and how it can effect our game; and we aim to bridge this gap for viewers on our website.
Stay classy hockey fans and we look forward to hearing from you.
We have BIG news, the first few Crown Sticks have been posted!
They are officially out and in the hands of players. It has been a hugely ambitious project and we have certainly selected the most difficult route possible, but it is the route with the highest reward. It would have been easy to go over to Pakistan and produce yet another brand with different graphics, but that's not how we roll at Crown. Developing a new manufacturing process and producing all Crown sticks in England has been beyond challenging, incredibly technical but enjoyable, I hope those lucky enough to get their hands on a Crown stick enjoy using it as much as we have enjoyed making it.
Let's hit the hockey world by storm and continue to push hockey forward.
Best Regards from,
Evan, Matt and Matt M @ Crown
All the best from the Crown Team
Thursday, 25 June 2015
Hi Everyone
My name is Victoria and I'm new to Crown Hockey. I'm an Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Bath. I captained the Bath Uni 2s this season and played for Team Bath Buccaneers 1st Team.
My role at Crown is to test our sticks so we can show you how good they are and help everyone understand the benefits of our unique manufacturing technique. We want to know what kind of testing you want to see, so please help us by filling out our short survey here: Performance Testing Survey
Please feel free to contact me at victoria@crownhockey.com if you have any great ideas or want to find out more.
Here at Crown, as you can probably tell, we've been getting really into the Hockey World League and watching as many games as we can.
Its been remarkable to see the level the players are at this year and watching the Great British women's team play has filled us with a lot of confidence in the team going forward, they have been the highlight of the tournaments for us, especially the incredible play of young Sophie Bray.
Sophie Bray, our player of the tournament so far. Photo from FIH
Today GB play South Africa in what we hope will lead them into the semi-finals. This promises to be the hardest test for the girls yet with South Africa being ranked 13th in the world currently.
From a personal perspective these championships seem to have really been taken into 2015. The FIH twitter has been posting replays of the goals and other key events, virtually the instant they happen. This seems to me like they are really investing in Hockey for the future and this is great for the sport.
It's always refreshing to see things moving in the right direction and we are all looking forward to seeing the men play in Antwerp next week.
When the World Hockey league semi-finals in Argentina recently finished, we decided to put an infographic together for those of you that may have missed it or just want more.
My name is Bernardo Fernandes, I am a professional Hockey coach originally from Portugal but living and coaching in the Netherlands. I am part of the European Hockey Federation Top Coaches Program and author of the Hockey blog www.self-pass.com where I write my own coaching publications and invite other International coaches or players to contribute.
Self-pass has many guest bloggers including England international Susannah Townsend
My life revolves basically around what is happening inside a hockey pitch and while I don’t consider myself an expert regarding sticks manufacturing or specs, I accept the invitation from Crown Hockey and will have a go about my preferences in this regard.
It is difficult to give a general appreciation about an ‘ideal’ stick as different positions, players characteristics and game level demand a different type of stick but personally I always looked for a ‘balanced’ stick in terms of weight and bow. Being a youth hockey educator I also believe it is important, especially in early development stages (until 16/17 years old), that players are not raised with extremely light/heavy sticks or exaggerated curved sticks as that can have a very negative influence in the mastering of some core technical basics as the hit or flat passing.
"I also like a stick with a reasonable ‘wide’ and ‘open’ hook to allow a better backhand control."
When I try a new stick the first things I notice are the weight distribution (if the stick is evenly balanced) and the ‘touch’ and by touch I mean ball tension feeling, then I also like a stick with a reasonable ‘wide’ and ‘open’ hook to allow a better backhand control.
If we attend to the international level we realize that players are using more and more an extensive grip area as especially for different type of receivings (mainly in a more static body positions) the right hand is getting lower, in the other hand I dislike this recent habit to overload the grabbing area of the stick with 2 or 3 grips in order to make it thicker (and eventually prevent ball vibration) as I believe this affects the grabbing - the bigger and larger is the volume your hand need to hold it and the less movement ability you have mainly in rotation situations.
The amount of passing and shooting with the backhand blade in the modern game tell us that this area of the stick has become fundamental and must be is properly reinforced.
In terms of design I like a sharp, minimalist design with some colour details especially to differentiate collections or models.
I understand Crown Hockey efforts trying to produce a new hockey stick with an innovative manufacturing method, a stick that will have less vibration during the impact with the ball and I hope you can succeed and eventually bring stick manufacturing to a different level.
Trainings will be funnier and players (mainly in the winter) will appreciate to smash some balls without an uncomfortable shiver running along their bones!
