THE CROWN SHADOW SERIES

Hi everyone,

It has always been our aim to filter down some of technological improvements that we developed while perfecting The Crown Hockey stick into a more commercial priced stick. The Shadow series is the successful result of our efforts.

By implementing some of the know how learnt from creation the Crown stick we have been able to produce a piece of precision engineered piece of equipment for the players who are looking for a step up from the traditional composite hockey sticks on the market. 

Some of the Crown technologies and improvements that have been filtered down into Shadow series include; increased power to weight ratio. All Shadow series sticks are extremely powerful relative to their weight, all Shadow Crown sticks are below 546g (even up to 39 inches long).

Shadow sticks are also made using our far more durable manufacturing process, we believe Crown sticks are by far the most durable on the market and for this reason we will now be offering a 12 month warranty with all Crown sticks. We have also used the same Mid and Low bow shapes which have been designed and developed with the insight and feedback from 1000's of players from all over the world. 

All the Crown team are excited to have the shadow series now available internationally both in store and on our website; www.crownhockey.com 

Matt.M @ Crown

The Crown Low Bow has arrived

Today we have released our Low Bow version of The Crown Hockey stick. I know that a lot of players have been eagerly awaiting it's arrival, and I can assure you that we have been just as excited.

TAKE A LOOK AT OUR LOW BOW PAGE

I am delighted to say that throughout our testing the Low Bow has been received extremely positively, I believe that we have created something in it's own class, we have surpassed even our own expectations.

I would like to go over a few specific design features and attributes that the Low bow has to explain a little more about the stick:

MORE POWER
The vast majority of players first notice the power. When designing the Low-bow we knew that we needed to create a stick with unrivaled power, for fearsome strikes at goal. We have made many slight changes to the geometry of the Low-Bow, with power in-mind, different sections of the Low Bow are thinner and some sections are thicker, using CAD (computer aided design) analysis software we were able to experiment with changes to the geometry, virtually testing the effects that these changes had to the power of the Crown Low Bow. Throughout our comparison testing we are yet to find a stick that possesses more power.

THE SMOOTH GROOVE 

We have added a very subtle smooth groove to the Crown Low Bow's shaft. We know that some of you are fans of flicking grooves and some of you are not, the main feedback we received from the 'haters' of flicking grooves where that their control and sweeping hits were more difficult to preform well, and we agreed. We feel that other grooved sticks on the market are too extreme and so effect other parts of the game, our smooth groove is subtle enough to go unnoticed during regular play (it is 1.4mm deep) but when flicking is concerned it is far from ineffective. Being a Low Bow the Dragflick was a constant consideration during the design and testing process. Every mm of every curve and groove as been calculated to provide the best flicking experience, not to mention that we have selected the most best weight and balance point for drag flicking - 530g and a balance point of 395mm from the head (fully gripped and game ready)

15% LOFT ANGLE

  (the loft angle is measured as the angle the stick's face is from the straight line drawn from the handle)

Another instantaneous realisation that players have when experiencing the Low Bow is its awesome ability for aerials.
Our perfected loft angle coupled with our unique subtly concaved shaped face allows for a new level of control, when aerials and 3D skills are concerned, to quote a tester "you can perform things with the Crown stick that you simply can't with any other'.
We are particularly excited to see what skills can be achieved with the Low Bow.

There is so much more to explain but I shall leave the rest for you to experience for yourselves.
Get your hands on a Low Bow, and please let us know all of your thoughts.

We want to continue to improve Crown sticks and push the sport forward with new innovations.

All the best,

Evan @ Crown

evan@crownhockey.com

Crown TouchPads & the Crown Low Bow

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since our last post but rest assured we have been very busy. A few weeks ago we were fortunate enough to go to the 3M facility here in the U.K. and get a closer look at some of their technology.

             

Our main incentive for wanting to visit them was to add a new piece of technology to our range. The Crown TouchPad.

We have used these for a while on our sticks and it has taken us some time to work with 3M to release the TouchPad as its own product and now we can finally go ahead and tell you all about it.

The main use of the Crown TouchPad is as a way of giving players extra control, a little more grip on the ball goes a long way. It also helps to protect your stick and keeps it looking the best it can for as long as it can.
What's really unique about it is that it can be replaced, which is especially nice, to have as much grip as possible before that all important big game.


Our main focus for the past few months has been creating and producing our latest stick, the Low-Bow.

A mixture of madness and performance the Crown Low-Bow will be available in shops across the world and those can be seen here: www.crownhockey.com/Stockists

As always is the case, we have designed the stick with the player in mind, looking to bring as much technology as we can to the stick. After hearing the first bits of feedback from testing with players, we're certain that we have made something truly special. 

Hope you all get a chance to check out all the new stuff on the way!

Matt.M @ Crown

GUN VS HOCKEY STICK

Due to our own curiosity we wanted to find out what would happen if we were to test our Crown hockey stick to the extreme. After speaking to players it was suggested that durability and wear resistant fibre should be put to the test.

The most extreme, and fun, test that we discussed was to shoot a hockey stick with a shotgun to see how wear resistant and durable our fibre was. We also shot a few competitors sticks to see what we were up against.

The white fibre that you see on the Crown stick is our wear resistant fibre (normally we colour our resin with black pigment so that our Crown sticks have a black face, the fibre is naturally white). Our performed better than our competitors in two major ways.

1. Our Crown stick did not break at the handle. We were expecting the damage to be exclusively located on the face of the stick, but the force of the shot gun was so strong that are competitors sticks snapped at the handle.

2. The Crown stick's face took less damage. The carbon fibre underneath our unique fibre remained largely undamaged. Compared to the competitors sticks which punctured the fibre leaving the bullet wadding left lodged inside the sticks. In the picture below we removed the wadding to see the full extent of the impact made. 

[competitor's stick]

[We tested another Crown stick. This picture was taken after one shot, keeping all conditions consistent] 

We attempted to keep the tests as uniform as possible, shooting all sticks at a range 5 metres with a 24g round at a force of 1420 feet per second. Using the same shotgun for every shot.

Overall it was a great way to test (and prove) our sticks strength compared to others, as well as make something exciting and different for people to watch. 

Hope you guys enjoyed the video :) 

Matt.M @ Crown 

THE CROWN LOW BOW - kickstarter

Hello Everyone,

If you haven't seen it already please take a look at our Kickstarter.com campaign that we have recently launched:

http://kck.st/1Ypd7pI


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:

 

INTERACTIVE MODEL

Crown Low Bow by crownhockey on Sketchfab

 

LOW BOW FEATURES

http://kck.st/1Ypd7pI

 

Best Regards!

 

EVAN @ CROWN

CROWNWEAR & SPONSORSHIPS

CROWNWEAR

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. 

Please let us know your thoughts.

Evan @ Crown

Advanced Engineering Show 2015

Hello everyone,

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.

All the best,

Matt.M @ Crown