Calgary-based Gear Valet is looking to define itself as the Uber of sports-equipment cleaning – especially smelly hockey gear – with a relaunch ahead of the NHL playoffs. The startup’s new campaign, “Bench the Stench,” developed by creative agency Trigger, serves as a humourous entry point to the company’s pickup-cleanup-and-drop-off service.
“It’s one of those ideas that you’re kind of like, ‘how is this not already happening,’” Geoff Hardwicke, president and partner at Trigger, tells strategy.
Gear Valet – originally known as Equipment Valet – was created by Tim Morrish in 2023 just as the self-described serial entrepreneur’s three children were getting to the age where their hockey gear really began to reek.
“It kind of clicked that smelly hockey gear is probably an issue for everybody,” Morrish tells strategy. “It hit me that people care more about convenience than anything else. So I had the notion of it’s not just about cleaning hockey gear, it’s about doing it for families that are busy and on the go. You know, hockey and carving out time enough just to go for a skate for an hour a week, it’s hard enough for a lot of people.”
The business started as a small team running around the Calgary area picking up and dropping off gear at homes and arenas in the Calgary area. Gear Valet sends sweaty equipment through an industrial washer to eliminate smells and a Sani Sport ozone-cleaning machine to remove bacteria in a process that Morrish says is similar to NHL cleaning procedures.
As the business began to grow, Morrish says he looked for ways to expand its reach and eventually crossed paths with the creative team at Trigger, which took on the rebrand on a pro-bono basis with the agreement that the agency would have full creative control.
Trigger pitched the rename to Gear Valet, a more specific moniker that improves SEO while also leaving the door open for potential expansion into other sports like skiing, rugby and football.
“When they came back with Gear Valet, I almost fell off my chair. And right from that first meeting, they had all of the concepts and framework,” Morrish says. “And so, on the spot, I changed the name, registered the trademark to Gear Valet and off we went with trying to actually put all those awesome ideas they had to pay off the creative and the vision.”
The rebrand was conceived and executed this past winter and launched last week with a set of three videos that feature a referee creating his own rulebook to penalize players for various personal-hygiene infractions. Trigger also delivered a new logo as part of the identity update.
The creative uses a casual and homegrown understanding of hockey’s culture to differentiate from a sport in which much of the branding emphasizes ambition and high-level skill.
“Everybody, when they come to do business with hockey, is really focused on the competitive excellence, performance angle of it,” Morrish says. “And so that’s going to be kind of phase two of the journey with the Trigger team. First is getting the brand out there so people can at least know it, call it the Uber, Lyft brand play. Then really starting to speak to how hockey really is for everybody and that’s what we fully believe as an organization, and what we’re here to support.”
“Bench the Stench” is rolling out via Gear Valet’s social channels and through local partnerships with community arenas and sports organizations across Alberta.
