Double Hockey Stix founder Lacey Conine went from 30 first-day sales to an NHL team partnership and over $12,000 in annual donations without paid advertising
Charlotte, North Carolina — October 9, 2026
Printful, a leading global print-on-demand and fulfillment company, has released a new success story profiling Lacey Conine, founder of the hockey fan apparel brand Double Hockey Stix. The feature traces how Conine, a 15-year retail veteran recovering from a traumatic brain injury, launched a small clothing line in 2023 to prove to herself that she could work again and grew it into a full-time business with a loyal community, a three-season NHL team partnership, and a built-in giving program.
From Recovery to Launch
Conine spent 15 years in retail, including a decade in upper management at a Seattle-based skateboard and action sports company, before a traumatic brain injury in 2020 left her bedridden for almost two years. A hockey game watched during her recovery introduced her to a community she quickly connected with, and she decided to start a small clothing brand built around hockey culture as an exercise for her healing brain.
According to the story, Conine already knew that print on demand existed but found the model intimidating while she was still recovering, estimating that learning the system took her three times as long as it might take someone else. She signed up for Printful around February 2023, ordered samples right away, gave herself months to get comfortable with the platform, and decided by June to build a proper website.
30 Sales on Day One
Launching at the start of the hockey season, Conine recorded roughly 30 sales on her first day as friends bought her designs, most of them inside jokes from the hockey community, and told other fans about the brand. Within two months of launch, an NHL team in her area reached out about a partnership, and she went on to produce merchandise for the team across three consecutive seasons.
Pricing proved the hardest part. Printful notes that it took Conine about a year and a half to understand margins and settle on a model that left her with at least a 50% margin. After testing $100 custom sweatshirts that her community did not buy, she kept her range at $50 to $60 and adapted to what customers wanted rather than where she hoped to take the brand, even as she chose premium blanks such as Comfort Colors custom shirts.
Community Over Advertising
Conine runs the business alone, having built her own Shopify store and handling every customer message and social media account herself. The resource highlights that nearly all of her growth has come from word of mouth rather than paid advertising; she tested Meta ads but found they did not deliver the results she wanted, and she credits her narrow hockey niche with sustaining the brand organically. She also enforces firm community rules, removing hate speech immediately and restricting comments to followers so the space stays welcoming for women, queer fans, people of color, and disabled fans.
Giving back is built into the brand. Last year Conine donated more than $12,000 to nonprofits, Black hockey leagues, and queer hockey leagues, and a mutual aid section on her website lists the causes she supports. Conine, who has ADHD and autism, says the flexibility of the model is what makes a full-time business possible: her mornings start with a couple of hours checking Printful, her website, and customer emails, with no fixed schedule on days when her body and brain are not aligned. She has since become a Printful affiliate and now walks new sellers through the same onboarding she once found difficult.
“Lacey’s story shows what this model makes possible: a full-time business built on her own terms, at her own pace, around a community that gives back,” said Davis Sarmins, Director of Growth Marketing at Printful.
About Printful
Printful is a global ecommerce platform and on-demand production partner that helps entrepreneurs and businesses create and sell custom products online. Through in-house production, fulfillment services, ecommerce integrations, and design tools, Printful enables brands to launch and grow without holding inventory.
