196 - From Hockey Player to Forbes 30 Under 30: Building Swift Hockey

Speaker A: Electric assets. Electric assets. This is Entrepreneurs Expose, the podcast. We speak to all kinds of founders and creators doing amazing things in business and beyond. I'm your host, Adam Laventer. Today I'm in conversation with Zachariah Thomas, founder and CEO of, uh, Swift Hockey. Zach is a former competitive hockey player. He saw firsthand how expensive the sport has become for families. So at just 19, he set out to challenge some of the biggest brands in hockey by building high performance equipment at a more accessible price point. Since then, Swift Hockey has sold tens of thousands of sticks, generated millions in sales, secured a deal on Dragon's Den, expanded across North America, and has earned Zachariah a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30. In this episode, we discussed the rising cost of youth hockey, why participation is declining in some markets, what it takes to build a challenger brand in a category dominated by giants like Bauer and ccm, and how Zechariah is using entrepreneurship to make the game more accessible. So with that intro out of the way, here is that great conversation with Zechariah Thomas. Enjoy. I think actually the relocation thing is a pretty interesting place to start. I'm still based in Toronto, Canada. You're from Toronto, you started the business here in Toronto and now you've moved the business physically south of the border. Could you just highlight, like, how that transition happened?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, starting, you, uh, know, I grew up. Everything I've done was in Toronto. For the most part. I grew up in Toronto, I played hockey in Toronto. I kind of started my career, career and everything in that Toronto area. And it's always been a thing for me to keep growing the business. And as our business was growing, our market consistently became us. Like us loved our product and we were doing, still to this day, we do about 80, 80% U.S. sales. And as soon as that tariff situation happened in early January, as of last year, especially with the DE exemption limit where we couldn't ship goods under 800 bucks and uh, all the E Commerce guys, that was like a big, big problem. So, yeah, that was kind of the situation we had there. And then we opened that new. We opened a New York facility to kind of help with bringing a product directly into the US and distributing from there. And over the last four months or so, we, we moved down to Tampa, uh, Florida.

Speaker A: How easy is it to relocate a business to the US Extremely difficult.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was a lot. It took, it took us. You know, I would say it took us two months, but it was, it was a lot of work.

Speaker A: So for those that aren't familiar With Swift. What's the origin story and what's been the growth trajectory over the past three years?

Speaker B: I started playing hockey at the age of 10 years old and always consistently seeing a problem, seeing an issue in the community where all these legacy brands were charging absurd prices for hockey sticks, hockey equipment, and keeping kids out of the game. And growing up in, where I grew up in a small city in Oshawa, it was one of the biggest plants down there. Closed down the GM plant where they used to make cars. They used to fund a, uh, majority of the city at that time. And I kept seeing kids break sticks, unable to afford them, unable to afford hockey, and even unable to afford lunch and everything at school. It was always the exact same problem, like sticks were too expensive, they kept breaking and nobody, nobody could afford them.

Speaker A: Ultimately, youth hockey participation in Canada is down materially. Like I was looking at some data before we started recording today, the participation in Canada peaked at roughly 520,000 kids or so in 2010. We're talking enrollment and by 2022 that number dropped to 412,000. So obviously there's probably a number of factors at play, but cost has to be factor number one here.

Speaker B: Cost has definitely been the thing that keeps kids out. And I think there's so many other factors other than just equipment. That's just the way we're kind of trying to find our solution where the equipment factor is like nobody understands that the high end hockey stick right now is 4 to $500.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And they're breaking 12 to 15 times a season. And uh, for like other people that play sports, they comprehend that just that stick cost is going to fund someone's full soccer season a lot of the times. And hockey is just going to keep dying as a sport is the best way to put it. Unless there's a solution.

Speaker A: Yep. And you mentioned it's sort of dominated by industry giants. Right. Bower, ccm, um, True Warrior. These are some big names, some big manufacturers. How do you go up against these folks and where do you play in the sandbox?

Speaker B: It's difficult for sure. Like we're kind of, we're the bad guys. I'd like to say we're kind of going up against some of those, some of these legacy brands that's been here for almost 100 plus years at this time, trying to chip away at their market. And the way we chip away at their market is by giving a more affordable good. And by giving a more affordable good, we hurt them in many different ways. We're making even better product than what they're making at a fraction of the cost. And people are starting to choose us, uh, over. Over those big legacy brands.

Speaker A: You start to poke away at this problem. Eventually you find product, market fit. But what's the first thing you uncovered when you go and you look under the hood of how these big names are manufacturing these sticks?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of my business background is I like to say I was, I was a born entrepreneur. Like, I was always that kid at recess, uh, selling bracelets, hats, doing whatever I could to get a couple bucks. And when Covid happened, I was kind of. I was at a loss in a sense. Like, I had no hockey, I had no schedule, I had no friends, I couldn't see anybody. And I turned all of my focus into business. M. That was kind of my second passion other than hockey. So I went and I spent months and months reading books, spending time on YouTube University is what I call it. Learning everything I possibly could end up doing a lot of dropshipping, E Commerce during those times, that was kind of where I was. And I learned a lot about business. I failed so many businesses. I was successful in a couple businesses. The amount of times I failed is kind of brought me to start Swift Hockey and understand the manufacturing side, understand how to deal with suppliers and how to run a brand.

Speaker A: Is it true that a lot of these names are all using a single point manufacturer for these sticks and just slapping a different brand label on them? Like, what is the truth behind this industry?

Speaker B: To sum it up, there's only about five factories overseas that make hockey sticks. There's about, I would say, seven different decent sized brands in the industry. If, if that sums it up a little bit, where there's. There's a lot of overlap, there's a lot of things that we do differently that other companies do differently as well to try and make the product better. But a lot of it is, it does come down to that branding aspect for sure. What Life is hard, but finding a really great podcast makes the days go by so much easier. Hi, my name is Blue Talisma. I'm a writer, an emotional intelligence coach, and the host of Humanize with Blue Talisma, a podcast where we believe that when you humanize everyone in the room, a great conversation is almost guaranteed. Join us every week here on Electracast as me and my guest co hosts unpack big topics and interview even bigger personalities with a sense of humor and a dash of mischief. If you're looking for a new best friend in your head, we've Got you covered.

Speaker A: Electric assets. Are you doing differently the way that these sticks are constructed? Are they the same? Are they better? Are they slightly worse? Like, how are you making this happen at half the margin?

Speaker B: We, we don't cut any corners. I think that's like the coolest thing about us. And I make. I do everything we possibly can not to cut any corners. When I first started the company, the way I kind of pitch it is this was a company made by Player for players. It's one of the few companies I would say, that are, uh, probably the only company I would say, that actually has that aspect to it. Similar to Phil Nike, where he made a running shoe for himself. He made a running shoe to perform better. So that was kind of our thing is where I made a stick for myself and I couldn't cut any corners. Like, I was playing at a high level during that time. I didn't want to have a stick giving up on me. And I do whatever I could to make that stick. And honestly, we just, we really don't charge as much as the competitors on the markup side. Our strategy, our model is completely different than any other competitors where we're almost strictly direct to consumer online, which is really weird in the hockey industry where a player needs a stick, they have to almost run to the store the next day.

Speaker A: Typically, you're not in any retailers to date.

Speaker B: We're in about. We're in a couple of retailers, but primarily we're direct to consumer online. That's. That's how we've been able to hold our margin pretty decently.

Speaker A: How do you fix the supply chain side? So I was watching some of your YouTube videos and you were out of stock, like constantly. The minute a shipment came in. I mean, these six were gone, like within minutes.

Speaker B: We're working on that problem every single day. I think it's. It's a good and a bad problem. Our demand keeps rising, but our inventory keeps rising as well. But the demand is just rising at a much higher rate.

Speaker A: And you go on Dragon's Den, right? At some point you sign sort of a quote unquote, a deal with one of the Dragons. You know, this is the Canadian version of Shark Tank for those US Listeners that might not know what we're talking about, but you get a deal done with Wes hall and later on it doesn't come to fruition or you decide to reject the deal.

Speaker B: We got three offers on TV and we didn't hear from any Dragon during that time for about almost a year after the show was taken so by that time the show aired we were, we were at a whole different position within our company and we ended up turning down the deal at that time. And that was uh, obviously one of the best things we would have done. I would have gave up such a large chunk of the company that earlier that early when, now we have double, tripled our valuation during that time as well. So we went on Dragons in, we ended up turning down that deal and we kind of sat there and processed like what are we going to do now? Like how do we fix this problem? And everything I've done is kind of that founder in me is. I've just been. We cut back everything. We worked out of a storage unit, 500 square foot storage unit forever. Like trying to keep growing out of it. Like we're trying to stay as small as we possibly can and. But yeah, that cash injection, we've had no cash to date injected into our company. Always looking to fund inventory. But uh, the way we kind of got our start is from my past E Commerce background has been able to kind of fund swift.

Speaker A: But you're not drop shipping, you're committing inventory. No, we're not. Right. You're warehousing inventory. So that still takes, I mean you are funding these purchase orders long before the revenue side catches up. So ultimately this becomes just a cash flow game.

Speaker B: You're dead on. It's definitely just a cash flow game for us where we're trying to, we're trying to stay nimble. Like we don't have one stick for every other company is buying them almost 10m to kind of sum it up.

Speaker A: I would assume though now you're three years in, your sales have consistently grown, people know your brand. It's a big disruptor in the space. Has this process gotten any easier for you in terms of potentially, I don't know, having a bank say yes or having new investors pop up or new angels say I'm interested in investing.

Speaker B: Yeah, we've had lots of people want to invest into the company. Not at uh, anything we'd be comfortable with giving up yet, but a lot of that cash injection side, it's, it's hard because we're under for a lot of the banks in Canada. That's kind of another reason why I'm out in the US now. Um, but we're under a certain threshold where if we were selling 10 million plus a year, it's very easy for us to get bank loans. And we're, we're still so young, so we're under. We don't have three, four years, five years of tax returns. We're always under the threshold.

Speaker A: It seems like, what is the end game for you?

Speaker B: I really don't want to sell. I think that's something that a lot of investors may not like. I want to see this through and win the game ultimately. And I believe that Swift can be not just within hockey. I think hockey is almost thinking small for us is where branching out to other sports and really trying to find every sport has the same problem. I've noticed every single sport that requires equipment has a very similar problem. And we can kind of be that brand to change sports as a whole.

Speaker A: And you're already venturing out, uh, you're into pickleball now. How are you choosing what categories to expand into?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's definitely been difficult. I think on the category side, it's honestly, we, we want to stick within carbon fiber goods, very similar to hockey sticks, where all of the equipment we're going to get into, which is pickleball, we're talking baseball a lot. All of these sports truly have the very same issues ultimately. Like, they're all carbon fiber goods. They're made in very similar factories and we have very same, similar components and we understand them a little bit better. So that's kind of where we started to branch out to first.

Speaker A: Can I assume that's because you can leverage your existing manufacturing relationships. Right?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: To expand into these additional categories or industries or sports? Yeah.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Very cool. How do you think about marketing? What's worked, what hasn't? Your YouTube channel has grown, your follower count has grown. You've done an amazing job, in my opinion, of just generating that organic awareness that feels like is almost like a necessity in brand building these days. How have you done it and what have you learned?

Speaker B: We're consistently building content, like, even within our whole organization. Right now we're, let's say 90, 90% marketing staff or content creators is the best way to put it. Where we're consistently making content, we're trying to adapt and we're trying to grow our brand in every single aspect. And ultimately we do a lot more posting than anyone else imagines. Even our LinkedIn presence is pretty decent as well. Where we want to just be everywhere. We don't have a designated channel that we're like, we want to go win the YouTube game. Like, we're everywhere and anywhere and we're posting more than anyone else.

Speaker A: Are you optimizing for views? Are you optimizing for clicks? Are you optimizing to drive Traffic to the Swift website and see people check out.

Speaker B: We optimize a little bit for views. I would say definitely a little bit for use. It's such a bad metric to go after a lot of the times, but we, we optimize a little bit for views sometimes. Like, sometimes we'll go a little bit on traffic as well. But the views aspects is something that. It's just an easy metric for us to follow and it typically correlates to traffic most of the time.

Speaker A: You've spoken openly. Just reading about this earlier, about initially not wanting to be the face of the brand because you were worried about how hockey consumers would react to a young black founder in the equipment space. Can you just expand on this?

Speaker B: Yeah, honestly, this was something that I never, Growing up, I never wanted to be the face of the company. And me just, I always, I always have a little bit of, I would say marketing in me where, like, that was always my major concern. Especially like going in, we didn't have funding, we couldn't pay ads, we couldn't afford influencers. And I just happened to be the face after a little bit. But like, most of hockey is not people that look like me. And just in, in general marketing, let's say we're doing ads like you want to show people that look like you. And that was always something we, we always tried to avoid is by using my face. And, uh, by time we went on Dragons Den, it was, I, I had no choice anymore. Like, I became the face of the brand. I couldn't do anything but be the face of the brand.

Speaker A: I mean, don't you think that's a bit of a blessing in disguise? I think it's absolutely a positive to have the actual founder be the face associated with the brand. I mean, this is what the market wants. Right? I think we're past the days of sort of the CEO or the founder hiding behind the brand. Right. People, consumers want to understand, like, what is the story behind this company? Who's the founder, who's running it, what are they about exactly?

Speaker B: I think the founder aspect of growth has been. It's been everything. Like, I think that's something that like a lot of founders are getting into is like trying, like, they need to be the face of the brand ultimately, like, the founders are going to be the cheapest person to be an influencer, um, especially when you're starting, like, I was our cheapest asset. And that's why we were able to leverage myself early days for thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of content because I was the cheapest asset that, uh, we. We could afford me is the best way to put it.

Speaker A: You were talking about that aspect of, you know, having a celebrity influencer, having somebody attached to the brand. When it comes to hockey sticks, would it be helpful to have Swift associate, I think, with, I don't know, some younger, up and coming NCAA players, some NHLers? Have you approached this? Have you spoken to players that are interested in getting involved?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, we. We're the mainstick provider for the PWHL or one of their main suppliers, so that was a really good partnership to help grow the female game as well. But the males game. We just signed our first athlete a couple months ago, Landon Heffley, that we're betting a lot on, uh, to do pretty well in this, uh, upcoming draft as well.

Speaker A: Nice. Where is he at now?

Speaker B: He's in the ushl and he's been using us for a while. A cool story about him is that he's using our retail stick.

Speaker A: Oh, really?

Speaker B: We don't make. Yeah, he has no name, no custom name on his stick. Like, he's just using our retail stick. And I think that that speaks a level on, like, what we're actually doing as a brand where he's like, we don't have to make anything custom firm, it's not wrapped. There's nothing to it. He's using our retail stick because we put so much effort into making such a good stick.

Speaker A: We can. We can pivot, I guess, into this conversation now or later, but I'm just curious to get your personal take on what's been happening with the upcoming 2026 draft. Toronto Maple Leafs, your home squad? Yeah. Sketchy or not sketchy? We got the first round pick in the upcoming draft in June. So rigged conversations aside, what's your take on what's been going on? And will the Maple leafs draft Gavin McKenna or do you think they'll take somebody else?

Speaker B: I think he is the best pick ultimately. But, you know, even. Even from our perspective, that's actually the last thing we wanted. Not I love Toronto and living in Toronto, but the. The competitor brand. Who has. Who has Gavin McKenna. He went to the. Arguably the biggest market in hockey. They couldn't have got a better win than that. He went to the biggest market in hockey, and obviously he's a really flashy player as well. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, so you start playing hockey at 10 years old and you rise through the ranks of minor hockey. What was your experience like as a player?

Speaker B: I loved every aspect about playing hockey. Waking up at 6:00am uh, having multiple practices a day, kind of going through that grind. I ended up starting at 10 years old and kept going, kept going through all the levels. Ended up playing a little bit of junior hockey. Major junior and uh, then retiring at minor pro. And that was kind of, that was kind of my hockey career. And I kind of almost touched every single level in about seven years or so.

Speaker A: Do you find time to put on the skates down in Florida?

Speaker B: No, no, not, not at all. Not at all though. You know, I honestly, I was one of those, it was kind of a weird thing where like a lot of athletes when they leave the sport, they, they miss it so much that they're, they need to play. Yeah, I have not, I have not touched the ice other than like doing content videos with their staff.

Speaker A: One of the interesting things is we were talking about sort of the participation numbers in youth minor hockey in Canada and having it go down over the past number of years. It's sort of a different story south of the border where hockey is actually growing pretty significantly in the US Specifically in some markets that you probably find surprising, including where you're at, which is Florida, one of the fastest growing hockey markets. So I wonder why that is.

Speaker B: They have different development programs. They really try and develop their players in ground, even on. When we're talking Olympic level. All of those players have played on that national development team for years and years. Canada M has nowhere close to that in their system. M and they're also a little bit more inclusive with playing. And even when it comes to Florida, for example, where I'm at the last, I'm m gonna say stat, I'm not 100. Sure. I would say like they've, they have won out of the last 10 Stanley Cups. They've won about 60% of them. Yeah. So they've definitely been growing as an organization. Hockey has a really big love around everywhere.

Speaker A: I have two sons that are both in the Toronto hockey system here and it's, I mean they just, they, they love it and so we support it. But it is incredibly expensive.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And the lens of like, if you, if you really want your kid to go to the best level, sometimes you have to pay even more for some of these teams. Like even the prep teams. 40, 50,000 a year, going up to 100. A lot of these times just to kind of give your kid a really good opportunity. It's unbelievable.

Speaker A: Okay, so let's go back to the product side and then we'll do some rapid fire. So how, what is the percentage of Your sticks that are sold on the actual Swift website. Is it north of 90 at this point and the balance is retail?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, dead on. Yeah. I would say 90 of our sales are online.

Speaker A: Got you. For retailers that are interested in the brand, but ne you don't necessarily have to or want to commit to a certain number of SKUs or units. Can you do some sort of consignment arrangement with these retailers? Is that a possible avenue to get your brand into more doors?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's definitely like, I think honestly we've had so many offers to be in some of the biggest retailers in North America, to be honest. And we have turned down a lot of those offers because it just, it has to be a right fit with who we're going to bring on as well. And we're just, we don't have the inventory ultimately like we, we won't be able to last a net 90 like that would destroy us. If they're asking for a million dollar PO and they have to do a net 90, like there's no way for us to fund that. So that's kind of been. We're trying to be really strategic with how we're being placed indoors over the last next little bit and trying to put certain SKUs indoors. That makes sense as well.

Speaker A: What did your participation in Dragon's Den do for the brand and the awareness of the brand? And rewinding back, would you have done that show anyway, even though you didn't take the deal?

Speaker B: I think Dragons Den was, it was such a weird experience for me where when the Dragons. The day the Dragon's Den episode aired, it was September 2023 roughly. And we were kind of, we were sitting there, we're watching the episode live and I have my phone in my hand and I'm expecting my phone to go absolutely insane insane because I was watching how a, uh, Shark Tank does it. And it wasn't that, it wasn't crazy. And I think our actual leverage from Dragon Ven that it gave us social proof that we're a legit brand, we're here to stay and there's a face to the name. And it took us months on months and months to really see leverage from us being able to say, oh, we're a legit brand now. And we were able to make a bunch of videos from the Dragons and that's where we actually saw the leverage.

Speaker A: Okay, Zachariah, let's do some rapid fire stuff. Who's the best hockey player you've ever seen live?

Speaker B: Jack Hughes and Quinn Hughes.

Speaker A: Nice what is the most overrated thing in hockey culture?

Speaker B: Most overrated thing in hockey. Everything I say. Toronto Maple Leafs.

Speaker A: One thing hockey parents overspend on and you can't say sticks.

Speaker B: Team fees.

Speaker A: Nice. What is the most underrated business? Skill Speed. What was the hardest year of your entrepreneurial journey?

Speaker B: 2026.

Speaker A: And what's one lesson hockey has taught you about business?

Speaker B: To do more than everyone else.

Speaker A: Cool, man. Well, look, I've been following the Swift story. I've been following you a lot on LinkedIn actually. That's an interesting channel for you. I don't know if you've gotten any interesting inbound, but I do follow your content there. So keep it up. Congrats on the three year success. Wishing you guys the best of luck as you go forward.

Speaker B: I appreciate that. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks for coming on.

Speaker B: Yeah, no problem.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening. If you got something out of today's episode, don't forget to share it or leave us a review. It goes a very long way. Entrepreneurs Exposed is brought to you by Axis Brands, an operator led partner helping consumer brands scale profitably on Amazon and Beyond. More@axisbrandsgroup.com that's a X I S Brands group.com and I'm your host, Adam Lavinter. Until next time, make today count with whatever it is you're working on. Electric Assets.

Speaker B: Hey, heard you like podcasts.

Speaker A: Well, check out Dollar Bets. Two sports guys with faces for radio

Speaker B: betting live money against each other on air.

Speaker A: That's Dollar Bets with a Z. Find us on the winner's edge. Electric Acid There's a change happening in the way we live, the way we work, the way we spend our money and make, uh, our decisions. We are evolving to be more conscious and interactions in a way that serves the world and makes it a better place. Welcome to the Ethical Evolution. The mission is simple. To spread stories of collective change that make the world a better place. Understanding that to create collective change, we need to be the change. It all begins with us. Electric Acid.