25-year-old man paying it forward

Neechie Gear aims to offer quality clothing on top of supporting young local athletes.

Netmaker said the word “Neechie” is a Cree slang word that can be used towards a friend with the meaning “how are you friend.”

“It really fits well into our clothing concept because we’re creating a sense of friendship in the clothing, at the same time we’re helping the youth through sports teams, bursaries, promoting positive role models, so it’s just a great fit with our brand right now,” Netmaker said.

Netmaker has always been involved with sports growing up and sports have been very empowering in his life.

He started Neechie Gear as a full time student at the University of Saskatchewan, where he studied education.

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t enrolled in sports, so I wanted to create a clothing line that would also give back to the youth somehow, to empower them with how it’s affected me. That’s why I say we create our own sports teams, bursaries and all that stuff,” Netmaker said.

“I totally went 360 from where I was going to go and I entered business plan competitions, I won some cash and the next thing you know I started Neechie Gear,” explained Netmaker.

In Prince Albert Netmaker tried a pop up location in Gateway Mall in November and December.

He said it proved to work really well for the market in the city, so he thought he might as well invest in the space.

He said it’s encouraging to see how much growth the store has had in the last few years which he’s using as inspiration to keep pressing forward, adding hearing all the positive feedback about Neechie Gear and how happy customers are with what he’s doing for the youth is rewarding.

“It’s all very encouraging, I can only see bigger and brighter things in the future for us,” Netmaker said.
Netmaker said his passion for this comes from how he was raised.

“I wouldn’t be as level headed today if I wasn’t raised properly. I personally grew up on a First Nation, right until graduation and I stuck with my roots and my culture and after leaving the reserve I went to school, I studied. I think that just having that sense of respect embedded in my head has really allowed me to make relationships with people, business people and customers,” Netmaker said.

He’s able to talk with anyone and he says that’s vital for business.

A lot of the inspiration for his business came from a childhood experience when he was in elementary school.

A friend of his noticed Netmaker was great at sports, but had always wondered why Netmaker wasn’t playing on the same sports teams as the friend. When his friend asked why, Netmaker told him it was because his family couldn’t afford the registration fees and had no means to travel to practices and games.

The friend in turn told his father about Netmaker’s situation and the family decided to help the young man by paying for the fees and driving him from the reserve to his practices and games.

“This all started a trend for me; it empowered me in a really positive way that it allowed me to play sports. Before [his family] left they even gave us a vehicle. I don’t know anyone who would ever do this. This vehicle allowed me and my three younger siblings to go and play in sports. Me and my younger sister got volleyball scholarships after high school … we both finished out university and my two younger siblings are just in their second and third year now,” Netmaker explained.

He feels if he didn’t have sports to empower him he wouldn’t be where he is today, he said he wouldn’t have gone through high school to university if it wasn’t for sports.

Looking to the future

He said the next step is to get the store off its feet and to bring in good management for the new location, so he can focus on the growth of the store.

“The reason why we are so successful today, we could have been any clothing brand … but the fact that we have a positive piece to our business, helping youth, that is the biggest advantage for us that we have over any competitor and we’re already established with that,” Netmaker said.

“I think that’s just on trend right now, you got to help others in order to get some business at the same time.”

Netmaker even went as far as to set up his own non-profit organization called the NG Athletics Club Incorporated.

“I wanted to be in control of our own sports teams, how we manage them, who we’re going to sponsor, instead of just dishing out cash to different local random sports teams. So I created our own non-profit that we fund. We actually in the middle of actually giving a percentage of our last year’s profits towards a sports club,” Netmaker said.

Right now Netmaker is coaching an under-18 boys’ volleyball team and he’ll use some of the money from the non-profit to help the team pay for registration fees.

His long term goal is to help any youth he can take part in sports.

“I don’t want kids to have to struggle to play sports … that is the biggest thing. You solve that problem, you solve so many life problems down the road,” Netmaker said.

“It’s paying it forward; it’s the right thing to do. It’s in my nature to do these good things and I think it be wrong for me not to do it that way. I would honestly feel kind of greedy if I was just making money all the time with it instead of helping with what I can.”

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid

by Sarah Wallace

25-year-old man paying it forward

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