Christmas Eve was only a few days http://www.armacan.com/curtis-samuel-jersey-c-1_16.html away, but Kyle Rudolph still had something on his shopping list. He wanted to splurge on something real nice for himself.
So he texted Dan Gamache, who was sitting at a bar in Connecticut when his mobile phone started buzzing. It was late notice, but the big Vikings tight end was hoping to get a pair of holiday-themed cleats featuring, of course, his red-nosed namesake.
“I asked him if he wanted to do something for Christmas,” Rudolph said this spring. “And [Gamache] said, ‘I was hoping you were going to reach out to me.’ ”
Three days later, and just in time for the Vikings to make the trip to Green Bay to play the Packers on Christmas Eve, an overnight shipment arrived at Winter Park.
Rudolph, not knowing exactly what Gamache was going to deliver to him, tore open the box to find a pair of white cleats with the iconic cartoon version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer carefully hand-painted on the outside of each Nike cleat.
“It was cool,” said Rudolph, one of several Vikings players who laced up cleats from Gamache in 2016. “I was incredibly happy with the pair that I got from him.”
Many professional athletes and celebrities know that feeling, as do lesser-known sneaker enthusiasts who flock to Gamache for his creative custom shoe designs, whether they are painted on football cleats, basketball sneakers or casual kicks.
Gamache, a New York native who happens to be a Vikings fan, became an overnight sensation a few years back thanks to the social-media boom and a shout-out from the most famous basketball player on the planet. His http://www.cinemakolik.com/curtis-samuel-jersey-c-1_10.html breakthrough was preceded by a short-lived athletic career, art school and a string of unsatisfying sales jobs.
Gamache played college baseball for four years at three different schools, including the College of Saint Rose in New York in 2000. But a torn labrum on his left, throwing shoulder shredded any hopes he had of possibly playing professionally.
So he focused on his art, finishing his master’s degree in garment design at the State University of New York at Oneonta, where he said he pitched for one season.
About a year later, in 2002, Gamache read an article about someone creating custom shoes “and my competitive nature kicked in,” he said in a recent phone interview. He grabbed a pair of sneakers from his closet and descended into his mother’s basement to paint them. They were “really, really bad,” he says now. But he got a kick out of doing it.
“It just happened that the shoes were the new medium to work on, instead of paper or canvas or whatever,” said Gamache, who founded Mache Custom Kicks in 2004.
He gained popularity among sneakerheads when his designs appeared in magazines. But the shoe business was not paying his bills. “I was living off the dollar menu,” he said, while he was selling mobile phones or working the overnight shift at a school for autistic kids. He continued to paint sneakers, but it was more of a side hustle.
Gaining popularity
About seven years ago, Gamache took a job at a sneaker store that allowed him to create custom shoes under their roof. “That brought me out of retirement,” he said. And then social media exploded, propelling his Star Lotulelei Womens Jersey work into the mainstream.
In 2011, Gamache uploaded to Instagram, which he used as a photo-editing tool, a picture of a LeBron James model of Nike basketball shoes he had customized.
“I had no clue people were actually seeing it. I just thought it was a filter,” he said. “I posted pictures of my dog and stuff like that. Then I realized people were liking my pictures and I was getting followers. … It just kind of took off in popularity.”
With his design trending on social media, he auctioned off on eBay a dozen pairs of the custom LeBron shoes. The bids maxed out at $4,000 apiece, Gamache said.
Two years later, in 2013, James was asking Gamache to paint custom shoes for him. Pleased with the Ironman-themed pair Gamache designed for him, James thanked him by posting an Instagram pic. Gamache added about 17,000 followers overnight.
“That just kind of blew things open for me,” the 38-year-old designer said.
Gamache estimated that he sold between 500 and 600 pairs last year. They start at $300, and the cost increases based on the complexity of the design — similar, he says, to tattoo artists — and how much time Gamache has to deliver the goods. They give him a rough idea and a pair of white or black shoes and he takes it from there.
Gamache’s most high-profile customers include star athletes from the NFL, NBA and MLB, wrestlers from the WWE and famous rappers such as Kanye West and Wale.
“There are still times when I think, ‘This isn’t real life,’ ” he said. “I’ll go through my phone and see some of the names and I have to like pinch myself. It’s crazy.”
Among those names are several Daeshon Hall Womens Jersey Vikings, after DJ Skee, the Minnesota-born musician and fellow Vikings fan, introduced Gamache to the team a few years back. Gamache inherited his love for the Vikings from his late father, David, a big Fran Tarkenton fan.