HARTFORD -- GimaSport Art in Hartford had an early and busy start to their Monday morning, stitching and printing Super Bowl Championship hats and t-shirts, all featuring the New England Patriots!
Roberto Giansiracusa, second generation owner of GimaSport, said the products are all part of their deal with ’47 Brand, the company who is licensed to make the NFL swag. They hire the Hartford based GimaSport to print up and logo the apparel which ultimately gets distributed to big name department and sporting goods stores.
“Usually we ship for them, we ship direct to wherever they want us to ship, but in a situation like this they have companies coming to pick up because it’s hot market, they need these in the stores today and tonight,” Giansiracuse said. “We are a manufacturer and we embroider and screen print right here in Hartford, you know, they give us the marching orders and then whichever team wins we’re doing hats or t-shirts for them.”
That means that from Hartford’s south end, the hats and t-shirts printed with the winning Patriots logo will end up way beyond Connecticut’s state lines.
GimaSport has been stitching and printing all kinds of sporting good logos for decades. Giansiracusa, told Fox 61 being part of the historic Patriots Super Bowl win makes their hometown pride run even deeper.
“It’s just nice, because all this stuff goes all over the country and some of it even goes internationally, and it’s all done right here in Hartford, Connecticut,” Giansiracusa said.
He said the post-Super Bowl rush started well before the sun came up Monday and will likely continue on all week long. Giansiracusa said order numbers started somewhat slow, but ramped up alongside the excitement of the big record breaking winning finish.
No team had ever made up more than a 10-point deficit to win a Super Bowl. Tom Brady led the Patriots on five straight scoring drives that equaled 31 straight points. The last touchdown wrapped up a 34-28 victory, yet felt inevitable and anticlimactic despite coming in the first-ever overtime in the Super Bowl’s 51-year history.
“Tom has had a lot of great ones. Tonight was one of them,” coach Bill Belichick said, underselling the obvious.