SINX Story
Chapter 1
Sinx officially started in February 2024, but let’s be real—there were many failed attempts at creating a clothing brand and an art idea before I finally stumbled upon Sinx and SinxCustom. Turns out, trial and error is a lifestyle.
Hockey has always been a huge part of my life. It’s the reason I’ve lived in so many different places and met the people who’ve shaped my journey. In 2019, hockey took me to Buffalo for college, where I started off studying business education. That lasted precisely one semester before I realized I had no interest in it. With no clear plan, I decided to take a mix of computer science and digital media arts courses to see what stuck. Spoiler: it wasn’t coding.
Then COVID hit, and like everyone else, I was sent home. Canada had a 14-day quarantine rule, which meant two weeks of sitting around, trying not to lose my mind. To stay busy, I started making videos—specifically, two hype videos for my junior hockey team. I had no idea what I was doing, but seeing the final results got me hooked. The moment I was free, I went online and bought a GoPro.
Learning how to use the GoPro became my new obsession. I spent hours filming with my brother and a few buddies, getting better at video editing. Naturally, the next step was upgrading my gear, so I set my sights on a drone. Lucky for me, my parents got me one for my birthday. Armed with my new tech, I planned a trip to British Columbia with my brother and a buddy from junior hockey, Matthias Urbanski. We took a ton of footage, and each of us made our own videos with plans to post them on YouTube. This is when Sinc was born, my first YouTube channel, and the name came from my nickname that I was called in hockey.
This trip also marked the beginning of my first attempt at a clothing brand. I went all in—coming up with the perfect name, backstory, and aesthetic. I was convinced this was going to be something big, something that would really take off. I wanted it to have meaning, something deeper than just slapping a logo on fabric. That’s how KYZN (pronounced Kaizen) was born. It means continuous improvement, which sounded inspiring… until I realized I had no clue what I actually wanted to improve. And in the most ironic twist possible, I completely gave up on the brand after about two weeks. Continuous improvement? More like continuous abandonment.
I designed a logo, ordered three hats with "KYZN" embroidered on them, and that was the entire brand. I never launched anything, never sold a single piece—I just ended up giving all the hats away. And that was the grand rise and fall of KYZN, my first (but definitely not last) clothing brand experiment.
Chapter 2
Winter 2020 was a weird time—school was still online, so I barely even attended class. Everything was basically optional at that point, and I took full advantage of that. Instead, I spent a lot of time quarantining with a couple of my buddies, Barzo and Alger. We had our own little bubble, and off the start of the year, Barzo and I decided to start a podcast called "Preppin for 7," named because we would always post or go live on Instagram at 7.
We went all in. We made an Instagram page, I used my video editing skills to record and edit our podcast episodes, and we constantly posted pictures, stories, and clips. We even went live, had guests on (which was really just our friends), and basically used the podcast as an excuse to talk nonsense. A lot of it revolved around Donald Trump, random college stories, and our ridiculous, completely unrealistic future plans. It was an attempt at being funny, and while I can't say we built a massive audience, we definitely entertained ourselves.
Naturally, this led to another attempt at a clothing brand. This time, Barzo and I were in it together. We hyped it up, planned out the brand, and even ordered two shirts—one for each of us. And just like that, the brand was dead. The Instagram page, however, survived for a couple of years, as we kept posting random content long after we had abandoned the original idea.
Another project I got into was streaming on Twitch. I spent a ton of time learning how to make my stream look good, even though I wasn’t exactly great at video games. It felt like going to school on top of going to school—learning how to set up overlays, alerts, and pages. I was actually pretty proud of how professional it looked, but despite all that effort, my viewership stayed low. I stuck with it for about three months, but eventually, I moved on when I realized I was mostly just talking to myself.
Music was another unexpected turn. Barzo, who had an Instagram page called DJ Barzo, loved doing live DJ sets on Instagram during lockdown. I’d jump in sometimes, and eventually, we started making mixes together on SoundCloud. Somehow, a couple of them actually did decently well—we had two mixes called "Dorm Room Vibes" that got about 10,000 plays.
It was wild to see something we made actually gain traction. This was also the second time I used the name "Sinc" online—it became my little internet persona across all these different projects.
At some point during this year, I also bought a guitar. I had no idea what I was doing, but I committed to learning from YouTube. By the end of the year, I could actually play a few songs and even managed to kind of play a barre chord (if you know, you know).
On top of all that, I kept drawing in one of my art books throughout the year. One of my drawings ended up being a family tattoo design, which I eventually got inked on myself. At the time, I had no idea that tattoos would become a bigger part of my life—I just thought I’d only get ones that "meant something."
Looking back, my love for art had been there all along. When I was younger, I drew constantly. My town had an annual art fair with cash prizes, and from grade 3 to grade 6, that was my Olympics. I’d submit around 50 pieces of art and woodwork every summer, with help from my parents and grandparents, hoping to rack up as many first-place $5 prizes as possible.
Art ran in my family. My grandma was a painter, covering her house in landscapes and horse paintings. My mom was an art teacher, always bringing home projects for me to do before I was even old enough to take an art class. And on the music side, I was in a school where band class was mandatory for four years. I actually enjoyed it, which might explain why I ended up experimenting with music years later.
One of my earliest custom projects, though, wasn’t clothing—it was shoes. Back in grade 6, my brother and I were getting ready for track and field day. The track was gravel, so most kids wore ball cleats. Around that time, Usain Bolt was dominating the Olympics with his gold spikes, and I figured, why not? I painted my cleats gold and black with a lightning bolt and did the same for my brother’s, but in silver and red. That was my first ever custom shoe project—a one-off idea that I wouldn’t revisit until years later.
Winter 2020 was full of abandoned projects, half-successful ventures, and experiments in art, music, and design. But even though most of these things didn’t last, they all added up. Every random idea, every failed brand, every new skill I tried to learn—it was all building toward something, even if I didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 3
After the hockey season ended, I decided to transfer schools for the next season, although
at the time, I had no idea where I’d end up. While figuring that out, my brother Palmer and I made a completely unrelated decision—we were going to move to the mountains of British Columbia, specifically Invermere. At the time, Canada still had a ton of COVID restrictions, but Invermere was a summer vacation hotspot, meaning things were a little more relaxed there. So, we packed up and moved into a tiny studio apartment, ready for whatever came next.
That summer, Palmer and I got jobs at one of the top 20 golf courses in Canada, working 6 AM to 2 PM, Sunday through Friday. Having the afternoons off was unreal, and since we got free golf, I started thinking about a new idea—a golfing video series. We had easy access to the course, so it seemed like a no-brainer.
For our first attempt, we decided to jump on a growing trend: drinking challenges on the golf course. Our crew for the day was me, Palmer, Dace, and Woody which we were calling "The Boys," creative right?. I filmed every shot (at least, that was the plan). We played a two-man scramble where the losing team on each hole had to shotgun a beer. Seemed simple enough. We tied the first two holes, but then Dace and I lost five in a row, putting us in a pretty brutal spot. We stopped keeping score after that, but let’s be real—we probably lost the rest too. By the time we hit hole 15, we physically couldn’t finish the match. We made our way back to the clubhouse, called for a pickup, and called it a day.
The next morning, I woke up and decided to edit the footage for TikTok. I cut the first two holes into a one-minute clip and then went back to review the rest of the footage. That’s when I realized a major flaw in our recording strategy—after hole 7, we had stopped filming our shots completely. Instead, the video was mostly us pissing in bushes and recording other people taking shots on different holes. Safe to say, I had a bit of anxiety watching it back. I also had no memory of anything after hole 9, which was another red flag. It was a disaster, and just like that, the golf series was another one-and-done project.
In May, I started looking at different colleges for hockey. The most important thing that came out of this process was that Palmer and I both committed to the same school for the upcoming season. It meant we’d be living together for the next two years, which was pretty huge.
In August, a couple of my buddies from my hometown came down to Invermere for a vacation. They crashed in our tiny studio for two nights, and we spent the time hiking and golfing. Our golf match was a three-man individual round, but we spiced it up with a tattoo bet. I gave each of them 20 strokes, thinking I had it in the bag. They completely outplayed their handicaps, and when I shot an 84, I lost.
They continued their trip to Kelowna, and I met them there a couple of days later after finishing work. The first thing on our to-do list? Get the tattoo. We all ended up getting inked, and just being in the shop reminded me how much I loved drawing and creating art. When I got back to Invermere, I booked another tattoo—one I had designed the year before as a family piece. While getting it done, I started talking to the tattoo artist about his journey. He told me he just started drawing a lot and then practiced tattooing on himself. That conversation flipped a switch in my brain—I was fully hooked on tattoos.
A lot of people go through a tattoo obsession phase, but in my case, I went straight to searching up how to tattoo myself. For the next two weeks, before Palmer and I left for college in Superior, Wisconsin, I filled my sketchbook with new designs and started seriously considering whether being a tattoo artist could be my future job.
Chapter 4
Palmer and I traveled about 20 hours southeast to Superior, where we were going to college for the next two years. We were moving into the hockey house called the “Ritz,” named because it was the nicest house out of all the hockey houses. We were moving in with C-Lo, Franny, and Stomps. C-Lo’s dad owned the house, so he was pretty mature about helping his dad out and assisting the boys whenever we needed something fixed up. Franny, to this day, is one of my closest buddies who loves the art that I put out, and Stomps was with me in Buffalo. We transferred in together, which was great because we were already close.
Palmer and I each had our own room, although they were both in the attic, and I had to walk through his room to get to the bathroom, which, as you could imagine, caused a couple of awkward situations. Despite the setup, we made it work, and the house quickly became our home.
In college, I had to take the prerequisite courses again, which actually put me in some of the same classes as Palmer. I also went fully into art. I was taking digital media and filmmaking, which also put me in a painting class. Looking back now, that was the only class that I actually liked that semester. Aside from school, I continued to fill up my sketchbook, hoping to get better at drawing. Everything I had read about tattoo artists said I had to learn how to draw roses—and a lot of them.
It only took about a week before I thought it would be a good idea to buy a tattoo machine. I was worried about using my parents’ Amazon account, so Stomps let me use his to order it. Within a couple of days, it showed up on our doorstep. At first, our house kept it pretty quiet. We’d all come up to my room in the attic and practice on orange peels for a few days. But before long, it was time to try it on my own leg.
Our house decided that we would set up a little shop in the basement, near the water heater, which we deemed the official tattoo space. Unfortunately, the lighting was subpar, but we made it work. I started with a really small #23, because that was the number I wore that year in hockey. (At this point, I was still doing tattoos that had some meaning.) That tiny number 23 took me nearly five hours to complete because I was so cautious.
Shortly after that, I started doing tattoos I found on Pinterest. With time, I sped up the process—from stenciling to prepping my leg to tattooing itself. My right leg filled up pretty fast, and I got much better at pulling lines. I was starting to feel confident, and putting literally anything I could think of on my leg. That’s when I sent a picture of my leg to my mom to see what she thought. She thought it was awesome but was worried I was wasting all my money getting tattoos. That’s when I told her I had bought the tattoo gun and had been doing them myself. Surprisingly, she was supportive and thought it was cool, which was a good sign for me to continue down this path.
As I improved, Franny started tattooing his legs as well. We look back at our legs now and joke that those tattoos are the contract that makes us lifelong friends. Together, we came up with the idea to do a Ritz-Carlton tattoo on our legs as a “college house” tattoo. I started by tattooing myself, then did Franny’s next. It actually turned out really good for my first tattoo on someone else. I followed it up by doing C-Lo’s next, which also came out solid.
Now, the cat was out of the bag with our teammates. Once our half-leg sleeves were seen in the locker room, everyone knew something was up. Teammates started asking me to do their tattoos. It was too much, too fast, so I settled on keeping it within our house for a few weeks while I got more comfortable using the tattoo gun. It wasn’t long before Franny and I had no space left for art on our legs. By then, I had given Stomps a tattoo and even given Palmer his first tattoo, which is something I think is pretty cool to this day.
After our house had gotten all the ink we wanted at that time, I started doing appointments for the boys. It was more like whenever they had free time, I’d just tell them to swing by and we’d buzz it out. I started with Conor McLean, who was in my grad class and had become a close buddy. He wanted a scattered sleeve similar to Harry Styles—just small tattoos all over his arm—which was perfect for me to practice on. In all, I ended up doing four tattoos on his arm. Once I opened the door for teammates, I ended up tattooing 12 teammates and even my coach.
Throughout this whole process, we moved our tattoo shop to five different locations. We started in the basement, then moved to my room for a couple of weeks. Shortly after that, we set up in the front room of the house, then shifted to the kitchen island, and finally, we finished off with a setup in the living room so we could watch TV while getting inked.
Around Christmas, two things happened that really changed how I looked at tattoos. The first was when I did a “Wet Jeans” tattoo on my left leg. Wet Jeans was a podcast that basically talked about nothing but was hilarious. I tattooed one of their logos and, for the first time, used colored ink. Unfortunately, the headband in the design was red, and the color of my blood is also red. Trying to use the same shading technique as I did with black ink was a complete fail—but I didn’t know that yet. I finished the tattoo with no issues, but the next morning, when I peeled back the protective layer, the whole thing was full of blood. It scabbed over and turned a gross yellow color over the next week, and sweating at hockey practice definitely didn’t help. I genuinely thought I had an infection. I frantically looked up tattoo healing tips on Google and followed every precaution I could find. A few days later, it finally scabbed over, and now it has a nasty scar. The funny part? The scar is red, so it actually kind of works with the tattoo.
The second moment that shifted my perspective was when I tattooed a teammate who had never gotten a tattoo before. This was my biggest mistake. He was dead set on getting one, and I advised him to get a professional tattoo first so he’d know what it felt like. He insisted, so I caved. There were four guys watching as I started, and he completely destroyed the roll of paper towel he was gripping. He kept moving every few seconds, which made the tattoo turn out rough. This one really ate at me—I felt responsible, and the stress from it was awful.
After that, I decided to only tattoo a select group: Franny, Palmer, C-Lo, Stomps, and McLean.
Up until this point, I had been filming everything with the idea of making content about my tattoo journey. I even posted a few clips on TikTok. But after those two stressful situations, I decided this wasn’t something I wanted to post about—it was just something I wanted to do with my buddies. In a full-circle moment, I actually ended up getting tattooed by my roommates, which was pretty cool.
This is only scratching the surface,
To Be Continued...