LEWISTON — Six years ago, Chris Nadeau had paid off his car loan and wanted to put that extra money toward building a business.

He didn’t know how to sew but was confident he could learn. Good friend, math teacher and future business partner Joey Fitzsimmons read a copy of Nadeau’s business plan to open an upholstery company and handed it back to him with “upholstery” scratched out.

He wrote over it “sports repair.”

“Football was like his thing; he lives sports,” said Fitzsimmons, who graduated from Lewiston High School with Nadeau in 2002. “Chris pays attention to every little detail of everything. I was thinking instead of just doing upholstery, which is just random pieces of furniture, we can get sports into this mix.”

The Sports Fix was born.

They started the first year with two accounts for end-of-season football uniform repair in Lewiston and Lisbon. By last football season, it had grown to more than seven schools, including Yarmouth and Cape Elizabeth.

Out of Nadeau’s Lewiston home, they’ve expanded the business to hockey stick, shoulder pad and tackling dummy repair, are about to launch hockey glove repairs and haven’t flinched at unexpected requests.

“I did a school, we’re going in there to present shoulder pads and all of a sudden we came out agreeing to do a weekly wash,” Nadeau said. “It was funny, we weren’t doing weekly washings at the time, we weren’t getting many accounts and that area was an area we wanted to put a flag in. (The athletic director) asked, ‘Do you do weekly washings?’ I said, ‘Yeah, we do.’ The next thing I know, I’m getting introduced to the head coach.”

Historically, Maine schools’ athletic programs have sent their uniforms and equipment out of state for repair, he said, often to companies in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Chicago. 

It’s hard to compete with the one-stop-shop allure, Nadeau said. Those same companies fix everything from uniforms to helmets. Helmet repair requires a $1 million machine and $1 billion insurance policy; that’s out for now. But it doesn’t mean The Sports Fix can’t try for the rest of their business.

For Nadeau, who played football in high school, there’s a lot of hustle: He cold-calls schools to give them a shot during breaks at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center where he works in environmental services from 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

At 1:30, he’s on the road doing pickups or deliveries or down in the basement sewing.

“If they’re at the ice rink and their stick breaks, I can be there in five minutes, depending on the time,” Nadeau said.

He said he loves the work and making people happy, even if coaches razz him about being a Cowboys fan.

“I like the challenge of something new — you never know what you’re going to get,” said Fitzsimmons, who keeps the books and pitches in with sewing.

“You know that the work you’re doing is going to be put into use right away,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to take something, make it better and return it. You just feel that productivity.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com 

Lewiston High School graduates Joey Fitzsimmons, left, and Chris Nadeau repair sports equipment for a number of Maine high school and college teams. Their company is called The Sports Fix. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)

Joey Fitzsimmons of Greene uses an epoxy to repair a carbon fiber hockey stick at The Sports Fix in Lewiston. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)