Rebranding for a Phili Paddle Club comes to life with Custom QuickBlade Team Paddles

Over the past 2 years, Sunny Jackson and thePhiladelphia Flying Phoenix and Outrigger Team worked with Rosemary Murphy of Murphy Designs to re-brand the club with new logos for both canoe and dragon boat racing teams.

They had just finished the designs and were unveiling their new dragon boat logo to the team and the world when Jimmy Terrell and Jojo Rosen were in town doing a QuickBlade paddle clinic with the club.

“It worked out amazingly,” Sunny Jackson wrote to me in an email earlier this week. “I’m the safety chair for ECORA, and we had a safety clinic coming up and I needed to find a way to convince ECORA members to travel to Philly. Hosting Jim’s clinic and the safety clinic at the same time was perfect for Jim and us, we had a really great turn out.”

“This was a really fun project for me personally,” says Jim Terrell of QuickBlade Paddles. “I had the pleasure of doing a clinic with Sunny Jackson and her crew Philadelphia Flying Phoenix and Outrigger Team. We had a few demo paddles for people to pass around during a practice session with 3 six man canoes on the water last May, followed up the next day with a few hard-core people in the OC1’s. I mentioned to them that we make custom team Paddles and when ordering as a group can offer a team discount as well and they took advantage of the opportunity.”

The process was just as easy. According to Sunny, “I sent him (Jimmy) the logos and he handled the rest. I have many roles and responsibilities between my team, ECORA, and trying to give back through paddling. Ordering the custom paddles was probably the easiest thing I’ve done this year.”

The paddles, both OC and Dragon Boat sets, came out looking amazing. Team paddling comes with it’s own set of challenges beyond technique and timing. Sometimes that shared experience, that synchronicity, singular experience where parts become one unit begins with the concept of team. Not even the motions. It’s the belonging. The bond. And perhaps in this case where you have a strong group of paddlers, their team paddles could contribute to that identity and that bond which we hope to see translate onto the water as speed and that zone.

Jimmy wrote, “they have an artist that had some pretty cool logo designs for their Dragon boat team and Outrigger team, so a set was made for both for a hand full of people that were excited about it. I hope they have as much fun using them as I did making them, good luck!!”

I’m not on the team, but I want one.

—The Mullet