The Saskatchewan Roughriders obsidian green uniforms and team gear has been a smash hit.
"We had certain projections, but every single week, month and now as we get into the end of the year, we vastly exceeded that," Craig Reynolds told to the SportsCage. "We saw merchandise sales we haven't seen in a long time."
Initially, the set was planned to be worn twice, July 19 and October 26. Due to fans and players loving the uniforms, the team decided to be wear the kit for the Riders home playoff game against the B.C. Lions, winning 28-19 in the West Semi-Final.
"That was really fan-driven," Reynolds said. "I was getting lobbied from the players around: 'We're wearing the alt, we're wearing the alt." They really liked them."
Reynolds has been the Green and White's president and CEO since March 1, 2015. According to the Foam Lake native, the process behind the new jerseys took a long time as the team sorted through several iterations.
"When you deal with six years, actual styles change. The first version the logo we landed on pretty quickly with a designer. He's a world-class designer and he came to Saskatchewan to learn about the province. He really wanted to understand what the Riders were all about, what the province was all about, and incorporate that," Reynolds explained.
"The first iteration of the uniform, Jeremy [O'Day] was there, our executive was there, and we all sat in the room. We're like: 'No, this isn't it.' We weren't comfortable. Then we started talking about, are we moving forward or do we need to go back to the drawing board? We started to strip it down and went back to basics."
Similar to how the jerseys had multiple versions, the same could be said for how the obsidian green colour was created.
"We had to get the obsidian right and the first couple versions, it wasn't dark enough. We kept working with New Era, we needed darker, we needed darker. We needed almost black, but it needs to be green," Reynolds said.
"They finally got us a version and Mark [Habicht] will probably tell you the story where he got it. He runs into the office: 'I think we got it.' When you look at that, you're like that's the dark green we needed."
