A little DIY leads to backyard business opportunity for Lewis and Sam

It all really began last summer, explains sports tragic Sam Livingstone in his backyard shed surrounded by shelves of sporting equipment, framed Newcastle Knights jerseys and other memorabilia.

Sam’s 13-year-old stepson Lewis — also sport-obsessed — was breaking cricket bats at an unsustainable rate, and it was out of necessity more than anything that Sam began looking into repairing the bats himself.

“Lewis was playing cricket at a pretty high level, he was playing in the local comp, he was playing in the local junior comp, senior comp, representative team and then training two or three nights a week. So he had a bat in his hand six or seven days a week in summer,” says Sam.

“Handles break quite often.. also toes get moisture in them, split and then chunk out. So handles and toes are the main things that we've been repairing.”

Sam had already had some experience repairing and regripping golf clubs, a sport he took up after a shoulder injury brought an end to his rugby league career. With most of the tools already at hand, he began repairing bats for Lewis and then his friends and others.

“Yeah, we were just fixing our own stuff and then mates would say, ‘Lewis showed me his repair, I've got a bat at home with a broken handle’, or ‘ I’ve got one that's got a cracked edge that sanding back’,” says Sam

“Then they'd tell a friend, and they'd tell a friend, and we found ourselves really busy with repairs. We weren't making any money on it, but it was sacrificing our nights and weekends with the rest of the family.”

See that there was a real need for what they were doing, Sam sat down with his wife Tracy and Lewis and decided this might be a business opportunity. 

“We said, there's a market here for it. Why is there no one in the Central West doing this?” continues Sam.

“So we ordered some handles, we got some glue, did some research, speaking to people that have been around the game, people in Sydney that do some repairs and we learnt a lot off YouTube, and we just started fixing up old bats.

“We'd buy broken bats for 20 bucks, and we turned them into a really nice usable piece of equipment.”

But having come this far, Sam and Lewis thought, Why not get some willow and make a bat ourselves?

“We’d basically refurbished the bats from scratch anyway…So we decided to get our own clefts of the raw willow and see what happens.  We made our own bats and took them to the nets, and suddenly three or four other people wanted one!”

So two months ago, Sam and Lewis launched Ellebrook Sports, a business that manufactures custom cricket bats, refurbishes and repairs cricket bats, and retails pads and other sports equipment and accessories — right here in Orange.

“We saw that there was a gap in the market for both repairs and for equipment in general, says Sam.

“We did a fair bit of research and we thought it could be a little thing to do on the side to make a little bit of money. Lewis is on the Orange Under 16s rep side and is going to Queenstown in January. Maybe this might be able to contribute a little bit to the trip.”