Since the very beginnings when I started our flagship store ( House of Skates) in 2003, my goal was to offer the very best to skaters and the skating industry.  Being a national level skater and coached by the very best, I knew how important it was for your skates and apparel to be available and up to standard.  This was very challenging in those days, that is PRE House of Skates and our brand EliteXpression.

Once you walk into our flagship store, you will  be hit with many different segments such as skates, services, accessories, our staff and our world reknowned brand EliteXpression!  In its humble beginnings we had only one designer with a few sewers and production manager making only custom costumes.  As our popularity grew,  my vision for the brand went from custom costumes to making a complete line of apparel.  Skaters at this time were slowly moving away from wearing dresses and skirts to leggings (yoga wear).   Having all our focus and talent oriented in custom costume designs,  this was more challenging than one we wanted to admit.  Custom costumes are a very different breed allowing you to hone in on the customers needs and putting your design capabilities into their requirements.  Creating a collection is a whole other beast and process. The design and production needs are very different.   

Along comes the pandemic, that exposes, like all companies, small cracks in our model and our needs.  Changes were to be made and adapting to our new environment had to come hand in hand.   The vision for the company,  grow our design and manufacturing capacity.  After many meetings and facing new  challenges,  the pivot was made. 

Integration of 4 designers, each specializing in their field of expertise. They range from fashion designers, graphic designers to branding.   Also, some of the manufacturing is done overseas by a figure skating guru who has the biggest footprint and manufacturing expertise in the world.  We are very fortunate to have ties with such a dedicated group.

Now to address the new Custom dresses.  Times are changing and technology is allowing us to make more thematic and endless personalized designs. Matching fabric has its place for now, but the future design marvels lie in our hands. Investments were made to introduce an amazing and exciting platform.  It is called sublimation and I am proud to say, nobody does it like us.  We have just made major investments in adding more efficient technology to this platform allowing better efficiency and a much better customer experience.  You can see creations that have been done on our website of Elitexpression.com

Today, we have an energized team of passionate people who truly love what they do.  Stay tuned as many more segments and exciting products come alive!

Steve Laframboise

Owner and President