In 1997, U.S. figure skaters, Beata Handra & Charles Sinek, started their own wholesale business, Penguin Specialty Products. Necessity was the inspiration behind the company and its first product, Sk8tape®.

His skating boot had a hole the size of a quarter!

Rigorous competitive training took a toll on Charles’ skating boots. After repeating a left-foot lunge in his program countless times, the leather on the instep-side of his right boot had eroded away. His skating boot had a hole the size of a quarter! And behind that hole was a very cold foot in a slush-soaked sock. Needless to say, a solution was in order.

You don’t have to go far to find a roll of tape at the rink. Unfortunately, that tape is hockey tape. As Charles discovered, hockey tape is for hockey sticks, not for expensive, custom-built, leather figure skating boots. Charles struggled to scrape off the gooey remnants of hockey tape adhesive from his boot, his exposed sock, and finally, his fingernails. Conclusion #1: Hockey Tape: N, O, no!

For the next two weeks, practice sessions at the rink were followed by trips to every big and small hardware store in the area. At each store, Charles would buy a handful of electrical tape rolls. He had to wait until the next morning to apply the tape to his boot, because, if he did not wait for his boot to fully dry overnight, the leather would be damp and the tape would not stick, especially to the area around the hole.

Charles was tired of wet socks. The urge to solve the problem of the holey boot consumed him, and he didn’t get much skating done. The rink became his new testing lab. Some tapes would stay on until they came in contact with the ice during a lunge. Some would partially detach and flap in the wind like a sail. Other tapes would cement to the boot like industrial glue, almost impossible to remove. The worst offender was the tape that hardened and shattered in the cold. Left behind was a perilous trail of black plastic flakes scattered all over the ice. The results were all disappointing.

Charles had no choice but to use some viciously sticky duct tape to patch the hole. Unsatisfied with this second rate, unsightly solution, Charles sought out several tape manufacturers to look for answers. One company was willing to help him develop the perfect tape for skaters. The tape should be durable, leather-friendly, water- and cold-resistant. It should stay on when it is supposed to stay on, and it should come off when it is intended to come off but without leaving a sticky residue. In addition to its functionality, it was just as crucial that the tape have aesthetic appeal. After months of trial and error in experimenting with various compositions and combinations of plastics, adhesives, and pigments, Sk8tape® was born.

So what began as a personal endeavor to save an abused, waterlogged skating boot, soon evolved into the marketing of an original, multi-functional product that protects the leather on boots, secures laces, waterproofs soles, replaces polish, and makes an old pair of skates gleam like new.