BUFFALO, N.Y. — For as long as they can remember, Nick Ciavarella and Matthew Keeler have been creating art.

"I feel like when I was 4 years old, like when my mom asked me what I wanted to do, it was I wanted to be an artist or I wanted to be a hockey player," Keeler said, who has found himself at the intersection of sport and art for more than a decade.

The St. John Fisher University graduate is the founder and creative lead for Just Dishin, a fashion label that also houses his patented invention Skate Skins. Alongside Keeler is Nick Ciavarella, a former collegiate hockey player turned COO, who drew early inspiration from filmmaker Bam Margera.

"[My aunt] gave me my first camcorder when I was 12 years old. And from there I took the camcorder and just anywhere I went around the neighborhood, I had that on me," Ciavarella said. "And whether if we were skateboarding or doing little stunts, blowing off fireworks in the neighborhood, like that's kind of what I was recording."

When Ciavarella shifted his college hockey career back to Buffalo in 2017, connecting with Keeler at a local pop-up event sparked what is now a years-long friendship and entrepreneurial partnership.

"When I came back home, I wanted to be a part of something that would push Buffalo and our game forward," Ciavarella said.

Today, their patented Skate Skins are seeping their way into hockey culture at all levels. Clients include schools, individuals, junior and pro teams looking to add a little flair to their gear, from theme nights to team logos. Their biggest NHL moments include Loui Eriksson's 1,000th game and RJ Night in Buffalo.

This offering highlights the strengths Keeler and Ciavarella bring to the table at 712 Main Street: an inventive product plus creative materials and branding, tied together with engaging relationships across sports.

"The inventing process of it is like what I love to do," Keeler said. "That's ultimately how we founded Dishin, it's how we founded Skate Skins, it's how we build as creatives and entrepreneurs. I think being able to do everything all under one roof is so important to us because it fuels our creativity, us being able to design something on a computer, in a room next door, printing it, see on the cutting board in real life, and then seeing on a skate and then seeing that skate in the game is like completely full circle for us."

The two are able to both pose the question and craft the answer to what they see is a rigidity and uniformity in hockey compared to other sport cultures.

"What can that product do for the sport? It can create new conversations that we weren't having, you know, 10 years ago,” Ciavarella said. “It could allow players to open up about themselves and really bring out a personality that, again, we don't really see in our sport. It's such a traditional sport.”

As athletes from Buffalo and beyond ingratiate themselves with the Dishin brand, Keeler remains focused on painting the unknown picture that lies ahead.

"It's important because nobody else is doing it how we're doing it right now, and we don't really have like a model or a mold that we copy off, you know, a brand set in stone to really implement ours," Keeler said. "It's all inspiration that we pull from — creatives and artists and fashion and music that we put into our brand. And I think that's what makes us different, is because we're doing things that we think is cool and that we think other people will like. We don't really do it because we want other people to like it. We do it because we like it and we want to see it in our game today. So the biggest thing for us is just doing things that are different and doing things that are infusing our sport in a more creative way to push it forward."