Burlington

Hi, Kip.

I'm David Higham, and I'm from Burlington, North Carolina, and I own Hazel Grove Customs.

At Hazel Grove Customs, we design, personalize, and engrave giftable items, including kitchenware, home goods, accessories, and novelty goods.

Thanks for calling in, David.

But yeah, so we were able to scale it up and put it at two water treatment plants down in, uh, New Hanover County, which is the Wilmington area.

We were able to put it in a wastewater facility in Burlington, in Alamance County, which is just east of here.

It's in the Triad portion of the state, near Greensboro.

And then we were able to do some early pilots here in Orange County, right here in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, uh, at Orange Water and Sewer Authority.

26 games, 23 starts, a 5.77 ERA.

24-year-old from Burlington, North Carolina.

Ninth round pick by the A's in 2023 out of Wingate University.

In North Carolina, Division II school, it's been a really good baseball program for a number of years.

Do you know how that story came about? No.

He grew up in – Burlington was his background, right? Right, right.

So he had buddies over in Burlington that sold things in the stadium.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And they were not giving back the right change.

So they were charging people a different price.

Those Burlington boys you got to keep an eye on now.

Among those baseball teams were all 10 Appalachian league teams that were relegated from affiliated status to collegiate summer level ball and Nine of those teams worked directly with Major League Baseball to come up with new brands because they were all named for parent clubs that were no longer their parent clubs.

And then your Burlington Sock Puppets stand out as the only team that had the ability to work with a design firm such as Studio Simon rather than working directly with Major League Baseball.

So the Appalachian League is sort of an interesting study of teams that work with firms and teams that work directly with Major League Baseball.

This obviously is one of the teams that work directly with Major League Baseball.

You do have the ice cream helmets.

All right, that's good, that's good.

When the Appalachian League made this change, if I recall correctly, The Burlington Sock Puppets worked with Dan Simon, and that was the only team, just because of the timing of the change that they were planning to make.

The rest of the teams, I believe, worked directly with Major League Baseball on the on the branding update.

Some of your listeners may be familiar with those communities.

And then right adjacent is Alamance County, which Has the town, largest town is Burlington.

Also has the college town of Elon, where Elon University is.

And Graham and some other places.