Prior to retiring from the military in 2003,  Bob and Anita opened a small shop part time with the intent for it to just supplement his income until he found post-military employment.  Little did he know, NH and Mass were starving for a good sharpener, someone better than the rotating teenagers sharpening at the chain stores, and someone who offered more choices than just a "regular" sharpening. Their business exploded and within a year they had to move to a bigger location. In three more years, the customer base had grown so large that another move was necessary.

 

While their retail store was growing, so was their Sharpen By Mail Service.  Its early roots began from past teammates who missed Bob's sharpenings asking him if they could send him their skates. That soon spread to their friends, then friends of friends, and others by word of mouth. Before you knew it they had to accommodate their business to support this growing online demand.  At first, evaluations and orders were taken by phone. That soon became overwhelming as they found themselves on the phone all day and weren't able to get any work accomplished.  So, the website www.noicingsports.com was created to handle that new and growing part of the business. It was remarkable how they grew from a few teammates sending by mail to thousands of customers all across North America and the world sending their blades in for custom services. They quickly established themselves as the premier online custom skate sharpening shop.  A lot of businesses pay to get good Google results but their high rankings came solely from the pure number of hits and links to their website.

​

Over the years customers had called Bob a lot of different names, Skate Doctor, The Master, The Skate Guru, etc. One customer called them the "Skate Rescue Service" because they fixed his skates that had been butchered by a chain store. This name stuck and the business was split,  No-Icing Sports as the retail store, and www.SkateRescueService.com becoming their online store.

​

​