VANCOUVER, Washington (KPTV) — The Final Four is this weekend for both the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments.
And a Vancouver-based business is filling the stands with fans, cardboard fans that is!
“We are filling the entire lower bowl here,” Joe DiPietro is in San Antonio for the women’s tournament.
“We’re installing from 6:30 P.M. to 1:30 A.M. tonight,” Taylor Gaussoin is in Indianapolis for the men’s tournament.
The two are co-founders of Vancouver-based fan engagement company Perk Social, and last year after seeing a German soccer team do something similar, they decided to launch fancutouts.com and make personalized cardboard fans in a time when the real ones couldn’t go to the games.
“Working in technology and marketing we’re used to having to explain what we do and people don’t know what it is. Now we say you know those fake fans, those cardboard cutouts in the stands and everyone knows what those are,” Gaussoin said.
The project took off. They’ve worked with pro teams and more than 130 colleges and universities.
“It’s been a great way for fans and teams to feel a bit more normal in a year that we weren’t able to have as much of that as we would have all have hoped,” Gaussoin said.
Now they’re installing thousands of cutouts for the Final Four. There will be real fans there too; the cardboard ones help maintain social distance and fill the seats.
DiPietro and Gaussoin recognize as COVID-19 restrictions loosen, this aspect of their business might soon be coming to a close, but it’s been a fun run with a very exciting weekend ahead.
“It just feels like a really nice bowtie at the end of this to make it all seem worthwhile,” DiPietro said.
Now of course it is too late to try to get a cutout into the Final Four but they said some people have just wanted a cutout of themselves for fun, to have at home or in the office for zoom calls, so you can still get one just for yourself on this website: shop.fancutouts.com or see more about their business here: perksocial.com
