Thanks for the great response to yesterday’s post. Mary and I appreciate your support this coming weekend at the All Stars for Autism event, and we look forward to meeting and sharing our Great Race experience with the winners of the Ride Along contest this June. I promise to keep you posted about how to enter. In the meanwhile, if you’re still wondering what the Great Race is all about, this video tells you about the race (it’s really a rally) and its history. You will also find a lot of other informative and fun Great Race archived videos on YouTube.

Brett Stahl and Dan Stahl will be entering the Great Race 2013 in the rookie category this year. They will drive and navigate the 1941 Packard which we drove in last year’s Great Race.

Mary and I are getting ready to leave for Joplin, Missouri, where we will be participating in the “All Stars for Autism” Road Rally event hosted by the VCRA or Vintage Car Rally Association from May 1st-May 5th. Joplin also happens to be the city where the 2013 Great Race , Down the Mighty Mississippi, will finish. As many readers may remember, last year the team “Spirit of Stahls” participated in this classic car road rally for the first time. This year, we will have two cars entered. Mary and I will drive a 1934 Ford

Mary and I will be driving this 1934 Ford Phaeton in the All Stars for Autism road rally as well as in the 2013 Great Race this year. The car is on its way to Joplin right now!

and sons Brett Stahl and Daniel Stahl will drive the 1941 Packard in which we finished the race last year. Have you ever thought about participating in such an event? Vintage car road rallies are a family passion which we are honored to be sharing with some of our customers this year. We will be holding several contests that will allow YOU, our GroupeSTAHL customers, to enter for a

If you live along the route, we will be holding contests to customers who are interested in participating in this exciting vintage car road rally. Winners will ride along for a designated leg of the race. More info on entering coming from Stahls’ very soon.

chance to ride along for each leg of the race. More information on this opportunity will be posted soon. There are a lot of details to be worked out yet, but it will be a lot of fun. But I just wanted to let you know that if you are a GroupeSTAHL customer that lives along the Great Race 2013 route, or are able to get to the points on the route, there will be opportunities for you to enter for a chance to go for a “ride along” with Mary and I, and help me navigate. As soon as I have the details, we will share links on how to enter. In the meanwhile, you can follow the Great Race on Twitter @TheGreatRace or on Facebook. The Great Race takes place from June 22-30, so mark your calendars if you are interested in cheering us on or in entering for a chance to win a “ride along.” We are very excited about being able to share this experience with as many of you as possible.

Mary and I at a GroupeSTAHL event called Coney Island Day, where we celebrate the spring baseball season with all the Detroit Tigers fans at Stahls’ in St. Clair Shores, Michigan.

Coney Island Day is where everyone gets to have some fun eating hot dogs (Coney Island dogs). We also got to show Stahls’ team members some of the vehicles that will be used in this year’s Great Race.

Bethany and Jon Stange of Stahls’ DFC hand over a jersey they just heat printed on live TV during the NFL First Round Draft picks.

The power of heat printing was getting a lot of attention during the televised #NFLdraft announcements last Thursday and Friday. Twitter was buzzing with questions like “How do they get the names on the jerseys so fast? They put Milliner on the back of Jets jersey in 30 secs pic.twitter.com/lENLBDFuAM“

So in case you are still wondering how they were getting the names on the jerseys so fast during the NFL draft, it was a not so well kept secret that the Stahls’ DFC team was backstage on behalf of Nike, cutting and heat printing the names in just seconds. It was even picked up by Yahoo sports, with the article titled: How do new NFL draft picks get jerseys with their names on the back so fast? Thank you Rodney @tshirtforums for trying to let people know. If you haven’t figured it out yet, heat printing made it possible.

Brent Kisha, Bethany Stange and Jon Stange arrive at Radio City Music Hall in NYC to set up the “behind the scenes” on demand custom jersey station that will provide drafted players with a custom jersey as soon as their names are called.  CAD-CUT and heat printing make it possible!

The Stahls’ Decorating Fulfillment Center (DFC) team arrived in NYC to get ready for their “behind the scenes” role at the upcoming NFL 2013 Draft .  You can watch it unfold live on the NFL Network, with the first round taking place Thurs., April 25 at 8 p.m. ET, followed by the second and third rounds on Fri., April 26 at 6:30 p.m. ET. Rounds 4-7 will be held Sat., April 27 at 12 p.m. ET.  If you don’t remember from last year, what this team does is produce a custom Nike jersey for the each NFL draft pick as soon as his name is announced. Once the announcement is made, each First Round Draft Pick’s name is cut using a CAD-CUT® heat transfer material and heat printed on the respective jersey within 90 seconds. No, they aren’t informed of picks in advance! They have to wait to hear the name called out before they can start heat printing. Of course they do some prep work. Once the jersey is printed, it is handed over to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell @nflcommish, who then hands it to the new NFL player. Just read online that Goodell will be joined by a St. Jude cancer patient during one of the first round draft picks. These pics are all we can show you for now, tune in again for more pics and behind the scenes jersey magic after the draft begins. If you can’t watch it live, follow on Twitter @nfl and watch for #NFLDraft news.

The Hotronix® Air Fusion is ready to swing into action tomorrow when the live draft picks are announced. Here is a glimpse of what the custom jersey station looks like.

A photo of the Adidas store at the stadium where Real Madrid plays.

Being at the Adidas store in Madrid reminded me of the first time I heard the story of the Dassler brothers, Adi and Rudi. Adi, (get it, ADIDASsler), is the founder of Adidas and Rudi, the founder of Puma. For those of you who don’t know this story, you can read all about it on Fortune’s list of the 50 greatest business rivalries of all time. And in case you were wondering what the #1 greatest business rivalry is, it’s a bit closer to home. Okay, spoiler alert, it’s Coke vs. Pepsi.