Nicholls fans have a new way of buying their merchandise, as associate director of development Brandon Ruttley and sports information director Charlie Gillingham launched a new Web site at www.nichollsgear.com.

The new Web site features Nicholls hats, jerseys, jackets, shirts, blankets and accessories.

“We thought it would be another way to get Nicholls’ logo out into the community,” Ruttley said.

The site is operated through Advanced Online, which is a company in Texas that creates sites that sell gear for most Southland Conference teams. Ruttley thought it would be a good idea to go through Advanced Online to make a Nicholls site since they already make individual sites for half of the teams in the Southland Conference. He said the motive behind the move is to make Nicholls apparel more available to people.

“There’s a big push to try to get more venders with our logos out in the community,” Ruttley said. “With this company, at no risk to us, it offers a great opportunity to give people in other states the ability to buy Nicholls items. Coach (Charlie) Stubbs, for instance, has a lot of recruits from throughout the region and they want to be able to get their hands on a Nicholls hat or Nicholls polo.”

Ruttley said that when he came to Nicholls in 2000 as a student, they didn’t have a lot of access when it came to getting Nicholls clothing. Since then, he said the bookstore has come a long way, but Nicholls needs to continue to grow and make the product more available. Ruttley said he knows that there are a lot of LSU fans in the area, but there are Nicholls fans also.

“It’s very important,” Ruttley said. “I know most people feel that this is Tiger country, but we feel that we can have our place too since most of the business people in this area graduated from Nicholls. Nicholls has a place in this community, we just have to make it available to them.”

The new Nicholls gear Web site makes purchasing Nicholls merchandise easier for everyone, no matter where they’re geologically located. Ruttley said there is a big warehouse in Texas that prints on demand, and when someone from California orders something off the site, they’ll print it and send it to them. Ruttley is always looking to make improvements to the site and wants as much feedback as he can get.

“If anybody has any ideas, I have free reign for ideas to add items or subtract if people like a certain logo or don’t like a certain logo,” Ruttley said.