Sole Man: Denver SNKRS LLC | The Hustle

[Music] what happens when you take a love of sneakers a passion for dealmaking and $300 in startup Capital you get Denver sneakers LLC my name is Garrett Eisman I'm 16 years old I just finished my junior year and I currently run Denver sneakers LLC as my main business in this episode of The Hustle you'll learn how Garrett built his company how did he do it by crafting a strong reputation honing his skills and managing expenses to keep his business growing this all started for me when I was about 12 years old and my dad bought me my first pair of sneakers for $85 to $90 and I just thought that was insane to spend on a pair of sneakers so I just became fascinated with all these sneakers and why they went for so much money what's the record for the most expensive pair of shoes ever sold it's these one of one sample uh Nike Yeezys which is Kanye West's brand which sold at auction for over $1.6 million Denver sneakers LLC is a sneaker resale company Garrett buys and then resell sneakers for a profit it isn't easy because the market for sneakers is very competitive there are often these sneaker conventions where a lot of these sneaker enthusiasts all meet up to buy sell and trade their sneakers there's often a lot of replica sneakers which um I found how difficult and frustrating it was to purchase these authentic sneakers make sure you're not getting scammed from this I was talking to other sneaker enthusiasts in the Denver area and realized that this was an ongoing problem so I decided to make my own brand to sell shoes in the Denver area and it's grown worldwide now so how did Garrett get his startup Capital which is the money it takes to start a new business venture well he started by working another job and saving up I found there was money in almost everything there's money in candy that people are buying from the school there's money in the grass outside of your house I started a summer lawnmowing job to make money when I was 12 years old just to buy sneakers for myself I first started with $340 and with the this $340 I bought two shoes and I made $5 on each of those pairs of shoes Garrett continued to buy and sell sneakers at conventions but because he was so young some people didn't take him very seriously as they see this 14-year-old kid walking around with $3,000 shoes they started to get interested and they're like how is this kid getting these shoes Garrett had to build his reputation and the reputation of Denver sneakers as I started talking to these people they realized I knew what I was talking about and they kind of appreciated me more a lot of people are judging me without even talking to me your reputation is the opinion that people in general have about you in business your reputation can mean the difference between success and failure and having a good reputation for honesty and experience can set a person apart from the competition as I started to begin doing this uh it was very difficult to authenticate these for myself as I haven't seen these sneakers before so I got scammed for replica sneakers um claiming to be authentic so I've lost my money that way I've gotten things stolen so just knowing the market value off the top of your head I know the market value for almost any shoe I know how to authenticate them I know how to Value the condition so as I kind of developed my reputation then people started walking up to me at all these sneaker conventions that I've never met before they're like you're Garrett right you're Garrett it puts me ahead of a lot of the other people in this industry so how did Garrett build his reputation by becoming an expert in shoes check this out all right all so I got two pairs of shoes here this is the Air Jordan 1 one pair of these is authentic and one pair of these is a replica so you can take a look at them and you tell me what you think these are the real ones the these are the fake ones a so why why are these the fake ones to me like the leather on these felt a little weird these felt maybe a little bit more worn one thing that a lot of people look at when authenticating these Jordan One models is Nike Air logo is supposed to be sewn into the shoe and as you can see they used ink this is supposed to be reflective as you can see in the light this is just white paint they say the back is shaped like an hourglass this is all pretty intense and if you don't have the knowledge like you do you could get scammed out of a good amount of money definitely these sneakers go for about $2,000 so I'm sure if you saw these you would pay the $2,000 like I literally would have PID the $2,000 as Garrett's reputation as an expert and as an honest businessman continue to grow so did his business personally the most expensive pair of shoes that I've sold is called the Freddy Krueger Nike SBs I sold those for $26,500 the Back to the Future Nike Air Mags those I sold within 30 minutes of buying them and I made $3,000 on those because I bought those for $10,000 and sold them for 13,000 what are some of the other challenges that you face being such a young entrepreneur there's a lot of things still to this day I'm trying to make new accounts new this that you have to be 18 years old so I either need my parents to co-sign it or need them to sign me up for it completely starting in 2020 we started in about June and in 9 months um from 2020 is when I made my first $50,000 in Revenue uh and 2021 we did over 150,000 in 2022 we did almost about 400,000 and in 2023 we're projected about $700,000 wa that is a lot of money in a very short period of time the money that Garrett had coming into the business is known as his gross revenue but remember Garrett also had to buy shoes first in order to resell them the cost to buy the shoes is known as his expense When You Subtract your expenses from your gross revenue you get net revenue your profit Garrett's profit over the 3 years was about $76,000 I I can't imagine buying an expensive pair of shoes like this and then just not wearing them it's like buying a Ferrari or buying a Supercar and then never driving it I really appreciate these sneakers almost as a piece of art so it really pains me to wear them because the value depreciates so much when the condition goes down so I don't really wear expensive shoes from my myself I've never actually spent more than $200 on a personal pair of shoes sometimes the sneakers that Garrett buys are in need of refurbishing work they aren't up to the standards that Garrett would like so he makes sure they are cleaned and repaired before he resells them these right here would need something called a soul swap we take another Air Jordan 5 that has the same midsole you actually take the whole upper of the shoe off and reso it in the new midsole that makes it ready to be worn again a lot of those shoes that people are paying Tom dollar for they're not even able to wear because they're so old if they wore them the entire shoe would just fall apart Garrett realized that he couldn't do all of the refurbishing work himself and still run his business so how did he solve this problem by hiring a staff of employees to work for him time spent on my business I figured I could put on more productive things than just cleaning shoes so I started hiring some of my friends for $20 an hour to clean these shoes Garett developed a job description that included the duties and responsibilities as well as the compensation meaning the payment that each of his employees would have and then Garrett trained his employees on how to refurbish sneakers I had to set them through a lot of training on how to clean these the right way make sure they're not getting damaged in this process and uh it's a big change because uh it's another expense that the business has I need to make sure that I'm getting my $20 an hour in value hiring a staff means taking on more expenses Garrett's always checking to make sure those EXP expenses don't exceed the gross revenue from his shoe sales so far his investment is paying off so what did we learn today from the story of Garrett and Denver sneakers to be a successful entrepreneur you must build a reputation as someone people want to do business with and as your company grows keep track of your business expenses to ensure they never exceed your gross revenue or stop your business from turning a profit really impressive company what's your final piece of advice that you'd give to entrepreneurs watching just stick with something you're passionate about and don't just do it to make money really do something that you're passionate about and want to make a change in the industry to and work from there before you think about the money well you're a shining example of what it means to be an entrepreneur we will all be watching what you do next really excited for it man thank you very much coming up in this season of The Hustle you have to get out there and you have to hustle you have to go knock on doors you have to walk into offices I'm traveling across America this is going to be some of my best swinging work at to find the next generation of young entrepreneurs snowing turning their passion into profit we did almost about 400,000 and this year we're projected about [Music] 700,000 I mean come on look at that yeah I give it an eight out of 10 an eight this is where they were able to get in less than 10 years worth of their entrepreneurial Journey what can I do with my whole [Music] lifetime nothing like this ever happens on uh on a regular job day but today is just one of those days I [Music] guess thanks so much for watching the hustle to make sure you don't miss out on any more videos like this please subscribe at prageru.com today