A while back i met up with Crepe City,consisting of three individuals these guys collect rare and limited sneakers. They have now created an outlet for sneaker(trainers, i’m British) enthusiast in London to meet together share their passion, sell/swap trainers and to generally have a good time. Their next event is on November the 7th 2010 so, be there! (click here for more details).

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Tell me your names and tell me abit about yourselves?

Kade- My name is Kade Amoo, I’m from Crepe City this international trainer movement which is setting the world a flame. I work on it with Ronal Raichura and Paul Smyth.

Ok, so i think you touched on what Crepe city is but, could you expand on it?

Paul- What we’re trying to do is create a place for people who love sneakers. So a place where we can all come together, share sneakers, buy sneakers and talk about sneakers. There’s 20 odd sneaker sellers all round the UK mostly London based, they come down and sell their wares and then there’s people swapping things, people talking about things, it’s a day out but also the collectors come down to show their stuff off. Some of it’s sold, some of it is too expensive to sell.

Ronal-We work with a few clothing guys as well, in the last event we had Pins book, Trapstar, we had Benjart….not Benjart…..not Benjart(laughter), getting it muddled with the next event. We want to get clothing brands involved who share the same ethos as us and are into the same sort of things and are passionate about foot wear.

Paul- We had a thousand pair of shoes last time, it’s sort of like an  Aladdin’s cave when you go in, packed out with shoes, shoes you haven’t seen for like 10,15, 20 years

Crepe City: London Sneaker Festival, November 2009 from Paul Smyth on Vimeo.

So who came up with the idea initially?

Ronal- It was my idea initially, just because I thought like there’s allot of people hunting for rare shoes and at the same time i know allot of people who’ve got collections, they’ve grown up, their house is too small for it or they’ve got other priorities in their life, they wanna sell them so rather than messing around on the internet why not have somewhere where people can meet face to face and deal in person securely and talk about something that their passionate about.  Sort of try and build a community because i feel that’s been lacking a little bit recently in  the trainer scene within London. So you know I’ve had this idea, we discussed it and it probably took a year to get it going. So far we’ve done two events so it’s still really growing.

What makes a shoe a collectable shoe?

Paul-It’s numbers, they play some cleaver games. So what they do is that they release short runs of shoes . I’ll also say it’s about.. they play about with colour ways and collaborations. It’s hard to tell, some shoes will just fly off the shelves.

Ronal- Then obviously. Nike does allot of work with people like Supreme, Solebox , new balance people like that…. their collaborations hold allot of weight, people respect them. Shoes like that you’ll see them selling for £70, then you can see them a few weeks later selling for £700 or even straight after the release. It’s crazy.

So are you all trainer collectors?

Paul- He collects allot (gestures to Ronal)  I’ve always liked trainers, allot of my interest is in making things happen. I’ve run little businesses and stuff like that.

So how long have you been collecting trainers for?

Ronal- Since 2001, 9 years

So how big is your personal trainer collection?

It’s probably down to about 50 pairs now I reckon, but in the past it was probably up about 100 or so. Maybe a bit more.

Paul- But Ron sells allot of shoes as well so if you go to his house that his collection and then there’s rooms full of shoes.

Ronal-  we’re gonna be launching a web site and all that stuff is gonna go up on there, selling all the interesting stuff that we’ve got, gonna get the forum up on there as well so we’re making  like a whole resource for everyone who’s into trainers to go to one place. Get you news, buy your shoes there as well and interact with other people on the forum.

How did you first get into collecting trainers?

I dunno i think it’s something I’ve always been into and then i started getting a bit more money i just sort of started buying stuff.

Kade -Was it through your music scene?

Ronal- No, I think more of just going to sport shops and seeing things i liked really. I don’t think there’s any sort of thing… I mean obviously there was people wearing Jordan’s and things like that and the whole Michael Jordan thing so that was quite something i was always into but, i never played basketball.

Paul- i think it was hard not to get excited back then. Trainers we’re coming out. Airmax’s where coming out.

Ronal- Golden era really, like late  80’s and early 90’s is when all the good stuff really came out even if you look know what’s coming out now it’s those shoes coming back again. Either the same shoe or in a slightly different colour ways. That’s why allot of people our age are into shoes because it’s like you know you grow up with it and now it’s the stuff coming back out.

Ok, so what are the most expensive shoes you’ve bought and what’s the highest you’ve sold a pair for?

The highest I sold…, I had the Michael Lau dunks they come in a wooden box, brown dunk with like a wood effect i got them through a collector and i ended up selling them for like $1500 to somebody in China.  The most I paid my self was I had the Heineken Dunks in which I paid £250 for but that was a bit extravagant and it was something I was looking for, for quite a while so I thought why not.

[Show as slideshow]

So would I be right in saying that Americans dominate the collection scene?

I think it depends like obviously stuff like the Airforce’s, Jordans, Dunks ….that’s very American dominated but at the same time you’ve got like a more European culture where people are into running shoes like Airmax’s or like Adidas zx’s things like that.

Paul- he only told me a nice story the other day, that the Adidas stuff came about because of football. People where travelling about to different places and spotting  pairs of Adidas they hadn’t seen before ,bringing them back to Liverpool, Manchester, London and selling them. So it’s actually linked to like the football hoolie(hooligan) scene.

Ronal- It’s a massive scene

Paul- Different tribes

Ronal- the landscape of trainer collectors is not just for a specific group of people, it’s a thing that can really bring people together, which is one of the reasons we’re getting involved and doing the events really. So many different people can come together and share their passion.

Have you been contacted by any actual company e.g Nike /Adidas?

Yea yea we had puma come down to our second event, they had a little display there showing off their history of their, puma clydes.

Paul- We’re not about plugging one brand or another brand, we’re just about sneakers and the people who like sneaker and that’s our community. It’s the people who actually wear them, buy them, shed out their hard cash for them.

Foot patrol was bought by JD this year how do you feel about that?

I think it’s good to have a shop putting dead stock stuff out there, it’s quite nice. I think it would be nice to have a few more independent shops around in London because it’s a different environment but, at the same time i’ve been to Footpatrol and you can still go there and have a chat with the guys there. It still has that sort of vibe as an independent shop. So fair play to them.

So if a big company came to buy Crepe city would you….

Ronal- No, definitely…

Kade- Not yet Ron (laughter)

Paul- It’s not what it’s about. It aint gonna be an entity some one can buy maybe the community can buy into it and we can all invest into it together.

Ronal- It’s not something we’ll be interested in doing…

Lastly whats been the biggest learning curve since you’ve started this business?

Ronal -I think you’ve gotta work hard and build on the momentum you’ve got otherwise it slows down like you know. Once you’ve done something good you can’t just sit back and think you know “i’ve done something good” you’ve gotta do something better the next week.

Paul- We’re basically here to serve London’s Sneaker collectors and to give people who care about shoes a good time when they come down to an event and that’s it’s, i’m being quite simple about things. The trouble with the whole sneaker scene is that it’s abit commercial and were filling the gap and building a community around that. It’s reciprocal, we get some benefits you gets some benefits we’ll help you out.

Thank you guys

Crepe City 3

Location: Bar Music Hall – Shoreditch

Date and Time: 07 November · 15:00 – 23:00

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