On Friday, March 31, 2001 the journey began.
It was on this day, fifteen years ago, that I worked my first shift at my very first job at the age of sixteen years of age at a shoe store. Athlete’s World, a former premier Canadian shoe selling chain, thought that they gave a teenager a job, but little did they know that they started a career.
All that has come of my career in sneakers started there at Athlete’s World on March 31st. Every year I silently celebrate the day giving thanks for the opportunity I was provided, but for the milestone of 15 years, I wanted to tell some backstory and share my gratitude.
Nice Kicks celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2016, but the footwear journey began in a mall in Victoria, B.C. fifteen years back.
My family had just moved to Canada from the Caribbean and I needed two things as a sixteen-year-old hitting a new city and new school – a new pair of kicks and a job. The parents weren’t having the Canadian prices on sneakers. The $50US shoe budget didn’t go very far in Canada to say the very least. I had to get a job if I wanted to get the kicks that I spent years researching in Eastbay catalogs.
When I heard of the notion of “employee discounts”, immediately the thought of taking a stab at getting a job with a place that sold sneakers seemed like a solid one. I asked a few friends with jobs about the process of how one goes about getting a job in Canada. What should I have in hand prepared? Who should I speak with? What should I wear?
Three weeks prior to getting the opportunity to walk onto the sales floor, I walked in to speak to a manager to sell myself a position with the store. The mission was simple – sell yourself. Make them value you as being more than anyone else they can hire. A call from the manager followed later that evening requesting an interview where I got the offer.
Straight commission – 5%.
“You make what you want to make.” my manager, Joe Scalzo, said to me. “You want to give good customer service, take care of their needs, you will do well here.”
For me, it wasn’t the money, it was the shoes. I worked 35+ hours a week while still maintaining a full load of school work, but none of the hours on the sales floor interacting with customers about sneakers ever felt like “work.” I was hooked.
Still a junior in high school, I was in constant learning mode. Every piece of material about a sneaker, every hangtag, every sales pamphlet – I had to read it. But when the Air Jordan 11 “Columbia” came in with a retro card, my appetite for studying sneakers went beyond the obsessive levels it had already achieved. The retro card became my next mission for learning – a step by step list of Air Jordans to learn everything about.
The working environment at Athlete’s World was really an amazing experience. The team from Store #648 (Victoria, B.C.) was a competitive group. Not only was everyone competing with themselves to do better and learn more about the shoes we sold, but so too was there competition amongst all of the staff.
Fast forward fifteen years, words cannot describe the level of gratitude I have for Athlete’s World giving a kid a chance. Truly, thank you.
If you are interested in working in the sneaker industry, I cannot encourage you enough to get a start working in retail. What you will learn from working with customers and the products lays the groundwork to have a long career in the business no matter where you want to go in the industry.
