HOW TO OPEN A SNEAKER STORE

ACCOUNTS & COLLABORATIONS

Alife Rivington: We opened up the first shop in October 1999. We filled it with stuff we liked and thought was cool, hoping others would think the same. Our office was in a loft overlooking the store, which became a meeting spot for a lot of artists and designers. Through these meetings, collaborations would surface, and the store gained new products. One of the collaborations in the first year was a few pairs of sneakers customized by some friends of ours. Painting on sneakers and clothing was something we did back in the breakdance era, and we thought it’d be cool to rock again. The response was great.

Soon after, we befriended a cat that worked at Nike. He’d come by the shop a lot, and at the time there wasn’t much going on in the Lower East Side. One day we all sat down, burned one, and he gave us the low down on Nike. We ended up being a platform for Nike to introduce newer, more innovative designs and our Nike account was on its way. No promotion or advertising was done, yet lines of customers would form at sunrise each and every time we had a new colorway or style. At that time, we knew that the customer we were already attracting was this sneaker freak. Between the customs and the Air Woven craze, we knew it was time for an Alife spin on the whole shit. Hence, the Alife Rivington Club which we opened in September of 2001.