Clean kicks
Lemoyne-owen graduate opens Snkrr Bar to give new life to shoes
Dominique Worthen is helping Memphis put its best foot forward, one clean sneaker at a time. h His business, Snkrr Bar, specializes in cleaning, restoring and customizing sneakers to give them a like-new feel. h Behind the pristine white bar welcoming patrons, heaps of shoes wait to be cleaned. h “It’s their shoes that they own, the shoes that they bring in,” Worthen, 30, said. “But when they get it back, it’s kind of like we gave them a whole new pair of shoes.”
Hailing from Flint, Michigan, Worthen came to Memphis to attend Lemoyne-owen College. After graduating in 2015 with a degree in Business Administration, he played as a professional golfer in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. After a few years, he received a job offer to work for a project management company in Memphis.
Not truly satisfied in that line of work, Worthen started pursuing entrepreneurial ventures including a marketing agency and drone piloting.
While taking a walk one afternoon, a brief exchange with an older man served as an initial spark for Snkrr Bar.
“Start from the bottom,” the man told him, so he took the advice literally and got to work.
Memphis perfect for Snkrr Bar
Worthen says he started cleaning shoes when he was young, learning how to make one pair last for years.
After about a month of dedicating himself to finding the right formulas to clean shoes, he began cleaning shoes for other people. Now, what was once a
homegrown operation, is a storefront with five employees cleaning more than 70 and 85 pairs of shoes daily. His clientele, he said, is anyone who really cares about their sneakers from local officials to Nike employees.
Worthen said he saw Memphis as a prime city for a sneaker restoration business, not only because of the shoes’ prominence in Memphis style but also because of the city’s position as a hotspot for Nike sneakers.
“Memphis is the sneaker distribution capital of the world,” he said. “If you order a pair of Nike sneakers in Alaska, it has to come through Memphis, and it was a thought after I did my research I realized that, ‘Dude, you’re onto something,’ but it was just a crystallization of that. Something gonna come out of this, but you are going to be so uniquely positioned.”
Worthen said the most important thing he’s learned from the last few months about business is ultimately to believe in yourself.
“Be genuine, and be original,” he said.
Worthen received an Economic Development and Growth Engine Inner City Economic Development Loan for $15,000 to put toward $57,000 of improvements to the 1,129-square-foot space at 1869 Madison Ave. Upgrades include installing new signage and awning, plus the addition of a service counter. Snkrr Bar moved into the space in July.
A first-time customer, Damien Leakes brought five pairs of shoes to Snkrr Bar. One notable pair was his “grasscutters:” a pair of Cool Grey Retro Air Jordan 11s that hadn’t been worn in five years because of the agricultural wear.
“The first time I saw somebody tag you in a post, I said, ‘Man, let me see. Let me see what this man can do, what you really got going on. I just kept watching [Worthen] like, ‘You gon’ make me a witness,’ ” Leakes said.
Leakes was so pleased with the look of his shoes, he wore them right out of the store.
For Worthen, restoring shoes is less about the appearance of shoes but a sacred bond between a person and their shoes.
“We’re not in the cleaning shoes business. We’re in the ‘Man, you saved my shoes’ business,” Worthen said. “That connection with people’s shoes, I can’t explain.”
Not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach
For shoes like Leakes’, a service can take anywhere between one and 30 days. It’s not a “one-size-fits-all” approach to all shoes in need. Each shoe gets its proper diagnosis and receives a proper cleaning, as a result. Some shoes, like Leakes’, need 30 days to restore the shoes to their best form.
The repair shop also offers four levels of cleaning at different price points: the $40 Deep Clean, a $50 cleaning for suede shoes, $60 for Sole Icing and a $90 signature clean. Snkrr Bar also has a mail-in program for those from outside the Memphis area who want their sneakers cleaned by Worthen and his team.
So far, according to Worthen, Snkrr
Bar has serviced shoes from more than 30 states.
What’s next for Snkrr Bar?
Worthen said in just the three months Snkrr Bar has been open, it has outgrown the space and he’s looking to move two doors down to a space double the size of the current location.
Upon opening Snkrr Bar, Worthen also launched a shoe donation program
called SOLES, which is a backronym for “Saving Ordinary Lives Each Step.” Worthen takes shoe donations and gifts them to people in need.
“I felt so blessed for how this business took off, and it was all about like how can I give back? How can I be a part of the city? How can I be somebody that the city needs to be a bridge of happiness?”
As for the growth of Snkrr Bar, Worthen wants Snkrr Bar locations to be as common as gas stations.
“I want to become a staple in the city,” Worthen said. “We’re the only ones in the city that’s doing what we’re doing. And I just want to own that lane... I mean I want people getting their shoes cleaned to be synonymous with Snkrr Bar.”
Astrid Kayembe covers South Memphis, Whitehaven and Westwood. She can be reached at astrid.kayembe @commercialappeal.com, (901) 3047929 or on Twitter @astridkayembe_.