Sole Purpose 2 ties up sneaker aficionados

You ever have somebody come up to you and say, “Hey, wanna trade sneakers?”

That wouldn’t have seemed out of place at Sole Purpose 2, a sneaker collectors’ convention held Saturday at the Abode in Wichita.

Hundreds of people – mostly young, mostly male – gathered to buy, sell and trade upper-end athletic shoes, shouting offers and counteroffers over a ceaseless din of hip-hop music.

“It’s more of a hobby than anything else,” said Bryce Johnson, 18, a recent high-school graduate who will be attending Butler Community College in the fall. “Each shoe kind of has a history behind it, especially Air Jordans.”

Like most participants, Johnson didn’t come empty-handed. He carried a used but boxed pair of Adidas SL Loops Red Reptile running shoes.

His pitch: “It’s an all-red classic shoe; it’s got the little reptile texture on it; they’re also known as Detroits.” He cautioned, though, that you shouldn’t wear them when it rains because it wrecks the reptile trim.

Johnson was hoping to sell them for $100 to $110 but settled for $80. “It’ll do,” he said philosophically.

There were the casual sellers like Johnson, and then there were pros like Carter “I Sell Shoes” Milby, a 19-year-old graduate of Rose Hill High School.

Milby rented a booth space, displaying dozens of pairs of vintage sneakers in a rainbow of colors. Way more than a hobby, it’s a small business that makes him several thousand dollars a month during the summer as he travels to shoe shows in Wichita, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Kansas City.

He said Wichita was his third show this season, with two more to go before he’s off to Neosho Community College in Chanute to study – what else? – business.

Shoe trading has been good training, he said. “I’ve learned a lot about business.”

So why bother with the degree and not just work the shoe circuit full time?

“Well, prices go up and down, and I need something more stable,” he explained.

Not far away, Luke Guo, 16, was marveling at his luck in picking up a near-perfect pair of Nike Air Foamposites.

“They’re $300 on eBay,” Luke said, smiling. “I got these for $200.”

“It was a good steal,” added his friend Patrick Matson, 15.

Matson brought a pair of orange Nike Kobe 9 Strategy Elites with every intention of selling them. When that didn’t work, he went to his fall-back position and wore them.

Presiding over it all was Chris Barnett, a 31-year-old self-described “sneakerhead” and organizer of the show. He moved through the crowd with a mobile microphone, occasionally stopping a seller to do an impromptu commercial for a sneaker they were trying to move.

But isn’t buying the shoes off other people’s feet kind of icky?

“I don’t know how to explain it,” answered Barnett. “It’s what we do. It’s like the new baseball cards. If it’s new or if it’s used, somebody will buy that to add it to their collection.”

He can’t buy as many shoes as he’d like “now that I have kids,” he said. And all four of them, ages 11, 2 and 6-year-old twins, are following in their father’s footsteps as enthusiasts for snappy sneakers.

No Dollar General generics here, even on the pre-schooler, who could have proudly told you the make and model of his shoes, if he could talk loud enough to be heard over the music.

“I started them on a horrible, expensive habit,” Barnett said, grinning like a kid in a shoes store.

This story was originally published July 18, 2015 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Sole Purpose 2 ties up sneaker aficionados."