so a lot of people heard of you from the whole shoes IAM thing but explain to everyone what your history is with sneakers well I always loved Nikes ever since I was a little kid my dad used to run marathons when I was a kid so I would go with him to the sneaker stores when he would buy shoes and he would teach me all about him and I grew up in the 80s and the Michael Jordan era so I fell in love with Michael Jordan and Air Jordans fast forward to the early 2000s and I was in graduate school I was in law school and I was at a swap meet on the weekend and I stumbled upon a bunch of old Nikes and they were $20 each and I looked at these shoes and they were amazing like Air Force Ones and Harrah cheese oh geez from back in the day perfect condition and I bought these shoes at the time I only had $300 to my name took all the money out of my checking account gave it to this swapmeet vendor I actually bargained him down to fifteen bucks a pair and he gave me 20 pairs of shoes and I took him home to my one-bedroom apartment I took pictures of him and I posted him on eBay and the shoe sold a week later for about 75 100 120 dollars sometimes and I would get that money back and go back to the swap meet buy more shoes I did this for a few months until the swap meet vendor just disappeared no longer started going to the swap meet anymore I had to figure out a new way of finding shoes so I started going to the malls and eventually to the outlet malls and it was at the outlet malls where I really struck gold like I could walk into these different Nike outlets each store would have 20,000 shoes 25,000 shoes and I would just like really pick through everything on the floor and make friends with the staff and ask them to look in the back and it was like my goal was to go into each store and get a hundred pairs of shoes and I figured like just based on sheer math if I'm looking at 20,000 shoes or 25,000 shoes and I'm uncovering every rock and trying to figure out what shoes are under priced that I can sell for more online I would do that from one to the other to the other store so how big did this get well at first it was in a little one-bedroom apartment eventually I needed to get a storage locker eventually my storage locker turned into seven storage lockers and then my storage fees were so high that it made sense to get an office I rented a 1200 square foot office within three months it was bursting at the seams and I ended up subleasing office space from the neighbors all around me and I'd like have little shoe holes basically in other people's offices and eventually that office wasn't big enough and I was back to storage so I have an office and now all these storage lockers eventually I had to move to a warehouse and at my peak I had 15,000 pairs of Nikes that I personally hand selected okay so if you looked at those 15,000 pairs of shoes what would be the average price per shoe you think in terms of what they were worth roughly a hundred hundred fifty two hundred the retail on him was anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty or 160 bucks and the resale but when I was selling them on eBay I really wanted to give incredible deals on incredible shoes like that was like my internal motto so I wanted to make sure that the shoe that I sold was a top of the line or close to top of the line shoe and that it was discounted so really it was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 dollars a shoe at 15,000 which was roughly about a million dollars so you now have a million dollars worth of shoes you have a staff that's helping you ship the stuff out and list it and everything else like that what happened next so I was building my business while I was in graduate school I'm an attorney and I also have my MBA and when I was studying for my MBA I really learned how to build and grow a business I graduated with my MBA in oh five and now I'm done with school and it's like all shoes all the time the outlet stores opened at 10:00 and closed at 9:00 and I spent from 10:00 to 9:00 at outlets or on my way to the next outlet I did this for a few years until in May of 2009 Nike banned me they sent me these letters and one of them was sent to my warehouse another was sent to my home and the letters basically said thank you for your business over the years we've decided that we're not going to sell anything to you anymore we're not going to take returns from you anymore and don't talk to anyone that works at Nike about this I was at an outlet store as they were closing the door at night and I bought the maximum of the stuff that I could buy and I didn't have anyone with me to buy more and I went home and I was thinking about the product that I had left behind there it was actually some Nike SB belts that were $9.99 and these zesty beach volleyball shoes they were made for the Beijing Olympics they were $1.99 a dollar 99 for these they were like the gloves that you would put on your hands to do the dishes or like to clean something gross but they go on your feet and they were $1.99 and I was selling them for $45 and the belt I could sell for about $45 - okay so I closed down the outlet store I buy 10 pairs of the beach volleyball shoes i buy 10 of each belt there were three different belts and I go home and I left behind probably ten of each when that happened what I would do is I would have one of my employees go to the store the next day to clean up the mess that I left behind because my time was more valuable going to another store to look through their 20,000 shoes to see if I could find 100 or 200 or whatever okay so I send my employee out to viejas and I was about to go to another store and I get this phone call shortly after 10 o'clock in the morning and it's my employee and she's like they won't sell me these belts or the zesty volleyball shoes they won't sell to you anymore and I'm like what do you mean she's like you're done like they're cutting you off and I'm like what I go why don't you take the day off of work and just go and enjoy yourself I had a staff of four other people at the warehouse and I didn't want her coming in and telling all of them that this was over right so I said go take some time off let me like figure this out and think about what I'm going to do about ten minutes after we got off the phone there was a knock at my warehouse door and it was FedEx with one of these letters banning me and I was like oh so I looked at my staff and I sent them home they didn't know the led had come and I was like why don't you guys take the day off and I just had to like digest all this and figure out what I was going to do I went home ten minutes after getting home FedEx again with another letter and I'm like man Nike is not messing around like are they gonna follow me around all day and keep delivering these letters to me can you go ahead and read the letter that they sent you yeah of course dear mr. Geller we have determined that Nike retail will no longer sell products to you or accept returns from you at any Nike owned retail location effective May 19 2009 this also includes any persons you asked to purchase or return products on your behalf we appreciate your business over the years Nike makes all decisions about the sale of its products strictly from our own independent point of view please know that Nike sales persons are not authorized to discuss this decision with you so please do not seek to engage them in any way regarding the future sale or return of Nike products very truly yours John arbok director of stores okay you and John actually had a conversation since then no so I get this letter and I call Nike I'm like I want to talk to John arbok alright five oh three six seven one six four five three I know their number by heart I call him up I'm like hey can I speak to mr. arbok they let go of him a day after he kicked me to the curb like he no longer worked at Nike like almost immediately interestingly I had a guy that was working for me that was like my right-hand man and I trained him on the ins and outs of everything I mean everything I knew and I actually hired him to travel the country and buy shoes for me and it's funny because I was reading this letter and it says in here you can't ask people to purchase shoes right and I was like okay I'm not gonna ask him like I'm gonna tell him I'm gonna be like dude you're losing your job if you don't go and buy shoes for me I'm not asking anyone to do anything and really this guy's going to be at the stores asking me if he should buy the shoe like it was sort of like a loophole right there a little loophole I was like well I'm not gonna be asking him because he's going to be asking me he's going to be calling me and saying hey I'm in Kissimmee Florida and I'm looking at these penny twos and they're 59.99 should I buy him and I'm gonna say yes or no so I kept him traveling the country okay and he did it with his little brother with his cousin he always had one homie with him so that he could buy ten and his buddy could buy ten and also it's like a pretty daunting thing to travel the country in a minivan buying shoes and shipping him back to California which is what he was doing at what point did you realize that the business just wasn't going the way you wanted it to go my employee on the road just wasn't good he wasn't waking up early enough he wasn't getting to the stores when they opened he wasn't producing the same kind of numbers that I would produce he wasn't you it wasn't his passion it was a job that he was doing sort of against his will so at this point things aren't really working out with your employee no it's very stressful he's on the road he's calling me all day and night I'm convinced that there's a hundred pairs of good shoes at every outlet he's trying to convince me that there's only ten pairs of shoes at the outlets if he's lucky right we fought the battle for about nine months um it was three separate trips that were about two months each he would go out for two months come back and I would train him based on what he did and what he didn't do and then I'd send him out again okay in the meantime I was trying to find shoes that I could resell as well and I was going to footlocker I was also going to all of the mom and pops that I grew up going to in LA I would I was in San Diego and I would drive up to LA go to sporty LA go to Sammy's sports just a lot of these little like hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop places and I would shop through their old inventory and then I would go online and buy shoes from other ecommerce sellers and resell them myself at what point did you decide to just shut down the business my buddy and I had a meeting in July of 2010 so actually it was over a year from the time that was banned too when we both sat and had lunch and we were just like this isn't working and it was mutual like this guy did not want to get in that minivan and drive to Florida any more than I wanted him to go and do it you have to remember I was going to outlets that were 15 20 30 miles away from me maybe 50 miles in a Prius so there were like no costs associated with me going and filling my Prius with shoes and bringing him back to a warehouse now I've got this guy in a Ford minivan burning gas driving from state to state having to stay in hotels having to eat like it became so expensive after you shut down the store you had the idea to do a museum when Nike banned me I was in a three-year lease and I had 23 months left on a lease that was $4,000 a month so my future rent for this big giant warehouse was about $100,000 which was like 10% of my inventory and in the months that I was there before I was banned I did a considerable amount of improvements in there like I built all these shelves and racks and like really made the place my home and now I've been cut off and I'm looking at this warehouse and every day we're selling a hundred pairs of shoes or 150 pairs of shoes or 200 pairs of shoes and I'm looking at these shelves and they're slowly emptying little by little and this money is coming in I got this guy across the country who can't spend it as fast as it's coming in and I'm looking at these shelves and I'm looking at my PayPal account with the balance I'm like what am I going to do and it just hit me that I could use the shelves and the warehouse in a completely new and different way I could curate the history of Nike and set it up on these racks I could liquidate all of this inventory that I had worked for years to acquire and I could strategically build the world's greatest Nike collection actually what really inspired me to do it was Randy Pausch the last lecture Randy Pausch was a college professor who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he was told that he had three months left to live and he decided to spend his life having fun and fulfilling his childhood dreams he actually made a list of what his dreams were and he decided that he was going to spend the rest of his life checking off those things on his list and I read this man's story who was facing death and the way that he was embracing life and I was like what am I so upset about that Nike banned me I have an opportunity to do exactly what this guy is doing which is fulfill my childhood dreams and I'm going to do it right here in this warehouse and my dreams were to have every Air Jordan and not just Air Jordans but every Agassi every bo Jackson every David Robinson every Charles Barkley every damn shoe that I wanted when I was growing up that my parents wouldn't buy me that's what I wanted I wanted a Bronco I bought a 1973 Bronco convertible when I was five I wanted Garbage Pail Kids I bought the entire first series of Garbage Pail Kids I wanted Michael Jordan rookies I bought those I used all the money that I had made on eBay to buy everything that I ever wanted as a kid and curate the history of Nike so that I could tell the history of Nike tell my own personal story but more than anything else tell Nike who they banned at one point you got unbanned so after I built the shoes iam I started making videos and taking pictures and sharing the collection online and eventually I made some DVDs that I sent to the executives at Nike I went on Nikes website and I found out who their executives were and who their board of directors were there were a hundred executives and twelve people on the board of directors I hand wrote a hundred and twelve letters to these people dear so-and-so my name is Jordan Geller I have a nine thousand square foot warehouse in San Diego I built the first Nike Museum come experience it I sent a DVD everything actually looked like a golden ticket like a Willy Wonka ticket with a factory a couple months later mark parker tinker hatfield nelson ferris rick Shannon Mike lemming-like the top of the nike pyramid boarded their private jet and flew down to San Diego for a tour and this was on March 21st 2011 it was about a year and a half after I had been banned it really took me about a year to build the shoes iam okay these guys show up at my door I give him a three-and-a-half hour tour I walked him into a world that they had created they were mesmerised Tinker Hatfield like had tears in his eyes and he was thanking me profusely for bringing back the best memories of his life ultimately Nike ended up leaving that day they said do you want to come to the airport and check out our private jet I was like definitely so we go walk up to the jet it actually is looks like a Nike spike like a track spike and there's little spikes underneath it it says six four five three on the back of the jet as we were walking up to the jet Mark Parker looks at me and he's like you think you know so much about Nike what are those numbers on the back of the plane I look at him six four five three I'm like that's nice on a phone it gave me a fist bump and he was like yeah you got it I mean I've called Nike a million times so six four five three is something that I'm real familiar with so anyway I walked them to the jet the executives board the jet and Eric's brung says let me walk you to your car Eric's Brunk is the CEO of Nike okay he walked me to my car and he looks at me and he's like Jordy it is very important to Nike that the shoes IAM remains exactly as it is exactly where it is exactly as it is now my lease had already expired it expired in February and I was able to convince my landlord to let me stay February and March in exchange for my security deposit and Nike came on March 21st so I had 10 days left and I refused to take down the warehouse until I was able to share it with Nike I was like I spent a year building this place this is my everything I'm not taking it down until they come because they came and they leave and Eric's brunk is walking me to the car and he's telling me how important it is to Nike that this remains exactly as it is so I said okay I'm going to call my landlord and I'm going to tell him that I want to like extend the lease and we'll see what happens I go home I call the landlord who I had reached out to a few months prior and said come to this warehouse and see what I built and I was able to convince him to let me stay for two more months I'm like Nike came Nike came Nike came they want to keep the warehouse exactly where it is dude sends me an eviction notice and Sue's me tells me that if I'm not out by April 1st he's suing me for 150 thousand dollars which is the future rent of the building so I reach out to Nike and I'm like oh my god like he's playing hardball with me he's telling me he's going to sue me and evict me and he puts for lease signs all around the outside of the warehouse Nike says we'll take care of it and they ended up signing a three-month lease with my landlord for me to stay Nike paid my rent they paid sixteen thousand five hundred dollars for me to be there for three months the landlord was very opportunistic he raised the rent on Nike and then included a clause that every month the rent goes up by $500 so after Nike was done with their three months now my rent was six thousand dollars a month for July and I bit the bullet and I paid it and I wasn't generating any revenue to have this on display and now with that rent and the overhead it was just not making sense to keep doing this as I packed it all up I reached out to Nike and I was like hey is it cool if I shop at your stores again and they unbanned me they sent me an email saying you're welcome back in the stores but follow the rules Jadakiss man that dude is old-school do u know OG in the game so he got stuffed for years that you haven't even seen my favorite sweeping up the all-black sixties the original jump ball from from the championship and like that those my favorite releases but I got a I got a period either half or so long that I just I play ball of them still sometimes I wear my faders they twisted but they for the first error them so yeah
lmao so Nike does dislike resellers. Too bad they can't do shit when everyone is reselling their products and not just one person.
So what happened after that? Did he have to move the collection?
100 pairs of good shoes at outlets? I couldn't find anything at mine and I stayed for like 4 hours searching
It's cool what he did, but in no way was it sustainable. I mean, one million dollars is relatively a very small amount when you have an inventory of over 15,000 shoes. For the amount of work and time he put into his venture, you would expect a greater profit margin.