Selling, reselling, and collecting rare sneakers is a huge part of the global sneaker market, which is currently valued at $72.7 billion and expected to reach $100 billion by 2026, according to Statista.
And Salinas’ Retail Boyz, Daniel Castenada, 22, and Fabian Maciel, 23, are running on top.
Within their first seven months of opening the Retail Boyz shoe store at Northridge Mall back in early 2021, the Gen Z duo hit over $1 million in sales. Now, two years later, their business has made over $3.6 million across their Salinas store, a new San Diego store and an online storefront.
Castenada and Maciel plan to keep expanding, with a store in San Jose coming in March — and eventually a store in Las Vegas.
Sneaker ‘snowball’
Before opening Retail Boyz, Castenada and Maciel built their reputation reselling shoes on Instagram. They piled their money together to open a brick-and-mortar store and kept reinvesting back into the business, starting out with just one or two shoes per rack and 70 to 80 pairs in total.
The Salinas community supported their Instagram venture and showed up in droves to the store.
Castenada and Maciel opened Retail Boyz with $40,000, combining $30,000 in existing inventory from their previous reselling business with $5,000 spent on more shoe inventory and another $5,000 toward shrink-wrapping shoes and completing an initial remodeling of the store’s torn-up walls.
When they first came to Northridge Mall, they sat together to draw up designs on how they wanted Retail Boyz to look.
“The day before opening day, we literally emptied out our bank accounts just to put everything in there,” Castenada said. “But the inspiration came from picking at other stores and adding our own mix to it, and every time people come in here they like how it looks… the ambiance of it, the aesthetic and the music playing.”
Over time, they reinvested into their store setup.
“People were just coming in and buying shoes,” Castenada said. “Shoes were flying off shelves.”
“Like a snowball, it kept growing. Within a month of being open, the whole store was already fully restocked, like twice, three times more.”
According to the founders, a lot of people say their store’s dim lighting reminds them of a bar. They added highlight lights to illuminate their merchandise and give off a “showcase type of vibe.”
A few months after opening, the International Council of Shopping Centers in New York selected Retail Boyz out of hundreds of entries for a visual victory award in “Most Creative Temporary Store Design.”
Shoes on socials
Castenada and Maciel run advertisements for Retail Boyz across Yelp, Instagram, Google and Apple.
According to Retail Boyz’s accounts’ audience analytics, their biggest group of viewers across social media platforms is between 15 and 23 years old, followed by a crowd of middle-schoolers and younger adolescents between 10 and 13 years old.
Maciel explained that TikTok and Instagram are particularly helpful for bringing in new customers, through skits they film in-store and post as videos on the apps.
The comedic skits often depict scenarios featuring a range of customers and sneaker enthusiasts, from Castenada holding his head in his hands under the words, “When you go back to school and everyone got the same shoes on.” Or, him avoiding eye contact while sweeping a broom across the floor with text across the screen reading, “When the 6’5 250LB guy starts arguing with his girl in my store.”
They just launched a YouTube channel last month, which so far features a celebrity shopping video and a vlog of them at a Salinas sneaker event.
What’s behind the sneaker hype in 2023? The first people who wore sneakers were industrialists using rubber from their factory. Sneakers were status symbols through the mid-19th century but lost some fanfare between the two world wars, after which they were more regarded as shoes for children.
Then Nike brought back the idea of elite footwear as conspicuous consumption in the 1970s with its marketing around exercising for personal health. Ever since, sneakers have been connected to urban style and NBA superstars, among other cultural interests that appeal to wide audiences.
“I think sneakers have always been a thing,” said Castenada. “The hype of social media definitely boosted their popularity and made it seem like, for the kids, if you don’t have them you’re not really fitting in. It’s just like any other type of hobby people have, like collecting cars.”
Now, sneakers often go for $300 or $400 a pair. Brands send their shoes to celebrities and children want the same ones when they see their idols wearing them.
“The little kids going on TikTok see people wearing shoes. Back then it was different… like, I’ve seen 10-year-olds come in here wanting like $500 shoes, and they get them from their parents which is crazy because back then, when we were younger, we just wanted toys and all that. And now they want sneakers, which is crazy,” explained Maciel.
Streetwear to spare
The luxury shoes Retail Boyz sell range in their colors and boldness, from black and purple Jordan 12s to stone-colored Yeezy 450s sporting a clamshell-inspired design. Castenada and Maciel are uniquely tuned in to the industry yet maintain their own style.
Castenada has been into streetwear since he was around 14 years old. “I’ve seen a lot of trends go out of style and come back, a lot of brands as well… So, there’s times where I’ll wear stuff and people are like, ‘Oh, those are kind of ugly,’ but, I mean, I just wear what I like. I see things that people are wearing and I add my own mix to it,” he said.
Maciel agreed, adding “I’m not trying to be like other people and wear the same thing. I probably get some inspiration from rappers, see what they’re wearing and I say, ‘Oh, what is that” and look it up and go from there. I just don’t really like wearing the same stuff as other people.”
Castenada is partial to all-white shoes, and his all-time favorite is the Jordan 3 Retros in White Cement.
“When I was younger and I couldn’t afford the sneakers, I think this is one of the shoes I really, really wanted until I got to the time of age I could afford it, and I have it now. It’s one of the first Jordan 3s that came out. The color is easy to wear. I like to wear stuff that’s easy to match, like black and white… and {the Jordan 3s) have a classic silhouette,” Castenada explained.
Maciel’s favorite and first shoe was the Jordan 4 Retro Bred, which are black and red with grey accents. Maciel said they’re easy to pair with anything.
But everyone has a different eye for fashion, especially when it comes to sneakers. Castenada and Maciel sold a number of neon green Brooklyn Air Forces from the Off-White brand at around $2,500 a pair around Christmas of last year. Their most popular shoe across stores right now is the Nike Dunk Low Retro Panda White Black, an understated low-top sneaker that lightly resembles a zoomed-in checkerboard — in the past four months, Retail Boyz sold over 500 pairs of them.
Sourcing sneakers for Salinas and San Diego
Castenada and Maciel pay attention to what shoes customers wear when they walk into a Retail Boyz store. That everyday traffic informs how they build up inventory.
“Two or three months ago, a couple of people were wearing New Balances again, because New Balances went out of style,” Castenada said. “(Then we) started pushing them again. I started seeing people wearing New Balances, and then all of a sudden everyone’s wearing their New Balances again.”
Castenada said people in Salinas and San Diego wear completely different clothing and shoes. It’s often cooler in Salinas, which means most customers wear jeans. But in San Diego, many customers wear shorts. Jeans tend to pair with high-top sneakers, and shorts with their low-top counterparts, he explained.
Retail Boyz tends to carry sneakers in the $200 to $400 range in the Salinas store. The San Diego store caters to a different demographic and stocks sneakers upwards of $600 or $700.
Their most popular shoe, the Nike Dunk Low Retro Panda White Black, often flies off shelves within two days of being restocked. It’s fluctuated in price for the past year. When the shoe was more limited, a pair went for $330. The price later dropped to $180. Now they’re being sold for $225.
Maciel updates pricings based on market factors, taking into account how much particular shoes are going for on Stock X, an online marketplace that acts as an index for sneaker prices, and GOAT, another sneaker-focused selling platform.
According to Castenada, many stores price their sneakers higher than Retail Boyz because they do not own their own inventory, instead operating on consignment. But Retail Boyz welcomes resellers and handles their business for them.
“If you bring a pair of sneakers to us, we’ll give you a price,” Castenada said. “And if you like it, we’ll give you cash for it.”
“Or store credit toward another shoe or clothing item, whatever you like,” Maciel added.
When it comes to sourcing sneakers, Castenada and Maciel look at their current inventory across both stores and come to an agreement on what to buy for each store depending on the time of year and what people — real-life customers and celebrities on social media — have been wearing.
When buying from bulk distributors, they spend around $10,000 to $20,000 at a time. They also go to events like Sneaker Con where hobbyists gather to buy, sell and trade shoes, usually purchasing between $60,000 to $70,000 in store inventory.
Last year, the duo went to Sneaker Con in Santa Clara and spent $150,000 in three hours.
A handful of sneakers end up in their in-store claw machine that costs $5 to play. Retail Boyz makes about a 20% profit margin on its operation over time, which is about the same margin they maintain for a regular sneaker sale.
Sole proprietors
Castenada and Maciel have been friends since kindergarten. They both got their start in sneaker reselling as teenagers. Years and millions of dollars in sales later, they remain grounded yet ambitious.
“I came from a single parent household so I had to make my own way to get the things I wanted because no one was going to buy me what I wanted,” Castenada said. He bought his first pair of Jordan Retros – which he still describes as his favorite sneaker — as a young teenager and wore them a few times before reselling them at school to buy more sneakers, which sparked a long-term interest in the business.
“I feel pretty ambitious… I’m not gonna lie, for a moment a year and a half after opening this location, I was content with where we’re at. And I kind of got into that mindset that we can’t be comfortable, and then we opened our second location,” he added.
“My mindset is not to get too comfortable, to be honest,” said Maciel. “Because when you get too comfortable, things start to slow down and go bad for you. That’s my thing… just keep going every day and try to improve in different ways every day for the business.”
And business is improving, with no signs of slowing down. These Salinas locals have put their sneakers on the global map.
Retail Boyz is no stranger to celebrity attention, with San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel and rapper Lil Sheik among its repeat customers.
Maciel said NFL players recently made big purchases at Retail Boyz, stocking up on clothes and shoes before their season started in early September. Castenada added that, because San Diego has more concerts, the duo has been meeting more rappers and artists. It’s common for celebrities to come into the San Diego store and just start shopping, he explained.
Both Castenada and Maciel now live in San Diego. They return to Salinas once a month to check on the store’s inventory.
They have had only about seven employees in the three years since opening in Salinas. One of their best friends was recently promoted to manager and runs the entire Salinas store.
“It was just some of our closest friends that we’ve hired here,” Castenada said. “We’re going to be opening up, like, more to the general public, but there’s just a lot of trust that goes on with that… you can’t just be leaving stuff around with people.”
The founders plan to continue their expansion.
“I’ve been doing this since I was 15. I’m 22 now. I don’t see myself stopping. It doesn’t feel like work to me because I love sneakers and fashion… I’d probably keep doing this until I can’t. I have nieces and nephews and I would like to get my family into running stores later on, just to keep the trust in the circle,” said Castenada.
Manasa Gogineni covers local news for The Californian and writes a Daily Briefing newsletter on all things Salinas (subscribe for free at https://profile.thecalifornian.com/newsletters/manage/). For news tips, email mgogineni@thecalifornian.com.
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