LOS ANGELES Back in the day, sneakerheads had all kinds of homemade methods for cleaning their shoes: a Tide-to-Go pen, a little bleach with toothpaste or some dish detergent with water and a toothbrush to scrub away grime.
Commercial shoe cleaners existed, of course. But treat your prized Air Jordans with chemicals not designed for sneakers? No way.
If you want to see how far sneakers — and the cleaning of them — have come, a store in the Little Tokyo neighbourhood called Jason Markk is showing the way.
Inside, a wooden shoeshine chair is reserved not for wearers of Italian loafers but men and women in designer sneakers. And behind the counter, well-groomed young men in white dress shirts, denim aprons and fresh sneakers have a title known in-house as SCT, or Sneaker Care Technician.
Using house-brand cleaning products and considerable know-how, they make dirt stains, heel drag and other street markings disappear, returning busted-looking Superstars and Yeezy Boosts to a state that is more fresh-out-of-the-box.
“A customer will usually come in with one to five pairs of shoes,” said Jason Markk, 35, the founder, who started selling his cleaning solution in 2007 and opened the store two years ago. “The running record is 54 pairs.”
He and his team see a wide spectrum of sneakers and conditions.
“We’ve had shoes caked in mud,” Markk said. “Then we get shoes that need a little touch-up. One of our SCTs will say, ‘Let me see what you got.’ Then we’ll tell them, ‘OK, what we suggest on this material is this, this and that.’”
Jonmarc Francisco, SCT manager, chimed in to recall one infamous drop-off: a pair of Bapes (sneakers by fashion label A Bathing Ape) covered in blood.
“Not just a little bit,” Francisco said. “Soaked. The guy nearly blew up his hand on the Fourth of July.” But after careful scrubbing and buffing, he said, “the shoes looked almost brand-new. The guy was super happy.”
If the Los Angeles store is any indication, business will be brisk. Markk and his technicians have so far cleaned more than 15,000 pairs of sneakers. Two more arrived at lunchtime, carried in by a young woman named Megan Warden.
She stepped to the counter and was met by Justin Familara, a technician who looked over one pair, Nike Air Max 1s, and gave his professional assessment: undersole crud, a common sight.
Her other pair, Nike Roshes, were practically new, but they were also white. “They’re supercomf,” Warden said. “But the stains are very obvious. That’s what I get for buying white shoes.”
She has tried to clean her shoes at home, she said. But pointing to the staff, she added: “They’re way better at it than me. Before they were here, you just bought new sneakers.”
A prescient idea
Given that sneakers have become almost fetishised, the store’s idea of giving them professional cleaning has hit the right stride.
But what’s hit par dirt is Markk’s idea of the drop-off service, he admitted.
Markk grew up in Harbor City, a neighbourhood in Los Angeles, playing basketball, listening to hip-hop and being the DJ at parties. Sneakers, he said, went hand in hand with that culture.
In his 20s, while working at an ad agency, he had a revelation one night as he cleaned his Nike high-tops with a homemade concoction of warm water and mild dishwashing soap: Why wasn’t there a sneaker-specific cleaner on the market?
He asked around and found that many fellow sneakerheads were also doing the homemade thing. So he decided to create a sneaker cleaning product and hired a chemist. Research and development took 10 months.
“He would call me and say, ‘I’ve got a new sample for you,’ and I’d take it home and test it on my shoes,” Markk said. “I’d take little notes, like, ‘It foamed up too much.’”
He wanted a versatile product that would not damage shoes and that could clean suede, pony hair, ostrich leather and any other exotic material sneaker designers use.
Once he had his winning formula, Markk quit his job and spent a summer selling kitchen knives out of a trailer in the middle of nowhere. It taught him the fundamentals of sales.
In 2007, he began marketing his cleaner, scoring instant raves from streetwear blogs.
Like Markk, his aproned technicians, who work behind a wall of shoe-filled cubbies, regard cleaning sneakers as a labour of love. Sneakerheads themselves, they can check the latest styles and handle ultra-rare models, like the pair of original 1985 Air Jordan 1s that a woman brought in. They belonged to her father, and she was having them cleaned as a gift to him.
Markk, the man who created the cleaner and assembled the expert crew, said his store’s meticulous process reflects his customers’ love for their kicks.
“It’s like a car: You just don’t mess up a ... car,” Markk said. “It’s respect.”
Cleaning tips from the experts
Canvas: “Canvas absorbs colour and dirt very well, so you want to always dry-brush the shoes before cleaning them. Say your shoes are super dusty and you put the solution on: You’re technically wetting the dust and applying more dirt onto the shoe.”
Leather: “Dirt doesn’t bind or stick to leather shoes, so immediately after cleaning it will come right off. But a lot of times people want to clean their shoes really quick on the go. You have to devote time to it. The [Jason Markk] solution has conditioning properties, so you’ll see a suppler leather and a better shine when you clean it up.”
Primeknit: “It’s a knitted woven. We always dust that off, too. The difference is, we stress using a microfibre towel immediately after cleaning. You want to transfer the stain from the sneaker material to the microfibre towel. Always dab. Basically blot the shoe.”
Uncured leather
“If you have a shoe like that, buy Repel (a spray by Jason Markk). “The application takes about 48 hours, and you need to do two. Spray them, let them sit overnight, spray another coat, then let them sit overnight again. It lasts about six months.”
Cost of cleaning
The store offers:
“Classic clean” ($10 (Dh36.7) to $15, depending on the shoe material)
“Deep clean” ($23 to $28)
“Purple label detail” ($65 plus), for the truly obsessed which includes a deep clean, deodorising and a thorough going-over of the laces, insoles and lining. Standard turnaround for most jobs is three days.
