Clothes Whores: Enthusiastically examining Kansas City's sartorial shenanigans
Laskowski, is a KC native and a recent graduate of Northwest Missouri State University with
a bachelor's degree in marketing. He started altering his store-bought
shoes in high school as a way to combat boredom. Eventually, he began
selling customs on eBay. "When I
started, there were three, four, maybe five people posting pictures of
custom shoes online," he says. "Now, there's just hundreds of people
all over the world doing it."
To unify this niche of fanatics, Laskowski created a Web site in February 2009 called PaintOrThread.com, which functions as a place where designers can post photos and network with each other. He's judged three contests through the site, which yielded entries including Rugrats, Family Guy, Monopoly and Saw-themed kicks. The community on his site has grown so much in a year that he's basing his future marketing career around it.
One of Laskowski's idols in the custom game is a Floridian who shows off his creations at 3RCustoms.com. They've recently begun collaborating, and their design includes an innovation on the original light-up wire technique. Now, Laskowski's figured out how to illuminate a shoe's entire sole. He promises to post pictures of the prototypes online in February.
Wearing custom shoes is always an attention-getter, so much so that the slightly shy Laskowski has toned down his personal style a bit. "I went to San Diego last year and it was just crazy. I had people coming up to me saying, 'How much are those? Can they make you fly?'"
To date, $500 is the most Laskowski has charged for a pair of custom shoes. Depending on whether a customer provides the blank shoes or Laskowski has to cop a pair himself (he's found plain, white Nikes at Cargo Largo for a steal, at $30), he can turn around a pair of one-of-a-kinds in two to three weeks.
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