No loafer here

Student to step up his lucrative Internet sneaker business

FRED KELLY
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

At 15, Truth Han says he is competing with Wal-Mart, Sears and other retailers that sell sneakers.

Han sells 40 pair of athletic shoes each month to people around the country. He started selling shoes three years ago to get extra money to purchase Air Jordans his parents would not buy for him.

"This was the only way I could get them," he said, adding that his parents thought the $100-plus shoes were too expensive.

Since then, he estimates he has made $30,000 hawking mostly Air Jordans for anywhere from $130 to $500 a pair. An inventory of 500 pairs of sneakers stuffs a room and three closets in his family's Mooresville home.

Han is a rising junior at Lake Norman High School. But with summer break extended this year due to a change in state law, he plans to increase the amount of time he devotes to the business.

During the school year, he spends only about an hour a day on the venture because his mom won't let him sell shoes until his homework is finished. In the summer, he will spend three to four hours a day taking pictures of shoes and writing descriptions for them for eBay, the famed Internet auction site.

When he first approached his parents, Hongtao and Xiaopei Han, about his idea to sell shoes online, they emphatically said no. But after two months of incessant pleading, they relented.

"When he told me he could sell a pair of shoes for $200, I didn't believe it," said Xiaopei Han, his mother. "I didn't like it. I thought it would take too much time away from his schoolwork."

Han's business model is simple. He buys shoes from local stores and sells them at a higher price on the Internet. Last week, he went into local stores and bought 60 pairs. He said he got them at discounted prices because he purchases so many.

Han said often he buys the shoes and hangs onto them until the model is scarce in stores. Then, when he posts them on the Internet, bidding wars will erupt among customers, he said.

He acknowledged that he has profited from the popularity of Michael Jordan and a hot trend that has young people buying sneaker models first introduced in the 1980s and 1990s.

"The kids go crazy for anything Jordan," he said. "It has a classic look."

Han said he tracks trends by watching which shoes his friends buy. But they aren't wild about his business.

"They think it's crazy," he said. "They're like, `Why are you wasting your money on shoes?' "