Restoring prized sneakers makes him an entrepreneurial shoe-in

BY ALLISON KAPLAN
Pioneer Press

Despite her feng shui training, Jordan Hagedorn's mom can't complain about the sneakers spilling out of closets and cluttering hallways all over her house. Those shoes pay her kid's college tuition.

Twenty-year-old Jordan, of Eau Claire, Wis., buys, restores and resells vintage Air Jordan basketball kicks on eBay. It's not unusual for a pair he has fixed up to sell for $250. Some go for as much as $600. Why? If you have to ask, then you probably don't remember where you were when Michael Jordan hit that gravity-defying, foul-line jumper at the buzzer to beat the Cavaliers in Game 5 of the first round, either.

"These shoes are like Holy Grails for some people," says Steve Mullholand, publisher of Sole Collector, a magazine for sneaker aficionados. Yes, there are entire magazines devoted to analysis and worship of athletic footwear. Oh, they mention Nike's Zoom Lebron II Low and the occasional Reebok, but in the world of sports shoes, the Nike Air Jordan remains unparalleled. Even with His Airness in retirement, the new 20th-anniversary Air Jordan XX is almost completely sold out just four months after its release.

Fans will say AJs look cool and fit like a slipper. But mostly, the line owes its success to superb brand management and an iconic frontman. "For every shoe Jordan wore, there's a memorable shot or moment," Mullholand says. "You have this attachment to that cool moment, and you can have a piece of that on your feet."

That's where Hagedorn comes in. He can make a stinky, beat-up sneaker look worthy of a display case, which is where most vintage AJs wind up. "That's artwork," Mullholand says. "There are very few people who do it."

White shoe polish gave Hagedorn his inspiration. When he grew out of the used AJ XIIs he bought on eBay for $40, Hagedorn decided to touch them up and see if he could make his money back. They sold for $120.

"I made $80 for a little shoe polish!" says Hagedorn, who was born in 1985, the year brand Air Jordan debuted. His first name has turned out to be an apt coincidence, but his mom, Jody, says he loved sneakers long before he saw Jordan fly across a basketball court. "I'd buy two pair of shoes at Payless for $15 — one for Jordan, one for his brother. But Jordan wanted both. He wanted to wear a white one on one foot and a colored one on the other. He was always into shoes."

As a high school sophomore in Eau Claire, where most kids don't wear showy kicks, Hagedorn desperately wanted Air Jordans — and one pair wasn't enough. To keep up with the latest issued, he realized he could paint and patch the old ones and easily double his money. "There are a lot of guys who maybe had a pair in high school (or wish they had), and now they have money to blow," he says.

Hagedorn works out of the basement bedroom he shares with his brother, where the twin bed is unmade and paints and brushes litter the floor. Despite the mess, Hagedorn has a system, and it starts with Soft Scrub. He cleans each shoe with a toothbrush and uses an eraser on scuff marks. Then he paints, using a mix of acrylics and acetone that won't rub off. "You've got to be pretty artistic — stay in the lines," Hagedorn says. "I don't know how I got so good."

It's more than painting in the lines that draws collectors from as far as Germany, China and Japan. Hagedorn is savvy about which AJs he buys and sells. Sizes 8 to 13 are most popular. He can tell a re-released style from an original. He knows what's special about each model — a red insole, black paten trim — and can rattle off coordinating Jordan highlights. He knows, almost to the penny, what any Air Jordan is worth. Hagedorn holds up a pair of red and white VIs that he recently bought for $182.50. "Jordan wore them in the '91 season," Hagedorn recites. "And in those Spike Lee commercials." He expects to sell them on eBay this week for more than $400.

The money Hagedorn makes from his current eBay blitz of around two dozen pairs of shoes (he sells under "rogeycrew") he'll put toward a line of T-shirts he's developing. As much as he loves working on AJs, Hagedorn wants something more — a product of his own. He's taking a semester off from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he is a graphic design major, to work on it.

Until his own brand takes off, Hagedorn won't have to worry about being strapped for cash. All he has to do is pick up some ratty AJs and work his magic. That's always a slam-dunk.