On Friday, September 8, Jorge Martinez, co-owner of Sneakerheads, came to talk to students at Riverside Brookfield High School about his well known shoe business.

Martinez informed the class on how his hobby of collecting shoes came to be a profitable business.  Martinez talked about his start in interest with shoes. He said that from childhood he was always interested in shoes.

“I started getting into shoes in sixth and seventh grade,” Martinez said.

Working full time as Chicago police officer, Martinez, still holds his interest to shoes. Especially retro shoes. He bought a few pairs of retro shoes and then people became interested and started buying them. Eventually, Martinez began to buy more and more shoes to sell.

“I had three to four hundred shoes in my basement,” Martinez said.

Because of Martinez’s job as a  police officer, and as a father and husband, he was unable to commit full time to the shoe business until he met his business partner Anthony Guzman. Guzman convinced Martinez that he could make a profit off of buying and selling rare shoes.  

Martinez told the class that co-owning a business and having a full time job takes a lot of time. He explained his usual schedule and how he tries to manage his time at work and time with his family. Although Martinez has to balance his job as a police officer and co-owning a business, he uses his job to his advantage.

“Being a police officer helped me with getting shoes,” Martinez said.

Martinez described to the class that being a police officer gets him to know more people. Martinez told the class that one of his main motto is “don’t burn your bridges.”