Community Highlights: Meet Salim Hughes, Jason and Brandon Love of Solely Laced Sneakers

Today we’d like to introduce you to Salim Hughes, Jason and Brandon Lovee.

Salim, Jason and Brandon, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Salim: So we started Solely Laced Sneakers one night before a college party on September 3rd, 2016. We decided the best way to gain attention to our business is to network at these parties so every party we would attend, we would make sure we talk about Solely Laced to almost everyone in the party and from that we were able to gain fan base through different colleges in Los Angeles. Where we are today, I can truly say that I am amazed by our journey but I know we are not done yet, but honestly even being interviewed by you guys is a blessing as well.

Brandon: How we got here today, I still think we have a long way to go, but the progress we made came gradually. It’s not the hardest business to start, but it’s still a business and to build an actual brand, it’s a daily task. We had help from a lot of people. Support from our family, to our barber, to staff members from View Park and Loyola Marymount and just people who respected our grind and wanted and still want to see us do well. We also communicate with each other all the time. Jason and I are biological brothers and Salim has been one of our closest friends for about nine years so we all have grown to understand each other. We made a decision to have three branches of our business, which is selling sneakers, cleaning sneakers, and then our apparel line. Each of us focuses on our own segment so we have to constantly communicate to make sure we maintain harmony with the other parts of the business.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Jason: It hasn’t been smooth but looking back at it, each loss was a chance to learn from it. So every challenge or hardship I faced or will face I seek out the lesson from it so I don’t make the same mistake twice. One struggle I faced early on was communication with customers.

Salim: It has not been a smooth road I want to make that clear right now. In business, you will be put to the test and this is a “do or don’t “ test. You will know what category you will fall under as your business starts to grow or fall, but for every minor loss it’s a major comeback and that’s a lesson we learned the hard way. Some of the struggles we have faced were personal issues in life, being a black man in Los Angeles and staying out of harms way to see the next day, it’s always something to do in Los Angeles or Inglewood so being able to build self-discipline individually and as a group helped pave our way

Brandon: Yeah, things in life happen and it seems like things are purposely working against you. We’ve gotten denied business opportunities in banks, especially. They’ll give us a loan to learn how to work somewhere at eighteen, but not a loan to start a business. But even outside of our business, we have lives and you know, it’s never a smooth road in life. That doesn’t mean we’ll stop though, it’s part of the motion. A big struggle for me was the mental shift of taking the shoe flipping from a hobby to a legit business. I would see shoes I always wanted and now that I have them, sometimes I want to keep them, but it’s easier to let them go now.

We’ve been impressed with Solely Laced Sneakers LLC, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Brandon: We like to say it’s three branches. We buy and sell sneakers, we clean sneakers, and we have an apparel line for our brand. We have had a couple of pop-up shops in different cities and that’s something we were growing in pre-covid. We had one in Inglewood, right on Manchester, another one in the valley, in Reseda, and then our most recent one was in Los Angeles, on Slauson. Before covid, we took a trip to Seattle and hinted at that pop-up, but we had to postpone it. I think it was cool though because we’ve gotten to grow our Seattle fan base a lot. We’re still doing it, but it’s about to be a super dope concept in Seattle, I would say something the sneaker game hasn’t seen yet. The attention to detail sets us apart. Our shoe cleanings, we make sure it exceeds customer expectations. Salim sits down with seamstresses to pick our apparel so it’s the best quality and then the shoes, you’ll peep the page one day and be like “They got these right now? For that price? I need it!” and that makes people’s day. We try to corner a certain market within the shoe game, too. People ask us do we use bots and they’re shocked when we say “no”, but it’s no need for our customers.

Yes, we have the new releases, the mocha 1s, but we also have sneakers from 2015 that are in mint condition. A lot of our pairs, you have to really be tapped in to know what’s going on. That’s a big reason why our customers support us. I would say our biggest accomplishment is still being here. We do this full time, no investors, no trust funds, placing the bets on ourselves. We don’t do it to brag about shoes all day. It is a real business opportunity and that’s how we treat it, so when people come to our business, they can expect that level of service. I will say that if you are just now becoming aware of us and our page, then don’t let the size of our following fool you. Our daily sales are on Instagram, and lately, sneakers have been selling in a couple of hours or less so we encourage followers to keep our notifications on, we usually post between 1pm – 6pm Pacific time.

What matters most to you?
Jason: Being able to see another day because that allows gives us a chance to go after our goals. If we failed yesterday, we still have tomorrow to get it back right.

Salim: What matters the most to me is being able to wake up everyday and make a difference in my destiny, the fact that I’m doing this with my homies means a lot cause honestly only God knows what we might have fallen into if it wasn’t for us starting Solely Laced.

Brandon: Yup, being able to do it again. Regardless of yesterday’s challenges, we can get to it again today.

Pricing:

• Shoe Cleaning – $20
• Solely Laced Hoodies – $50
• Solely Laced Beanies – $17

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: solelylaced.com
• Instagram: @solelylacedsneakers

Image Credits
(G Perico) (Clarke Justice)