Gentei, Baltimore City?s only premium sneaker, skateboard and street apparel boutique ? shuttered in a July break-in that resulted in $5,000 in damage and $25,000 in creatively obtained urban-trendy merchandise ? will reopen by month?s end with a new, more far-sighted retail outlook, owner Oliver Jones said.
“That whole sneaker mania, here-today-gone-tomorrow thing, I?m trying to phase out a little bit,” Jones said of the booming, multibillion-dollar craze in premium sneaker and hip-hop-style streetware that likely figured into a burglary which cost him $70,000 in shut-down-related sales losses.
“My whole stance is now basically classic and timeless. I?d much rather sell apparel for a whole outfit ? a whole look ? than just an expensive pair of sneakers.”
Located in Mount Vernon, 1,200-square-foot Gentei ? which means “limited edition” in Japanese ? opened last October to offer mostly Japanese brand specialty sneaker and streetware merchandise to an increasingly savvy Baltimore consumer and collector?s market ? and was doing well, Jones said.
“We carry a lot of Japanese lines, and that more or less translates into ?expensive? and ?very hard-to-get,? ” said Jones, who maintains an office in and travels regularly to Japan.
“[Now] we?re basically sitting on a lot of summer inventory, so we?re going to have a sale and try to move some of that stuff out. [But] we?ll be opening with new stuff, too.”
Among its largely Japanese-release sneaker brands, Gentei stocks limited edition Nike, New Balance, Adidas and Vans and carries about 10 Japanese streetware labels, including Lowrider and Devilock ? most of which Jones obtains not through official manufacturer channels but through industry contacts, account-holder surplus sales and informal access to name brand inventories.
“Nike really is like such a big company that half of [its employees] don?t even know what?s going on in their own company,” Jones said of the company that he says everyone loves to hate because of its secretive and dictatorial ways.
“Or maybe they do know and they just don?t care.”
Questioned about Gentei?s claim to singular sneaker boutique status in Baltimore, a management source at a Baltimore chain sporting goods store confirmed Jones? market claim.
