Q. Can you describe your business? What kind of services do you provide?
A. I run a shoe cleaning business called Shoevenirss. I kind of do it all when it comes to fixing shoes: I clean them, coat them with water and dirt protection, and have recently started to remove creases as well. I try not to be too pricey so I charge anywhere between $20-35 depending on what I’m asked to do to the shoe or depending on how hard it is to work with certain types of material.

Q. How and why did you start your business?
A. It just kind of started out of nowhere to be honest. I needed a way to make money during the summer and I was big on shoes, so I thought why not start cleaning them and try to make a couple dollars doing so. I was already consistently cleaning my own shoes at the time so I already had the materials necessary to clean, I just needed people’s shoes to do so.

Q. What is your favorite part about running a business?
A. Helping others do something they’re not familiar with themselves or that they might have trouble doing.

Q. What have you learned from running a business?
A. I have learned that running a business is hard and that you’re not always going to have loads of customers all the time, sometimes you won’t have any; that’s fine you just have to keep pushing and advertising and the people will start to come.

Q. Do you have any future plans for your business?
A. Yes, of course; I plan on sticking to it. However, it might be a little hard to stay consistent, especially if I play basketball collegiately next year. In terms of expansion, my goal was to eventually make my own shoe cleaning supplies, like a personal brand, and then start up a website and sell it there. This might take me a little while to complete just because I’m usually pretty busy, but I hope it’s something I’m able to achieve.

Q. How do you advertise your business? And how should people contact you if they want your services?
A. I didn’t really do anything crazy advertisement wise. I just posted about it on my Instagram and Snapchat and told a couple people in person and they told their friends, which helped me out a lot. If you want to contact me at any time you can either message me @shoevenirss on Instagram and/or Tiktok, or email me at [email protected].