A founder story
One backpack. One dream.
1968 - Present
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Today
Present day — Baltimore, MD
2025
A business. A community. A mission.
What started as survival became the recognition that everybody is just trying to survive. Baltimore was not just a new city — it was where the real work began.
1968Story begins
2014Brand founded
CommunityAlways first
Chapter 6 — 2025
Still building
Chapter six
2025
The work paid off
After years of struggle, the work finally paid off — they had enough time and people to build what once felt impossible: a website. The team grew, and so did their commitment to giving back through community cleanups, donation drives, and partnerships with local organizations. They perfected their craft, found their rhythm, and began creating a new generation of service — collaborating with local artists and visionaries to give back to the city that gave them a second chance.
“Never admit that you can’t — then you’ve already accepted failure.”— Kev
The shift — when survival became purpose
The mission shift
Surviving was the whole point.
For everyone.
For everyone.
He had survived 20-hour shifts and bankruptcy and grief and starting over with nothing. Then he looked outside the store window in Baltimore and saw it plain as day — the trash piling up, the man walking barefoot past the door, the kids with nowhere to be after school. He had seen all of this before. He had lived it. The difference now was that he finally had something he could give.
“What started as one man trying to survive became the recognition that everybody is just trying to survive.”
Chapter 5 — 2016
The move
Chapter five
2016
Baltimore changed everything
Sneaker Premier became real, and building everything on instinct and will, he had gotten further than most. But there is a ceiling that comes with not having parents to show you the map or the education to protect you from sinking — invisible until you hit it. In Richmond, he hit it hard.
Maryland felt like a flicker in the right direction. He moved hoping a bigger market might breathe new life into what he and Marcus had built. It helped — but not enough. So he kept going. Baltimore. A bigger city, a city that had seen everything and still showed up every morning. He didn’t know what was ahead. He just knew he wasn’t done.
And then Baltimore became special because it was the first place where the debt wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Having lived every version of not having enough, now he had just enough to give. $5,000 worth of shoes and counting, cleaned and donated to the homeless walking the streets outside his own door. Free dance classes for city kids, partnering with Baltimore’s very own Strut King: Bunky Jr. Food events open to anyone who needed a plate. A partnership with Floyd Mayweather to give school supplies to and put clean shoes on disadvantaged kids and families across East Baltimore.
Maryland felt like a flicker in the right direction. He moved hoping a bigger market might breathe new life into what he and Marcus had built. It helped — but not enough. So he kept going. Baltimore. A bigger city, a city that had seen everything and still showed up every morning. He didn’t know what was ahead. He just knew he wasn’t done.
And then Baltimore became special because it was the first place where the debt wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Having lived every version of not having enough, now he had just enough to give. $5,000 worth of shoes and counting, cleaned and donated to the homeless walking the streets outside his own door. Free dance classes for city kids, partnering with Baltimore’s very own Strut King: Bunky Jr. Food events open to anyone who needed a plate. A partnership with Floyd Mayweather to give school supplies to and put clean shoes on disadvantaged kids and families across East Baltimore.
“They break in to my store, they steal so much without thinking about where it comes from. But that’s not all of this city who gave to me. I know.”— Kev, on the last break-in at Sneaker Premier
Chapter 4 — 2014
Born again
Chapter four
2014
Sneaker Premier
The Source didn’t go quietly. Debt accumulated, suppliers squeezed margins until there was nothing left to squeeze, and eventually bankruptcy took what was left. Years of building, years of life — gone on paper. But the people, the friendships, the community, the culture — none of that goes anywhere when you build something real.
His friends gave him an idea: buying, selling, trading. The hustle he’d always known, just a different form. That’s where he met Marcus Kelly — founder of Wavy Kickz, now known as Cool Kicks — who carried the business degree that Kev never had the chance to get. They saw the same trust and the same dream in each other. In 2014, from the marketing down to building the shelves by hand, together they built Sneaker Premier.
His friends gave him an idea: buying, selling, trading. The hustle he’d always known, just a different form. That’s where he met Marcus Kelly — founder of Wavy Kickz, now known as Cool Kicks — who carried the business degree that Kev never had the chance to get. They saw the same trust and the same dream in each other. In 2014, from the marketing down to building the shelves by hand, together they built Sneaker Premier.
“To this day, I know I couldn’t have done it without Marcus. He stuck by me every step of the way.”— Kev
2014Founded
TogetherKev + Marcus
Chapter 3 — 1995
First store
Chapter three
1995
The Source House of Shoes
When his sister called needing support, he packed up San Jose and moved across the country to Richmond, VA. New city, new start — just a bike and a backpack. He started at the flea markets, selling whatever moved, until he thought about what moved him. The Jordans. The ones he could never afford growing up in Korea. Something clicked. He knew shoes, loved shoes, and saw nobody offered a space for what he and so many others loved. He opened his first space: The Source House of Shoes, after The Source magazine, the biggest voice in culture at the time, bringing that same standard into everything he did.
Word spread the way it does when something is real. The shop became a destination. 2Chainz came through. Macklemore came through. People who didn’t have to show up, showed up. That meant something.
Word spread the way it does when something is real. The shop became a destination. 2Chainz came through. Macklemore came through. People who didn’t have to show up, showed up. That meant something.
“The thing about [Kevin] I’ll always remember. He started with a damn bike. Then next time I saw him, he traded that for a car, traded that for a van, and eventually that for a whole building. Not only a good man, he proved to me that you can.”— Bob, family friend
Chapter 2 — 1986
The crossing
Chapter two
1986
The last one to leave
“Truthfully, I really didn’t want to go. As bad as it was, it was my home.”— Kev
After his mother passed to cancer, his father and siblings packed what little they had and left for America. He was the last to go. He cried when he couldn’t afford to bring his dog and left the day after, only with one backpack.
Knowing no English and arriving in San Jose where most of his family were, he took every job that would take him. Cleaning excavation sites at night. Hauling garbage in the mornings. Welding and grinding metal through the day. Painting houses on whatever time was left. Eighteen, twenty-hour stretches, getting home at 3AM to sleep, sometimes only to wake up at 5AM otherwise he’d be fired. Just to survive, to send money home, and find his place in a city that barely noticed him.
Knowing no English and arriving in San Jose where most of his family were, he took every job that would take him. Cleaning excavation sites at night. Hauling garbage in the mornings. Welding and grinding metal through the day. Painting houses on whatever time was left. Eighteen, twenty-hour stretches, getting home at 3AM to sleep, sometimes only to wake up at 5AM otherwise he’d be fired. Just to survive, to send money home, and find his place in a city that barely noticed him.
“I worked like that for a few months. I quit, I could feel myself dying.”— Kev
0English
20hrDays
1Backpack
Where it all begins — 1968
The beginning
1968
Born into the wrong side of a country still finding itself
Late 1960s South Korea. A child born into poverty, into a family held together by obligation and silence. His father was disabled. As the oldest son of four, the weight of the household landed on shoulders too small to carry it. School was survival but he didn’t know that. He dropped out young, started smoking at eleven, and learned that knuckles heal faster than pride and that cigarette burns settle deep as scars.
“There was no room for softness in a place like that.”— Kev
South Korea — 1968
And this is just the start
And this is just the start
The mission
is still being
written.
is still being
written.
One man who survived built something for everyone still surviving. Every shoe cleaned, every kid dancing, every plate served — it all started with showing up to a new country with one backpack and a promise.
Baltimore — built with love