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Qias Omar is one of the biggest sneaker personalities on the internet. His Youtube channel, QrewTV, centered around sneaker culture, has over 1.4 million subscribers.
After the success he had online, he decided to open up Off The Bench, a sneaker shop in San Diego. The shop formally opened on December 5th, garnering growing attention ever since. One of the co-founders, Dillon Dropz, joined Omar for a sitdown with ClutchPoints' Nikki Goel to speak about the shop and their rise as preeminent sneakerheads.
When asked about the genesis of his passion for sneakers and idea for the shop, Dillon appealed to his humble entrepreneurial beginnings as a student in New York City.
“What really jump-started me is when I moved to New York City for college. You know as a college student you’re always looking for different ways of making money.You can buy nice things, you know college is tough,” he said. “So I noticed a lot of people are lining up for like Jordans and I started doing research for myself. I started to get active in New York, started to camp out and go out for sneaker releases, built my bankroll. After I did that, I started hiring kids from my college dorm to go to a lineup for me. So basically when you go on to a release you really like to do a pair, but if you bring people you can get crafty, you can get more and more pairs. So number one for me was building my bankroll and then building the amount of inventory that I had.”
With Off The Bench, Dillon hopes to bring the aura of New York City sneaker culture to San Diego.
“What I wanted to bring with Off The Bench was a little taste of what I learned in New York, cause I looked at the stores in this area and felt like something was missing. You know, I wanted to bring some culture like what I experienced and what I’ve seen in the other shops and bring that here.”
His meteoric rise suggests Dillon's eye for business and branding could extend beyond the sneaker game. While he won't rule out venturing beyond it, shoes, clothing and culture will always be nearest to the co-founder of Off The Bench.
“I mean, I’m very entrepreneurial at heart so if something captivates me or got my attention and I think it’s lucrative, then definitely I’ll take advantage of it. But for right now, it’s sneakers. I love Jordans, I love shoes, I love the clothes portion of it too. It’s really like a passion to me. I’m thinking of being in this business for a long time, but as far as other entrepreneurial things like that I'm open to more stuff.”
Off The Bench is barely a week removed from its grand opening. Still, Dillon already has plans for how to continue growing the business into one of the premier retail shops in Southern California.
“Off The Bench, I wanna grow it as a brand, so we’re not just going for shoes, we’re building the brand, we’re doing collaborations,” he said. “Bring influential people here..when you start a business it’s like a baby. You go crawl,walk, run, so I wanna make sure this one really succeeds and I worry about the end game. But I know our stuff right now is getting more inventory, working with more consignors.”
Dillon and Omar, clearly, aren't finished. They have big dreams for Off The Bench. Given the shop's burgeoning popularity in San Diego, don't be surprised if those ambitions are ultimately realized with additional locations across San Diego and the country at large.
