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Updated: September 9, 2024

Online sneaker resellers transition to brick-and-mortar store in Kittery

Two people stand in their Kittery retail store. Photo / Courtesy Limited Hype Mohammad Alhamdan, age 23, and Cal Gotlieb, 19, leased space at Kittery Premium Outlets at 345 U.S. Route 1 in Kittery and opened Limited Hype.
By Laurie Schreiber

In 2020, two teens separately started buying select sneakers and reselling them online.

They found each other through the online marketplace, discovered they live in the same city and recently decided to start a brick-and-mortar store in Kittery.

Mohammad Alhamdan, age 23, and Cal Gotlieb, 19, leased space at Kittery Premium Outlets at 345 U.S. Route 1 in Kittery and opened Limited Hype.

The two are former Portsmouth High School graduates who are now in college. 

Alhamdan started reselling sneakers in 2020, when he was enrolled at the University of New Hampshire.

“I always had a love of sneakers, growing up,” he said.

Demand drives price

He learned about the online resale market through friends and decided to try it out, doing local deals on Facebook Marketplace, then expanding to Instagram.

In 2020, the sneaker resale market became particularly active due to shipment delays, and customers are generally interested in special releases by name manufacturers, he said.

“Demand at the time was very high,” he said. “The shoes will release and be very limited — hence the name Limited Hype.”

The market can be profitable due to high demand driving up prices, he said. For example, one brand released with a retail price of $225. 

“After the release, the price started shooting up. Now they’re reselling at $400 to $500,” he said.

Alhamdan would buy stock at the lower retail price, either in-store or on the manufacturer’s app, then advertise it on his Instagram account. It was mainly a hobby at first. But sales slowly started to take off as he built up inventory and networked through friends and family.

“I started realizing, ‘Hey, this is a business. It’s not a hobby anymore,’” he recalled. 

Networking

Gotlieb, a few years younger than Alhamdan and still in high school at the time, had also hit on sneaker resales at the start of 2020. He was working at a supermarket but started reselling sneakers that he had won in online raffles that were available from name manufacturers for limited releases.

“I started making enough money to quit my regular job,” Gotlieb said.

The two met through Alhamdan’s brother, who is the same age as Gotlieb and had been reposting Alhamdan’s Instagram account. Eventually they decided to partner and work on scaling the business.

About a year ago, they joined a networking server that provided connections to brick-and-mortar stores willing to take consignments.

“Let’s say there’s a store in Boston that sells sneakers and takes on consigners,” said Alhamdan. “I could drive down, give them 50 pairs of shoes, and tell them I want this price, they can take a percent commission and they sell for me. That’s how the scale-up started.”

They expanded that model to stores in New Hampshire, California, Florida, Texas and elsewhere, he said. The server also connected them to larger resellers in the U.S. and beyond, he said.

100% ROI

“And the margins were significantly better than us just selling locally and on Facebook,” Alhamdan said. 

Margins could be as high as a 100% return on investment.

At any given time, their inventory could range from 100 to 500 pairs of sneakers. They’d ship from 10 to 50 pairs at a time.

“It’s a pretty big industry,” said Gotlieb.

One of the stores they sold to was at Kittery Premium Outlets. That store closed. Alhamdan and Gotlieb liked the space and the location, so earlier this year they decided to transition to their own brick-and-mortar store. They contacted the landlord, Simon Property Group. In addition to Limited Hype, Simon brought on six additional retailers this summer, and have signed a lease with Vineyard Vines for next spring.  

“We love to see local and small businesses like Limited Hype succeed here at Kittery Premium Outlets,” said Carolyn Edwards, Simon Property Group’s area general manager. “We are proud to support young entrepreneurs like Cal and Mo, who have taken a fantastic idea and built a business from the ground up.” 

Flip side

Business in Kittery is good, the partners said.

“We’re on the flip side,” said Alhamdan. “We’re asking people for restocks every day because we can’t keep up with the demand.”

Throughout the business endeavor, the two have kept up on their education. Alhamdan gradated from the University of New Hampshire last year with a bachelor of science degree in economics. He’s working full-time at First Citizen Bank in a finance position and also getting a master’s degree at UNH in business. 

Gotlieb is going into his sophomore year at Purdue University.

“We have a solid group of workers at the store,” said Alhamdan, who is the store’s on-site manager while Gotlieb runs the business on the back end. 

The location works well, said Alhamdan. 

“Cal and I only know so many people who follow us on Instagram, so when we post, only so many people see it,” he said. “With the store, we open up to people from New England and beyond. We’ve had customers from Germany, South America, Costa Rica, Guatemala — and now these people are following our Instagram.”

Said Gotlieb, “I think it’s a dream of every student to turn their passion into their business. We love what we do.”

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