Remember Transition Year? A year of daily excursions to 'adventure' centres, occasional charity work, poorly produced musicals and, well, generally being on the doss ahead of the dreaded Leaving Cert.
Well, not for everyone it seems. One Dublin student Kevin Owens, now aged 20, really made the most of his Transition Year by starting a business that nearly four years later is still going strong and turning a serious profit.
Back in 2017 whilst in fourth year at Belvedere College in Co. Dublin, Owens set up a small business cleaning people's trainers and shoes that had seen better days. A modest idea you might think but by his Leaving Cert year, Kevin had already hired his first employee to help manage the demand his company, entitled Sneaker Cleaner, was experiencing.
By 2020, the business had set up an office on Dublin's Harcourt Street and was working with the nearby Grafton Cleaners to facilitate drop offs and collection - a far cry from storing shoes in his school locker and dropping them off at their owner's residence we're sure you'll agree.
Advert
And then, of course, COVID-19 arrives. A devastating blow for any emerging business but for Kevin, the pandemic ended up being more of an opportunity than a loss.
"COVID stopped business dead in its tracks overnight, like so many other businesses in the service industry. It took a few months to pivot the business but now I [kind of] see it as a blessing in disguise," he's quoted as saying on the official Sneaker Cleaner website.
The national lockdown forced Sneaker Cleaner to make the inevitable pivot to operating entirely online. "...I was talking to a friend and he said, 'Would you not just put it all online?' Ninety per cent of what I used to do was cash-in-hand, so I did a website and now it's 100 per cent online, we don't take any cash payments at all, which is great and it helps with the whole Covid situation," Owens explained to The Irish Times earlier this week.
Advert
The decision to move his business online has certainly paid off - Sneaker Cleaner sales have increased by a staggering 900 per cent in the first three months of 2021. Not too shabby for a business that began whilst most of his classmates were probably learning lines for the upcoming school production of Footloose?
To check out what services are available via Sneaker Cleaner - and marvel at the insane results they can achieve on even the most beat up pair of shoes - visit the official website here.
Featured Image Credit: SneakerCleaner.ie