Bodega draws people from all over to Clearway Street

The Boston Globe Magazine
The secret to selling cool
How three young guys with almost no retail experience created an uberhip sneaker boutique to rival those in New York, LA, and Tokyo.

By Kevin Alexander
November 21, 2010

The kid in the Hollister shirt is lost. Well, as lost as one can be in the age of GPS-enabled phones. The teen knows he’s supposed to be at 6 Clearway Street in Boston. And he knows that’s right where he’s standing. But 6 Clearway Street, with its signless exterior and dusty windows lined with sun-weathered convenience-store goods, apparently doesn’t look anything like what he’s expecting. After several minutes staring into the windows, he clearly needs a lifeline. He opts to phone a friend. “I’m right here,” he says pleadingly into the cell, “and I still have no idea where it is.” As the kid listens, his eyes grow wider. “Wait,” he says, peering again doubtfully through the window. “You’re telling me this is the place?”

The decrepit store in question is Bodega, and, to answer our young friend’s question, this is indeed the place, if by “place” he means the most influential, cultishly revered, and only sneaker boutique/convenience store in the world. Four and a half years after opening its doors – a passage involving a secret entrance that shoppers must know or figure out themselves, which divides the shoe store from the bodega novelty in front – it has quietly vaulted from upstart shop to international player.

Among sneaker boutiques across the globe, the Back Bay store is “definitely in the top bracket,” says Simon Wood, editor and founder of Sneaker Freaker, an Australian magazine for sneaker enthusiasts that’s sold in 43 countries. And this isn’t just an underground sentiment. “They’re absolutely one of the top, top brands and retail experiences anywhere,” says Matt Ting, senior product line manager for Reebok’s Heritage shoe division. “When people from Reebok Europe or Asia come to Boston, it’s the first place they want to go.” Nate Jobe, a design director at Nike (who worked with Bodega while at Converse), agrees. “Those guys are definitely players on a global scale. They can stack up creatively against anyone else in the world.”

“Those guys” are Jay Gordon, 38, Oliver Mak, 31, and Dan Natola, 34 – the unlikely triumvirate of first-time, Boston-bred owners who’ve somehow managed to do the impossible: create a store in the Hub, selling sneakers from $60 to $300, that’s managed not only to flourish in the wake of a retail-assassinating recession but also to reach lofty status in a fashion sector traditionally dominated by New York, LA, and Tokyo. “Back [when Bodega opened] no one in the sneaker world cared about Boston,” says Jobe. “They made people care.”

In 2006, when Bodega appeared on the scene, sneaker collection hysteria was just starting to seep into the mainstream consciousness. That year, the HBO series Entourage focused an entire episode around its character Turtle’s attempts to snag a pair of custom Nike Air Force 1s from a real LA boutique. At the same time, a wave of retrophilia started to crest. Clothing companies like Homage (which reproduces vintage-esque T’s celebrating sports and pop culture from the ’70s through the ’90s) came up with unique ways to commercialize the interest in yesteryear. Meanwhile, a night-life craze best described as faux speak-easy (think obscured entrances and passwords, minus the illegal hooch) started with the openings of bars like Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco and Milk N Honey in New York. Suddenly it seemed like older members of Generation Y wanted to drink in the places their great-grandparents frequented in the ’20s while wearing the gear their parents bought them in the ’80s. And shoes were no different.Continued...