Matt Choon’s first investment in sneakers was a success.
Around the age of 12, he began trading them as a hobby. As a teenager, he didn’t have much money, and he recalled the rush of taking $200 in birthday cash to SoHo to buy a used pair of statement sneakers from a stranger on Facebook.
“Teenage Matt definitely was obsessed with the internet and looking cool,” he said.
When he came home with his 2003 Nike SBs, his mom “flipped out” at the price he’d paid, he recalled. But as he bought more sneakers to resell or trade for a profit, “she realized it was me becoming an entrepreneur.”
Choon, 26 years old, founded multiple businesses, including Bowery Showroom – a retail space in Lower Manhattan that serves as a hub for creatives – and Bowery Agency – a marketing company. The showroom and agency are part of Choon’s Lower East Ventures LLC and have pulled in five figures of revenue per month in recent months, according to records provided to MarketWatch. Choon says that the three businesses combined are profitable and consistently gross between five and six figures each month.
Choon, a native New Yorker who grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, attended elementary school in Chinatown before attending middle and high schools in Chelsea. Takeshi Fukui is his roommate and business partner in Bushwick. They met each other when he was in middle school.
After high school, Choon got into CUNY’s prestigious Macaulay Honors College, which allowed him to study tuition-free at Baruch College. Choon switched from studying finance to entrepreneurship at Baruch College. He got his feet dirty by creating an app and competing in business competitions.
He failed to day trade and was devastated by his loss of $3,000, which he had earned with hard work.
His luck has changed since he discovered crypto. Choon told MarketWatch he sold stocks and put the cash in his bank account into Ethereum — most of what he had at the time. He saw the low five figures he invested soar to more than $100,000 and then fall, he recalled, still landing, at the time, at more than double what he’d invested. He then went on to make much more.
He said that he used $1,000 from his earnings as an economics teacher during college to launch his CBD brand Potion. He started the brand in fall 2018, when he purchased CBD gummies, which he then rebranded, resold and made a profit.
He then got a 9-5 digital marketing position at a crypto company and sold CBD gummies at street fairs and parties on weekends, which helped grow the business. In August 2019, he was earning enough money from Potion to quit his full-time position.
Let’s fast forward to the year 2020, and we are in pandemic times. Choon took a pair vintage Air Jordan 4s to a Bushwick repair shop. He recognized his owner as a former East Village shoe designer. Choon told the story of the man who took him back to the store, where there was a lot of vintage designer clothes. He also said that more were in the warehouse. Choon paid $300 for a black trash bag filled with clothes.
“We’re talking about like $500 T-shirts that are crumpled up, smelled like bleach, dirty, disgusting,” Choon recalled. “But to me it was like a treasure.” He bought many more bags from the seller, and washed, ironed and tagged them to get them ready for sale. He posted his activity on TikTok.
He went back to the Hester Street Fair with vintage clothing and cannabis products. The TikTok postings of his have sparked an explosion in interest.
“So now I’m this micro influencer overnight,” he said.
In order to keep buying more clothes for fairs and selling them, he had to find somewhere to store them. He found a store on Craigslist, “really cheap because it was still during Covid,” and in serious need of repair.
He used his crypto earnings for the preparation of a sample sale. At that sale, enough was sold to fund the renovations.
Choon is the CEO of Bowery Showroom. The Bowery Showroom is a retail space for clothes and cannabis products. Choon is the CEO. The store also offers a tattoo artist and direct-to garment printer.
Choon, through his marketing agency provides services from the conception of a concept to its completion. He employs videographers, editors, and social media writers who create content. There’s also a hospitality component.
Choon reflects on his business ventures and notes that he did not have a business plan before starting. He was learning as he went.
“My biggest teacher is the experience itself,” he said. “Understanding what my customers wanted, what I wanted, what performed well, trial and error, those are all things that got us to this point. But my professional background, things I was interested in when I was young, provided me the foundation.”
Julia-Barrett-Mitchell contributed to this story.