Even while running one of the web’s most-visited sneaker sites, Matt Halfhill always wanted his own sneaker store. Now sneaker blog Nice Kicks has transcended the online space to become a living, breathing boutique located two blocks north of the University of Texas, Austin. Halfhill says he aimed to recreate the community feel of nicekicks.com in a space he designed with his crew.

Frank151: Tell us about the history of your store.
Nice Kicks: We started as a blog in April 2006, and were one of the first sneaker-dedicated blogs where people could get daily news on upcoming sneakers. We developed a very big, loyal following and we kind of wanted to progress and build the brand out of the digital space and into the real life space with a retail store, which we opened in February of this year.

F151: Were there any other shops that inspired you?
NK: My first job, nine years ago. It was working retail at a shoe store and ever since then I've always wanted to own one. Just ’cause I always wanted to do things my way, be the one to select the products we carry, be the one that determines how customers are treated, how things are merchandised and things like that. But with the website, you know it took me to many different stores over the past four years. So, the whole time I was looking at different stores to feature on the website, I was also putting in the back of my mind what I liked, what I didn't like, what I would do differently.

F151: How would you describe the design of your store? What was the inspiration behind it and what type of environment are you trying to create?
NK: We started with a blank sheet of paper. I worked with Chris Swift, he's a very famous retail designer here in Austin, Texas and we really wanted to design a very clean store that just happens to sell shoes. It wasn't like, "Let's build a nice looking sneaker store, let's look at all the sneaker stores that are out there and pick and pull what we like from each one and throw it all together." It was like, "Well let's start with a blank sheet of paper, and here are the products that we're going to have to display somehow, now let's find the most creative ways we can display these products."

One of the things that we did with the store was we left a lot of open space and with that open space we used it for events and there's plenty of room for people to hang out. Also right outside of the store there's an incredibly large sitting area on a planter so it's very common that people come by, hang out, look at shoes, chat with their friends outside the store... We really wanted to create a space where people could experience Nice Kicks in its real life form instead of just on the internet.

F151: How did you decide on your location? How important has the location been?
NK: Location was crucial. It literally came down to this; we were either going to get the spot that we're in or we weren't going to do the store. We're just one block north of the University of Texas, it's the largest university in the country, tons of college students and we just sort of wanted to be in the central shopping area, but we also wanted to be in this building that we're in. It's a brand new building which worked perfectly for building the space so the interior definitely matches the entire building.

F151: What brands do you carry, and which are your top sellers?
NK: We carry Nike, adidas, New Balance, Supra, Converse, The Hundreds, *4:22 In Case, we have Stussy and UNDFTD coming, G-Shock, Nixon. Very soon we'll be having Puma and a couple of others. But Nike's definitely the best seller.

F151: What brands or specific products are you excited about for Spring / Summer 2010?
NK: Yeah I'm very excited for what Nike has on the whole Nike *indie front. They have some really cool pieces in that collection, as usual, so, that's what's exciting me a lot. (*never heard of it, sounds like it could be ‘Nike iD’ but how they can have ‘pieces’ in the collection is beyond me – E*)

F151: Are there any trends in fashion that you're excited about, both for Spring / Summer 2010 and beyond?
NK: What I really like seeing is people are really getting a lot more utilitarian with their choices, they wanna buy products they're gonna use and use. Not just a product that "might match one outfit" or might go with you know, a pair of shoes or shirt that they have – people are getting into products that they can use. So it's really cool to see people making those choices and having in the back of their mind, "Okay I'm going to use this for this, this and this”, so you know that when they're making that purchase it's going to be fully appreciated.          

F151: How has social networking (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) affected retail for your store and retail in general?
NK: Twitter and social media has changed – I mean it's pretty safe to say that it's changed everything. It's become the greatest tool that small businesses could have ever dreamed of. The fact that you could tap into a worldwide market by just sending a quick little text update, it's unbelievable. We do that, where we have a hot product and we do it as a Twitter-only thing, we do it to test it out, and the power and the impact is incredible. You just put on there that you have this product that just arrived and instantly you're getting phone calls and people are retweeting it to their friends and people come into the store and it's... it's really incredible how invaluable social media are for retail stores.

F151: What about ecommerce? What effect has online sales had on your store and on the broader retail industry?
NK: In terms of how ecommerce has changed things, it literally connects consumers that you never could have before with brick and mortar retail. I mean, when we posted something to Twitter for example, we had one person from a small ski town in northern New Mexico call to order. I mean, in his town they only have a Walmart, they don't even have a Target. So, for him to be able to purchase a pair of shoes from Austin, Texas is incredible. Usually he could only rely on Walmart or would have to drive over an hour to Albuquerque to go to a normal retail shoe store. So it's completely connected the world and all the little corners of it together.

F151: What future plans for your store do you have that you’d like to share?
NK: Yeah we're definitely going to be doing a lot more with our own self-labelled product line, and then also a lot more with the online store. And then we're going to have in development a special ecommerce iPhone app. That will be coming really soon. The last one we launched last year for the website has a huge following.