It seems to be that Glasgow doesn’t really have any small sneaker-specialized stores, however I’ve come across this one hidden gem in the city centre of Glasgow. It’s a sneaker café/laundry/store called Sneaker Laundry, situated at 73-77 Trongate, Glasgow. The store was established in 2015 by two buddies, Rob and Al.
This is the sneaker cleaning -station. A deep cleaning on your trainers would range around 18 to 35 pounds depending on the brand (luxury brands require more careful handling and are therefore more expensive to have cleaned). Definitely the place to come to if the Scottish weather has ruined your sneakers! I also love the aesthetics of this cleaning-corner a lot!
They don’t really have a huge selection of sneakers, however they do have some accessories and sneaker-related books. They sell mostly a t-shirts and sweaters, but they had cool smaller brands which is always nice to notice.
The cute little café with lovely staff.
If you are visiting Glasgow, or happen to live here like me, do pay a visit to this place!
I went to London some time ago and visited some hyped sneaker shops there. There are so many sneaker shops in London that I didn’t even get the chance to visit all of them, but at least I got a glance of a few of them.
Let’s start off with Footpatrol, which is located at 80 Berwick Street, London.
The shop was very aesthetically pleasing! I wish I had a sneaker closet at home that looked like this. The selection wasn’t very big, but they definitely had some cool sneakers that you don’t find at every shop. Here are some of my faves that I found there:
Adidas x Reebok InstaPump Fury Boost
Li Ning Furious Rider Ace 1.5
Nike Air Jordan 1 High OG ‘Fearless’
Look what I found! Karhu in London! It made me very happy to see that you could find the Finnish pride in a fashion capital like London. They were even discounted to £45, which is not much for Karhu, I hope the shoes have found a lucky owner.
Next I went to Presented By, which turned out to be heaven. The store is located at 15 Percy Street, London.
Looks pretty fancy already outside of the store, right? Once you walk in and the door is opened by a security guard, that’s when you can tell that you’ve just stepped into a slightly more expensive and exclusive store.
This is how it looks like once you walk in. The board at the top is displaying the current selling rates of the most exclusive and wanted sneakers. All of the prices had at least four digits…
These were very interesting to me. I was wondering if “Flea” is a reference to Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers? After I did some research I found out it wasn’t, but this is anyway such a cool design.
Playstation x Nike Air Force 1, how cool are these?!
They even have a claw machine where you could win a pair of sneakers.
I found a few of my dream sneakers that have been on my ‘to buy’ list for a while, but when I asked for their price and the shop assistant said that they were around £800-£500 my jaw dropped. Both of them have been around £200 when they first were released, but now they’ve gone significantly up in their retail price as they’re very wanted and quite rare to find. So I left the shop empty handed as the poor student that I am, but I will definitely be back some day when I have some more money.
Today’s topic is an exciting one for me. I’m going to introduce you to the Finnish sneaker & street wear brand Karhu. Karhu meaning bear in Finnish, was established in 1916 as a sports goods company. The brand has already in its early days been seen on Finnish athletes at the 1920 Olympics (they won five gold metals) and at the 1924 Olympics, when runner Paavo Nurmi won five gold metals wearing Karhu running spikes. Another fun fact; Karhu sold their trademark at the time, which was “three stripes” to Adidas in 1952 for 1600 euros and two bottles of whiskey. I wonder if they regret that decision…
I visited Karhu’s flagship store in Helsinki which is located at Lasipalatsi, Mannerheimintie 22-24.
This is the place where you can find the best selection of Karhu sneakers for sure.
The famous three stripes they sold…
A variety of the sneaker model known as Karhu Originals.
Two of my favorite pairs at the store:
The shop has a cool display of Karhu’s history with various other products than just sneakers, such as t-shirts, hoodies, jackets, socks and mugs.
Karhu is a pride for me and many other Finns, as I personally like to support Finnish businesses. It’s great to see a brand that’s important to Finland’s sport history do well, even globally. I hope I got at least one more person interested in this quality brand.
I thought I want to show you and compare a few different stores specialized in sneakers. I’m going to start this mini-series with a post about my favorite sneaker store in my home country. So as you may or may not know by now, I come from Finland, a cold country located in Northern Europe. Streetwear and sneaker culture has been gaining a lot of popularity and recognition in Finland during the past few years. There are several stores specialized in sneakers in the capital of Finland, and there has even been a sneaker convention organized in Helsinki every year since 2017.
In today’s post I’m going to present Beamhill to you, a sneaker store located in the centre of Helsinki, at Yliopistonkatu 5.
Beamhill was established in 1986 as a store specialized in denim, and grew bigger in the 90’s with a greater selection
I believe that Beamhill is the only store in Finland that has sneaker raffles, which means that you participate in a raffle to have the chance to purchase sneakers that are being released limited edition, e.g. special Air Jordan 1’s or Yeezy’s.
Beamhill provides a variety of different very known brands such as Adidas, Nike, Puma, Acne Studios, but also less known brands such as Aimé Leon Dore, Nomen Nescio and Carne Bollente.
There’s a great selection of shoes that can’t be found in the big streetwear chains such as JD Sports, which makes these kind of small stores special with their unique products.
Beamhill also has a great selection of shoes by the Finnish established brand Karhu (translates to bear). I have been dreaming about a pair of Karhu sneakers for years, as I want to support Finnish products as much as possible, but I’ve yet to find the perfect pair for me. By the way, in the next post I’m going to introduce you more to Karhu as I visit their flagship store in Helsinki.
This Nike shoe was a special find in the store that really caught my eye.
I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the famous Finnish sneaker store. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comment section below.
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