Smyrna's Eco Sneakers provides shoes locally and abroad

Feb. 17—SMYRNA — Bobby Johnson, the founder of Eco Sneakers, was born in poverty in Paris, Kentucky. Growing up, he was bullied for wearing old clothes and tattered shoes.

This kind of childhood can serve to harden the hearts of many. For Johnson, it set him on a path in which his two desires were to rise up out of poverty and make a positive impact on people and the world, he said.

So, Johnson started Eco Sneakers, a social enterprise that provides gently used shoes to people in need in Atlanta and people in poverty-stricken countries around the globe.

A social enterprise is a business based primarily around social objectives like helping those in need, according to Johnson.

"We operate for the good (of the earth)," Johnson said. "We operate just like a nonprofit, so what we do is good for people and good for the earth."

Eco Sneakers has partnered with companies like Georgia Power, Coca-Cola, Chick-fil-A College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta and several more.

Johnson moved to Smyrna in 1996, and he started what would become his company's mission in 2003 when he was training for the Peachtree Road Race in downtown Atlanta during an encounter he now describes as "destiny" or "divine purpose."

He noticed a homeless man with no shoes, so he gave him the pair he was wearing. Months later, he was driving through downtown Atlanta, and locked eyes with that same man. The look of gratitude on the man's face assured Johnson that he wanted to continue impacting lives through sneakers, he said.

"I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world," Johnson said. "I didn't know what it was; I had no clue. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I didn't want to be poor, and I wanted to make a difference in my life and other people's lives."

Throughout the following years, Johnson, along with friends and family volunteers, started Eco Sneakers and made a hobby out of collecting shoes through donation boxes they set up at the Peachtree Road Race, various mud runs and other events around Atlanta.

In 2012, Eco Sneakers became an LLC and Johnson began partnering with small businesses around the world in places like Haiti, South Central America, Pakistan and the Philippines.

"Those folks would take our shoes, clean them and mend them," Johnson said. "If the shoes have small holes, then they will repurpose them. If they don't, then they will resell those shoes to people in their country."

Eco Sneakers' reach has grown tremendously over the last 19 years.

In addition to partnering with big-name businesses, in 2019, EcoSneakers partnered with the Ludacris Foundation in "The Sole of Atlanta" Campaign to collect shoe donations during the Super Bowl since the game was played that year in Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

In November of 2021, Eco Sneakers partnered with NFL player Jonathan Jones, a New England Patriots cornerback from Carrollton, Georgia. Jones founded the Next Step Foundation, which aims to mentor and give back to the youth in Carrollton.

Eco Sneakers and Next Step teamed up to host the "Sneaker Week: Walk There Challenge," where attendees donated new or gently used shoes at Carrollton Junior High School and Carrollton High School for children in the community.

Eco Sneakers has also worked with basketball player Stephon Marbury, who used to play for the New York Knicks and is now the head coach for the Beijing Royal Fighters of the Chinese Basketball Association.

When he was an NBA player, Marbury created his own shoe brand, Starbury, as an inexpensive competitor to brands like Nike's Air Jordan.

Eco Sneakers would buy Starbury shoes for kids in the community who couldn't afford the more expensive basketball shoes until Johnson spoke and connected with Marbury himself.

"Those shoes were like $30 compared to, you know, the Nike shoes and they had the same stitching and everything," Johnson said. "As I started Eco Sneakers, I called him to let him know what we were doing, so he started donating."

Since 2003, Eco Sneakers has received over 400,000 pairs of shoes and counting.

According to Johnson, while Eco Sneakers is saving used shoes from rotting in landfills, it is also saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.

"One of the great things that we do is—it takes 2,240 gallons of water to make one pair of shoes," he said. "So for every shoe that we save, we're also saving that much water."

Besides redistributing shoes to people in need at home and abroad, Johnson said his future plans for the company include making original products out of the shoes that Eco Sneakers recycles.

"The plan is to create products ourselves and to have those products go into schools and companies all over the United States," he said. "We want to make sustainable products like stuffed animals, backing for carpets, beanbags and more."

To follow along with what Eco Sneakers is doing locally and around the globe, visit ecosneakers.org.