Kevin Santos came up in the ‘80s New York street art scene, where he developed the hustle and individuality to stand out from the crowd. Now, he uses those traits to grow his graffiti-inspired art and clothing business on eBay.
Check out his very cool, very unique store, RetroCity Snapbacks/Graffiti.
7 Questions with Kevin Santos of RetroCity Snapbacks/Graffiti
- How did you start selling on eBay?
At first, I was just selling hats on the street. Once I found some wholesalers and I got more inventory, I thought maybe I could make some extra income. I could sell some on the street and some online. That's where eBay came in.
I knew I had to have something different to stand out on eBay, and that was basically the colors of the hats. This was the early 2000s, and everybody wanted to match their new sneakers with their hats. Any team color that was a colorway for a sneaker drop, people had to have it. So I would source hats the same colors as new sneakers coming out.
In around 2007 maybe, it got out of control. There were so many hats to ship from eBay sales. We’d go to the post office and send out 15 to 20 hats every day!
- What’s your process for sourcing merchandise?
I started out just scrounging the internet, like, “Where can I get more of these ‘90s hats?”
By 2005, I discovered that I could get all these vintage snapback hats from the ‘90s for all these teams, brand new for a good price on eBay.
I also went to the wholesale district in New York and found one wholesaler that had a bunch.
Then we started painting on glasses too, and I sourced out vintage glasses from the ‘90s. We'd take the lenses out, paint the frames, pop the lenses back in and boom— custom everything!
Every day, we were just like, “What are we gonna come up with today?”
- What eBay tool do you find most useful? Why?
The best tool is probably best offer.
A while back, I had a custom hat that was up for a lot of money, and a buyer said he only had this amount of money, but there was no Best Offer on the listing. I don’t even think Best Offer existed yet. He seemed like a teenager; he said he was gonna get some money from his mom for this hat. So I went into the listing and lowered the price just for him because we’re messaging. Now with Best Offer, that can happen automatically.
- What’s one thing you would tell yourself when you first started your business?
At the same time that I'm trying to sell my artwork on clothing, I would paint more and try to show my artwork in galleries.
- Who inspires you?
I get inspired by a lot of things. So many things. Music, artwork, new murals, dancing. I can still see a lot of great dancing on the internet, but it's nothing like seeing it in person, you know? There hasn't been that much dancing going on in the past two years, so hopefully there'll be a lot of more dancing going on in the world.
- Where do you see your business in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years?
I hope that I can just really put my art out there. Sell a lot more and have some art shows and do a couple more murals.
One of my big dreams is to paint in Ukraine. I do these “143” murals. “143” stands for “I love you.” The “I” is the one, “love” is the four, and “you” is the three. I've done a big mural in the Bronx with a heart in the middle that says 143. I'd like to do that in Ukraine.
- What does community mean to you and your business?
The community isn’t really like a single neighborhood per se, but just people who want to take a picture in front of one of my murals, for example. I'm always trying to do something beautiful so that every community can be like, “Wow, who did that? He's an artist.” That's how I try to spread the community.
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This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
