The two went to Home Depot and spent around $500 buying wood and other supplies. “He said we should make one for ourselves.” “I had a friend who called me and said he’d gone to an event and there was a photo booth there,” Josh said. He had another friend who noticed the same thing. It seemed to Josh like a photo booth rental business might be a less stressful way to run a business. “But I kept noticing these photo booths,” he added. ![]() “I had to get there, set up, and then I would meet with the bride and groom, make sure everything’s perfect, what they want for the first dance, any of the walkouts. “Being a DJ is a lot of work,” Josh said. “And after that, I started doing them on my own.”Īt many weddings, Josh noticed the couple would hire a photo booth operator. “One weekend, he was double booked, so he did one event, and I did the other,” Josh told us. That turned into a regular weekend project, which eventually evolved into Josh running his own DJ business. The experience put his entrepreneurial pursuits on hold for a while, but not forever.Īfter graduation, Josh worked a “normal” job for a few years-working in a call center for a large financial institution.īut even there, when the chance to do a side project came his way, he didn’t hesitate.Ī coworker was a DJ for weddings and other events, and he asked Josh if he wanted to help him at an upcoming event. It’s been over a decade since Josh received that letter from Nike. I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing.” Starting a DJ business “I look back on that now and think: Oh, I was actually drop shipping back then. He didn’t realize it at the time, but in high school Josh was doing something that was about to become a major business trend. “He helped me settle the case and he just kind of gave me a pat on the head,” Josh said. ![]() Josh’s dad stepped in and helped him navigate the situation, eventually settling the case for a few thousand dollars. “They had screenshots of his website with my name on it and everything.” “That’s how they really found me,” Josh said. And it was also on a website owned by a vendor in China Josh had developed a strong relationship with. “It was from a lawyer about a $50,000 trademark lawsuit they’d filed against me in court: Nike corporation vs. “I came home from school one day and there was the letter in the mailbox,” Josh said. It wasn’t long before Josh set up a website-hoping to reach a broader market in the U.S. “I was making a few hundred dollars a week while I was in high school, and it was pretty great.” How Nike found him “I had a catalog printed out, so I would go to class, pass the catalog around, and take $20 deposits,” Josh said. Then he ordered more and started selling them to students at his high school. “And they had Jordans on there for $30, so I thought, ‘Why am I paying $200 at Foot Locker when I could get them here?” “It was late one night, and I ended up on ,” Josh said. Even with shipping, the cost was a fraction of what he’d pay for an authentic pair from the local shoe store. ![]() “I always remembered that-that he made that sacrifice to come here for a better life for us.”Īs a teenager, he discovered he could order knock-off Nike shoes from a website in China. “My dad had a pretty nice job back in South Africa, and he had to leave that and come here and start over,” Josh told us. Josh was born in South Africa, but his family moved to Dallas, Texas, when he was nine years old. It was addressed to him on behalf of Nike, announcing their intention to sue him for $50,000 for copyright infringement. It’s a letter he received when he was a teenager from an attorney based on Oregon. ![]() There’s a framed letter hanging on the wall of Josh’s office. That time in high school when Josh got sued by Nike
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