Darrin Willingham is Merrimack’s founder of FlightSkool, a sneaker company. He and his cousin Anthony Jordan run the sneaker and clothing company, which is based out of Portland, Oregon.
Darrin and his cousin Anthony came up with the idea based on their shared love of collecting sneakers with high value. They started selling shoes their junior year of high school and became known as “the guys with all the sneakers.” Eventually this became a selling success, which led them to pursue their dream of opening a sneaker store. The store named FlightSkool opened in 2011. Now Darrin, who is only a sophomore at Merrimack, is learning first hand how to own and run a business.
After the store opened, they created a Facebook fan page to market their business. The page started out with a little over 100 followers, which was disappointing. But their entrepreneur skills kicked into action when they came up with the idea of raffles and contests to spread the word about FlightSkool. Later in January 2012, they launched the store’s first website (www.FlightSkoolShoes.com). By the time they launched their website their followers had risen to 3k followers on Facebook and 20k followers on Instagram.
FlightSkool is mostly likely to gain the attention of high school and college students or any “sneaker heads” in general. They currently have 23 representatives located all over the country as well as in the United Kingdom.
Recently, Darrin and Anthony landed an interview with MTV2. The interview aired on one of the network episodes about a sneaker event in New York City that the two happened to be at. Darrin commented on the outstanding opportunity the event and interview was in helping to get their name out to the world.
Overall, Darrin and his cousin Anthony have already achieved great success with FlightSkool and continue to learn the more about business through their own creation than any class could teach. They can be seen around campus, as well as on social media, practices their marketing moves.