‘One pair of shoes changed my life’: How a dunk turned a hobby for Billy Hobbs into a booming customization business (2024)

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Billy Hobbs went to bed on the night of March 21, 2015, with what amounted to a pretty cool hobby. A solid side hustle at best. He woke up the next day with a couple hundred new emails, several thousand new Instagram followers and what turned out to be a new career. All because Willie Cauley-Stein went viral that night, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, when he jumped off of an invisible trampoline and posterized some poor soul from Cincinnati so violently the victim appeared to disintegrate upon impact. “I don’t think they put the kid back in the game,” Cauley-Stein said afterward. He was right, and that was after a dunk that happened in the first half.

Beyond the breathtaking leap and the brutality of the finish — floating ever upward and fully extended, Cauley-Stein looked as if he had reached into the rafters and grabbed a sledgehammer to drop with both hands and bad intentions — something else pops off the screen in every photo and video of that signature moment: a gaudy pair of sneakers that Hobbs had customized in his basem*nt. He transformed the size-16 Air Jordan 11s by painting their patent leather trim in shimmery gold, dying the soles in bright royal blue, stenciling “WCS” on one shoe and “Trill,” the 7-footer’s nickname, on the other. When Cauley-Stein completed his high-flying feat with those kicks on his feet, sneakerheads everywhere went crazy.

“One pair of shoes,” Hobbs says now, “changed my life.”

Within months of that dunk, he had quit his day job of a dozen years at the Pepsi plant in Lexington. By the next year, every shoe-obsessed Kentucky basketball player was wearing his designs — although word about his fledgling company, True Blue Customs, had already spread much farther than that. Markelle Fultz became a regular customer while at Washington, before he turned into the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, and remains one today. In 2017, when a friend called to ask Hobbs if he was watching Game 5 of the World Series, he was floored to discover that Astros starting pitcher Dallas Keuchel was standing on the mound in a pair of custom cleats Hobbs had long since completed and forgotten. That was his first “Holy sh*t, those are mine!” moment but certainly not his last.

Albert Pujols and about 80 other major leaguers commissioned Hobbs for custom cleats last season, and when UK alum Hamidou Diallo jumped over Shaquille O’Neal and crammed his elbow through the rim to win the 2019 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, more Hobbs artwork went whizzing past the Hall of Famer’s head. Hobbs had turned a pair of Under Armour M-Tags into a tribute to Queens, N.Y., and the LeFrak City apartment complex where Diallo grew up — and made a duplicate pair that Diallo gifted to fellow LeFrak product Kenny “the Jet” Smith.

“That was one of the coolest moments of my life,” says Hobbs, a 45-year-old native of Scott County, Kentucky whose training consists of a lot of drawing in high school art classes, prepping and painting cars and motorcycles at a body shop as a young adult and countless hours of trial and error when he started tinkering with sneakers almost two decades ago. “I never dreamed it would lead to something like this,” he says from the workshop at his home in Lexington, flanked by a stack of boxes filled with Adidas Yeezy Boosts that he has been asked to enhance for the Louisville basketball team. Yes, he’s the same lifelong Kentucky fan who made a pair of L’s-down themed sneakers for Wildcats point guard Ashton Hagans to wear in the rivalry game last season, but money is money.

As Hobbs describes what a surreal ride the last five years have been, he inspects his current project, a pair of diabetes-awareness-themed cleats that will be worn as part of the annual “My Cause My Cleats” week in the NFL. He’s also working on a pair for Detroit Lions quarterback David Blough, a Purdue alum, featuring a portrait of Boilermakers superfan Tyler Trent, who inspired a nation before losing his battle with bone cancer last January. The NFL has relaxed its strict uniform policy since taking heavy heat in 2016 for threatening to fine then-Titans linebacker Avery Williamson for wearing a custom pair of 9/11 tribute cleats. Guess who made those for the former Kentucky star? Hobbs was proud to see the red, white and blue cleats go for $6,600 in an auction to benefit wounded soldiers.

Last season he designed Black History Month-themed sneakers for NBA players Mikal Bridges and Josh Jackson — honoring Garrett Morgan, African-American inventor of the modern stoplight, and Martin Luther King Jr. But athletes are hardly his only clients. He gets a lot of work from everyday folks, creating personalized birthday and Christmas gifts for kids, commemorating special occasions, designing one-of-a-kind items for collectors and lending his considerable talents to various charities. That’s his favorite part of the job, like when he recently stenciled the names of needy children on 110 pairs of donated Converse shoes.

Hobbs estimates he has customized more than 400 pairs of shoes this year. He now has almost 46,000 followers on Instagram. His wife, Tracy, handles the books and “she’s going to be pissed,” he says, pointing at a pile of crumpled up receipts and other paperwork spilling out of a mail bin on the wall of his in-home shop. She’s thinking about quitting her day job to help manage an exploding business. He’s wondering whether he needs to take on an apprentice to alleviate what have become 70- and 80-hour work weeks, “but, man, I work in my underwear,” he says, having willed himself to get dressed for a visitor.

Could this really all be because of one pair of shoes and one crazy dunk back in 2015?

“Nobody ever seen some blue bottoms on some Jordans before,” says Cauley-Stein, the sixth pick in that year’s NBA Draft and now the starting center for the Golden State Warriors. “He went crazy on that custom. Nobody really had seen it before, and that’s why it was so big-time. Plus, you do a highlight in them in the NCAA Tournament and it’s going to blow up. That’s when I feel like customs were first hitting. We started that really custom hoops sh*t. Ever since then, and once the league changed their little policy about shoes, it opened the door for everybody, opened the door for all the different colorways and just different things so you can really get creative and get yourself out there.”

Cauley-Stein’s inadvertently helping launch True Blue Customs was sort of a perfect storm. The Wildcats were deep into their pursuit of college basketball’s first undefeated season in 39 years (they got to 38-0 before losing in the Final Four) and Cauley-Stein, an eccentric art lover and national defensive player of the year, was the tattooed face and absurdly quotable voice of that barnstorming bunch. He ended up at Hobbs’ house, collaborating on a number of wild designs, sort of by accident.

Hobbs grew up with parents who set a few strict rules, one of which was nobody could call the house while the Kentucky Wildcats were playing a basketball game on TV. He idolized Rex Chapman and Kenny “Sky” Walker and always thought Roger Harden was a badass renegade because he wore Converse when everyone else was in Nikes. That’s not to say Hobbs wasn’t obsessed with the swoosh. He was 10 years old when the first Air Jordans came out in 1984, and by high school he was a full-fledged sneakerhead. He first attempted to customize shoes for a few people he met online as the user “True Blue” on a Nike Talk message board in the early 2000s, but those early iterations weren’t very wearable. The paint cracked too easily.

The hobby all but died until seven or eight years ago, when Hobbs’ son was old enough to get interested in sneakers and started asking Dad to refurbish and then totally remodel his Jordans. And then his friends’ Jordans. And then their friends’ Jordans.

“It snowballed,” Hobbs says. “There’s actually a pretty big sneaker following here in Lexington. It’s almost a subculture. They would go to these sneaker shows and stuff and, just by word of mouth, Kentucky basketball players found out about me. The first guy who reached out was Tyler Ulis. Then Alex Poythress. Then Willie. And the rest is history. He had that dunk, I went to bed, every sneaker blog picked up the shoes and tagged me as the artist — blogs with like 2 million followers — and the next day I had to take my email address off my Instagram because it just got overwhelming.”

Fate is funny, because a journeyman pitcher on the Philadelphia Phillies that year also played a big part. Jerome Williams saw Cauley-Stein’s gold-and-blue Jordans and reached out. “I love your work,” he said. “Can you do cleats?” Soon Hobbs was customizing cleats for most of the 2015 Phillies roster. Then the Dodgers. Then the Astros. That’s how his work ended up in the World Series.

Now more than ever, as “brand” has become a major buzzword in sports, it seems athletes want to humanize themselves to the public. By the very nature of team games, what with everyone wearing matching outfits and all, it’s easy to blend into a crowd.

Custom shoes are “an expression of you,” says Cauley-Stein, who still commissions Hobbs to help tell new stories on his feet. “What we really want to do is one of these times, like a whole year ahead, give him like 50 pair of shoes and have them themed out already for specific games — and then I want to auction them off. Because it’s art. He be killing it. I want to put them in cases and auction them off.”

When he was in college, Cauley-Stein frequently hung out at Hobbs’ house while he worked on the latest design. Sometimes the 7-footer passed out on the couch or sat and talked for hours with Tracy about superhero movies. It was so common, the Hobbs’ son, Bryson, now a student at UK, barely blinked as he walked by a slumbering All-American in the den. (Daughter Hannah helps with the business when she’s looking to pick up a little extra cash.)

“He’d be like, oh, yeah, that’s just Willie. No big deal. And I’m going, dude! If I was 12 years old and Rex Chapman or Kenny Walker walked in my house, I’d sh*t my pants,” says Hobbs, who because he is now sponsored by the leather paint company Angelus gets most of his materials for free. “It really is hard to believe this is my life now.”

The pinch-yourself moments just keep coming. Last year he customized shoes for Kentucky stars Tyler Herro and PJ Washington, a pair of lottery picks now thriving as rookies in the NBA. He created Jamaica-themed sneakers for junior 7-footer Nick Richards, which sadly someone stole from him. He’s working on something for Wildcats freshman Kahlil “the Dragon” Whitney playing off his nickname and outfitting Tyrese Maxey with various Marvel-inspired looks.

This is where he figures it best to address the elephant in the room. No, he says, he’s not giving these guys free shoes to get close to the program. He rattles off the names of three top officials in the Kentucky compliance office — both sides are aware of his work and the NCAA rules that must be followed in any transaction with college players — and says he cuts duplicate receipts for every pair. One for the player, one for compliance. All of his clients supply the shoes and Hobbs typically charges between $180 and $250 for his work, depending on how extensive it is.

A simple pair might only take him five or six hours. One Noah’s Ark-themed pair of Jordan 5s for a collector in Nashville, with a different animal print on every panel, took him 25 hours. He’s not giving that kind of work away.

“That’s actually one of the challenges of this job,” Hobbs says. “There are a ton of dudes who do this now and a lot of them are like, hey, I’ll do this for free, just to get their name out there. I’m not doing that. This is my job. I’m past looking for attention. I’ve got bills to pay.”

If the Wildcats are worried about his proximity to the program, it doesn’t show. He recently tricked out a pair of Air Force Ones for John Calipari. They were already the Devin Booker edition and Hobbs added the first names of all 38 NBA Draft picks Calipari has coached in his first 10 seasons at Kentucky. Hobbs also made a Dunkin’ Donuts-themed birthday pair of Air Monarchs (Nike’s “Dad” shoes) for the coffee-obsessed Calipari, whose Naismith Hall of Fame induction is commemorated with sneakers featuring the logos of every team he has coached — a gift from son Brad, by way of Hobbs.

All the customized basketballs marking milestones or major victories in Calipari’s offices at the Joe Craft Center, Rupp Arena and his vacation home in New Jersey? Hobbs painted those. Rupp Arena also hired him to make gifts for all of the artists who play concerts there. Justin Timberlake thought his sneakers were “dope.” Snoop Dogg so loved his customs from Hobbs, with the Adidas logo morphed into a marijuana leaf and smoke billowing along the side panels, he wore them home to California and showed the world on his Instagram story.

“To see your work on that kind of stage, it’s awesome,” Hobbs says. “That’s what most people see, and don’t get me wrong, it’s cool as hell. But there’s more to life than the clout.”

The last pair he did for Cauley-Stein, worn just last month in an NBA game, featured a portrait of Cauley-Stein’s best friend, who was murdered this summer. It moved Hobbs’ first big client to tears. It reminded them both of the most meaningful custom they’d ever collaborated on.

During that 2015 season, Cauley-Stein befriended Blake Hundley, a 9-year-old Kentucky fan battling brain cancer. After the season, sensing his little buddy’s time was dwindling, Cauley-Stein asked Hobbs to make something special for the boy. So the artist replicated those gold-rimmed, blue-soled sneakers that changed his life — only for tiny feet. Weeks before Blake died, his parents told him they were taking him shopping but showed up instead at Kentucky’s practice facility, where Cauley-Stein led him to the locker room and revealed their matching kicks.

Blake replicated a photo Cauley-Stein had posted of the fire on his feet the night of that Cincinnati game, and he couldn’t stop smiling. The adults in the room couldn’t stop crying.

“It’s amazing to see celebrities wearing your stuff, but that was cooler,” Hobbs says. “Of everything that’s happened to me with this, by far the best part is now I have a chance to help other people.”

Because he knows better than anyone, one pair of shoes can change your life.

— Anthony Slater of The Athletic contributed to this report.

(Top photo: Kyle Tucker/The Athletic)