New after-market store sells ‘supreme limited edition’ clothes, sneakers in Geneva

This story has been updated to reflect the correct name of the retail business, which was incorrectly identified as The Dawg House. The correct name is The Dawg Pound. The Kane County Chronicle regrets the error.

GENEVA – The Dawg Pound, 206 Commons Drive, at Geneva Commons offers vintage clothing and streetwear and sneakers, but it’s not your usual retail store.

Owners Jonathan Erceg, a 2017 Batavia High School grad, and Tyler Hintz can explain.

The Dawg Pound sells “supreme limited edition” clothing and sneakers for more than what they initially sold through other retailers, Erceg said.

For the uninitiated, that means the store carries specialty clothing lines of the type that once they are sold out, they are gone.

These would be items sold via a few online stores, Erceg said, where there were maybe only 200 of them available.

Items such as KAWS X T-shirts featuring characters created by a New York artist.

A KAWS shirt would sell for $60 to $80 at their store. But don’t get too excited. They are sold out, Erceg said.

The store’s vintage clothing ranges from the 1980s to the early 2000s. While some items are secondhand, others are brand-new, never worn with the tags still on, Erceg said.

Erceg and Hintz know how to access the unsold specialty items and resell them for over the retail price.

That’s right: More than retail.

The store puts supply-and-demand economics into practice in a big way.

If an item is available everywhere, the price reflects that, but if an item is a sought-after limited edition, the price goes up.

“If a shirt costs $45, we will sell it for $75,” Erceg said. “The same with sneakers.”

In short, The Dawg Pound is not the store for bargain hunters.

It is a store for fashion aficionados seeking limited edition clothing and sneakers not available everywhere else.

Regarding sneakers, though the store is not associated with Nike, it would resell a special type of Nike, such as a pair of Jordans that would cost $190 retail.

“The after-market range is from $250 to $600 depending on the shoe,” Erceg said.

“We are an after-market store,” Erceg said. “I started watching people on YouTube about how to resell. That’s how I got into it back when I was in high school.”

Erceg started out by buying a pair of Nike Air Adapt shoes.

“They’re self-lacing. You put your foot in it and it laces it for you,” Erceg said. “I purchased them to resell them. Retail was $798 and I resold them for $1,800.”

Erceg was a 15-year-old high school sophomore at the time.

High school?

That’s right. Erceg is 23, just finishing his senior year at Aurora University in business administration.

His partner, Hintz, 22, is a 2018 graduate of Riverside-Brookfield High School. He studied business in college for two years.

As serendipity would have it, Hintz, who lives in North Riverside, had been doing the same thing as Erceg, buying specialty items at retail and reselling them at after-market prices for a profit.

“How we met – we both worked at a sports clothing store in 2019,” Hintz said. “I was his manager.”

They discovered, independently of each other, that they had been selling after-market items for about five years.

Through their shared interest and talent in the after-market retail business, they now have The Dawg Pound.

As to how the pair finagle these specialty items is a secret: No telling.

“We source it through contacts,” Erceg said. “It’s like a secret recipe.”

Their stock changes every day and is posted on their Instagram account @thedawgpound708.