Custom sneaker business began as high school art project

For Quentin Southall, the path toward becoming a sneaker entrepreneur began with an AP art class during his senior year of high school.

“One of the projects was painting a pair of shoes,” Southall recalled. “It led to me painting my own shoes at home and posting them online, which snowballed into people reaching out offering to pay me to paint their shoes. "

Since then, Southall's handiwork has found itself on the feet of NBA player Kyle Kuzma. His customized sneakers have featured album covers for recording artists such as Lil' Uzi Vert and Motley Crüe, and professional sports teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles and the Washington Mystics. Southall offers his wares through Q’s Custom Sneakers, a side hustle he tends to when he's not working as a wealth advisory associate at the Glenmede Trust Company in Washington, D.C.

“I have a very strange duality in my life,” Southall said. “From nine to five, I’m working with numbers and legalese of trust agreements. And then I come home and work with a paintbrush. It’s fun because it’s different, and I enjoy them both. I try to excel at both things every day.”

Southall’s passion for shoes began like many others who grew up in the 2010s – an obsession with the game of basketball and the signature shoe lines that accompanied it. 

“Growing up, I was a part of the sneakerhead, hypebeast culture,” Southall said. “Back then, everyone would wear basketball shoes – not just on the court, but in class and as walk-around, casual shoes. That kind of mystique of having the new or rare Jordans, KDs, and Lebrons was always kind of a status builder as a teenager. But being a basketball player, where it was one of the only professional sports that had shoes as a collectible item, bolstered my love of shoes.”

A pandemic pastime

However, the Alexandria, Virginia native took that love far beyond the prospects of status and sport. Using an artistic flair that he developed through classes he took in his childhood and two years of AP art at Georgetown Preparatory School, Southall created Q’s Custom Sneakers in 2020. 

“This was also during the pandemic, when I couldn’t go outside and play basketball as much as I wanted to,” Southall continued. “It started as a fun distraction, and the business naturally grew from there.”

One of the first shoe designs that Southall created and sold was a Nike Air Force One displaying Lil Uzi Vert’s album “Eternal Atake,” a popular album released the week before the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.

“It was a very intricate design over the entire shoe,” Southall said. “Eternal Atake is a very eclectic, space-themed album, so it took a lot of work. And at the time, I didn’t have all the experience I do now in terms of design and how paint reacts to this material or that material. It was one of the first projects I undertook, so it’s one of my favorites I’ve ever made.”

Southall created the first version of the shoe for one of his high school classmates. However, Southall said that the design grew to be so popular, he ended up replicating the design five or six times. Since then, he’s designed shoes reflecting other artists and albums, as well as sport franchises, movies, and culture. 

A three-step process

Southall implemented a basic three-step design process he uses to this day: prep, paint, and seal. However, each of those steps has their own subprocesses.

“First, I have to acetone down whatever finished layer that the brand of the shoe puts on,” he said. “I peel that top coat off to get to the leather, which often involves sanding down the shoe, then I can paint it. I usually put one or two coats of primer on then turn to whatever method I might use: hand painting, airbrushing, stenciling, et cetera. I have to be careful to not add too many layers, or else it’ll get brittle and crack under pressure. Finally, I put a top layer back on to seal in the design. It’s a long process, but it’s worth it because it lasts a long time.”

Over the course of time, Southall began refining his process and working with all different kinds of shoes – wrestling shoes, bowling shoes, football and soccer cleats, boots, and clogs, which included learning to adapt to different heights, cuts, and materials.

“Each pair of shoes is different,” Southall said. 

Upon graduating high school in 2020, and with a re-kindled love for shoes and basketball, Southall went to the University of Richmond, where he began pursuing a degree in finance while simultaneously playing for the Spiders’ basketball program. 

At first, Southall concentrated his efforts on his degree and duties as a Division I basketball player. He always had a long-term goal of working in the financial and investment industry after college. He kept working on his shoe business on the side, but had to quickly compartmentalize.

“The balance was tough. I was going to class, doing my homework and studying, all while being a student-athlete,” he said. “Practice every day, constant lifts, traveling for games, and recovery time.”

However, things changed halfway through his sophomore year.

“I decided I was pretty serious about this business,” Southall said. “My love for sneakers and my business led to me being kind of entrepreneurial. So, I picked up a concentration in entrepreneurship and began taking focused classes.”

Southall said that his initial experience running the business made the coursework feel more natural to him, being able to apply his existing client relationship management skills to his case studies and capstone courses. In turn, what he learned in the classroom only improved his side hustle. 

“They deepened my understanding and ultimately made me a better entrepreneur and allowed me to run my business more sustainably and efficiently,” Southall said. “It was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy at the end of the day.”

In 2024, Southall graduated from Richmond with a degree in finance and entrepreneurship and as a four-year basketball player, highlighted by an Atlantic 10 Conference championship in 2022, sending the Spiders to March Madness, where they upset No. 5 Iowa, 67-63, in the first round.

NBA inroads

Southall’s success with Q’s Custom Sneakers led him to making shoes for some high-profile athletes, including NBA player Kyle Kuzma in 2024. Southall created four pairs of custom, blacked-out Sabrina 2s, the signature shoe of WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu, for Kuzma when he was with the Washington Wizards. 

From chasing sneaker status in middle school to a successful business, with some high-level academia and Division One basketball sprinkled in, Southall has proven that passion and hard work can take you to the top of a pursuit – or, in his case, multiple pursuits.

Editor's note: This story was produced through JOUR 459X, a special "sneaker journalism" course offered in Spring 2026 through the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park.