About Us

The Journey

The owner of Empire, Taylor, began reselling exclusive trainers online in 2016, aged just 13 years old. For the next 3 years, Taylor would secure limited release trainers from the retailers and sell them online for a markup to the people who had missed out on the original release.  After spotting a growing demand for these exclusive trainers amongst Glaswegians, he started our Instagram page, Empire Glasgow, in March 2019. We quickly built a customer base due to being one of the only places in Glasgow you could secure a pair of Yeezy’s or rare Jordan’s.

We continued to grow our stock and clientele, doing meet ups and drop offs in between school and work. In August 2019, we hosted our first Pop Up Shop in Glasgow’s merchant city which was a huge achievement considering our business was only a few months old. We done the same again on Boxing Day 2019 where our event was the talk of the town and attracted well over 1000 people with a queue outside all day. We sold out of every item within 2 hours and knew at this point that a permanent store was our goal. 

Covid19 held back our store dreams by a few years but this time allowed us to build our following and clientele and continue strengthening our service before opening our 12 Week Glasgow Christmas pop up store in October 2021. Based in Glasgow’s Princes Square shopping centre we were Glasgow’s first ever exclusive sneaker store. Focused on providing a premium service and stocking shoes which you couldn’t find elsewhere, it was an instant hit!

Due to the unprecedented demand of our pop up store, we decided to go permanent with it. In April 2022, Taylor packed in his career in aeronautical engineering to chase his dream of having a sneaker store and we moved into our permanent home in Princes Square and continued to build our sneaker empire. Going from strength to strength and supplying Glasgow with more than 10,000 pairs of the hottest sneakers!

In November 2022, we opened our 2nd location in Silverburn Shopping Centre. This festive season pop up was yet again, a roaring success. The announcement post alone getting over 1 million impressions on Instagram. After waiting 8 months for the right unit to come up, we have finally moved into our new Silverburn store in October 2023. Who knows what is next for Empire!