Sneakerhead Horace Leung Has Collected Over 600 Pairs of Kicks
He's spent more than a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars on his sneaker collection.
Horace Leung has spent more than a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars on his sneaker collection. He’s also the main man behind hk-kicks.com, an expansive resource for fellow sneakerheads.
When did your obsession with sneakers begin? I started buying sneakers in university because I needed them for basketball. But I couldn’t wear them all so they slowly grew into a collection. Michael Jordan was—and still is—my favorite basketball star, and I thought he was really cool, so I tried to emulate him by buying similar gear with the money I earned from tutoring. Maybe it’s a kind of psychological disorder, I don’t know. But I think men have to have some sort of distraction from their nine-to-five jobs, and if it wasn’t for my collection, I might be gambling or doing something even more costly.
But shouldn’t you have more “me” time because you’re self-employed? I’m actually really busy! It may seem like my work is really flexible, but in reality I work all the time, even on weekends. On top of working, my wife has also tasked me with taking care of our six-year-old son. It all takes a lot of scheduling.
Does collecting sneakers get you girls? No! Only men who own collections of money get girls. That said, my wife doesn’t interfere with my habit—as long as I’m able to provide for my family. I quit my full-time job as a salesman in 2010, the same year my son was born, to run hk-kicks.com, which my then-partners would’ve shut down if I hadn’t taken over. It was a crazy move, but I’ve been doing alright.
