Round Two’s “Dom” Talks About Keeping Good Company & Reaching Your Goals

One of Richmond’s biggest sneakerheads and currently Round Two’s General Manager of the company, Domnick Quinn is known as “Dom” speaks about his history with Round Two and showcases his crazy sneaker collection. Dom is originally from Richmond, VA, and is now based in Chicago, IL where he is handling everything at the Round Two Chicago location located in one of Chicago’s historical areas Wicker Park. Dom has been operating with Round Two for about 10 years now and has a strong connection with the well-known owners known as Sean Wotherspoon, Chris Russow, and Luke Fracher. Dom has been a huge collector of sneakers since he was an early teenager and continues to pick up insane items that a lot of collectors don’t see on the regular like Nike Yeezy 1s, brand new pairs of 1994 White Cement 3s, 1985, 1994, 2015 Chicago 1s and a huge Nike SB collection with many more. His love for Vintage has drawn a lot of attention in the city as he showcases pretty rare Rap tees you don’t come across at all. If there is someone that helps authenticate a shoe or even just some type of history about any sneaker, he would be the one to enlighten you on anything you need to know about them. Dom has come to Chicago and put the Round Two Chicago location on his back as it continues to flourish in the city of Chicago since opening back up in October of 2019.

NK: Tell me where you are from and a little bit about yourself?

Dom: Well, I’m originally from Richmond, Virginia. A little bit about myself, I’m a very outgoing person when it comes down to the clothes that I’m wearing, down to the shoes, all the vintage tees, all the vintage hats, that’s like a part of my personality. So that’s the kind of things that I’m into.

NK: You’ve been working for Round Two for a while now. What has Round Two done for you so far throughout this journey to keep your loyalty with them?

Dom: Round Two are honestly like brothers to me since day one. They’ve always been there for me, always helped me out, anything I need, you know, I’m like their actual son basically, always nagging them, making sure we’re on the next wave. Like when I first came up in this, I was a young buck and we were all kind of around the same age, but I was the youngest out of the crowd at the time. So, you know, they just always been keeping it real with me. So I just always remain loyal no matter what.

NK: How long have you been working for Round Two?

Dom: I was originally kind of a little intern around like 2013. In 2012 I used to run to get food for them, you know, on the little shop cart. It’s a little spot in Richmond called Chicken Fiesta and they just always sent me what they ordered and I used to run and go get their stuff. So then after that, you know, I kind of floated in trying to get on the schedule, you know, but they had OG guys working there already, so I couldn’t really get on at first. And then finally I got my shot and I just took off from there. 10+ plus years of friendship and being employed with these guys.

NK: Give me your first experiences with Sean Wotherspoon, Chris Russow, and Luke Fracher?

Dom: I’ll go with Chris Russow first, In my first experience with him. I remember walking down Broad Street and I used to play basketball a lot, and I saw this building with all these brown paper bags all over the window and I was like, Oh man, this is a cool place. Something told me, like, man, let me just open the door and so I opened the door and they were doing Monday appointments only. So Chris, if anybody knows who Chris is, he’s very sarcastic. He was like, Yeah, man, today’s Monday, and we only do appointments only, and stated “So you know, like, I mean, you already walked in, so you might as well just start shopping” and from there, that’s what really sparked me. Chris is one of my best friends in the world now but at that time I just was a regular guy off the street that really cared about what they had to offer to my city.

Dom: I’ll go with Sean Wotherspoon next. I remember seeing Sean up and down the block all the time right after I met Chris, back in the days, Sean was just that guy in VA. Like, he was just always on the next wave, always camping out for something that’s just a Sean thing, just trying to control the market or whatever shoe that came out recently he would be 10 steps ahead on copping it. We had Carmine’s a couple of years later and he tried to buy every Carmine in the whole Richmond area, so he controlled the market and that was just a Sean thing. But my first interaction was just like, Sean- “yo, you’re hanging out here all the time, like what it is to you”? So I just told him a little bit about myself and then we just got cool from there and continued a ten-year friendship at this point.

Dom: Last but not least, my guy OG Luke Mook, my first interaction with Luke was like a very love-hate relationship because I used to always say Luke was a little thicker back in the day and I was very skinny. The roles have reversed like once or twice by now, but at the time, I used to always mess with him and be like, man, like give me a job here. I told him that he needs people but Luke was being a little stubborn at first but finally gave me a job, and that was just how our relationship was from there on I used to always draw him on the pad and he would get mad and say, “You never be copping anything” and that was just our relationship. It was a give-and-take thing for everybody at the time. In the beginning, I ended up getting super closer to Luke than more than anybody because Luke has this stand-off attitude but he also will bless you with anything, sometimes he would say, “Hey, don’t think that we that close, but then would say, I still love you at the same time. But over the years, we got extremely tight and I hit him up like every day, annoying him about something I want in the New York store or whatever. That’s just pretty much my interactions with all of them. Three At the beginning. Now everything has been changed and now they are all like my brothers now.

NK: How did Round Two shift the culture in a small city like Richmond, Virginia?

Dom: It shifted the culture in many ways, I’ll say the first way was like how our buying process was and how we photo things, you know, I feel like that we shifted the culture not only in Richmond, we shifted the culture all over the world. We were the first people to take pictures of shoes, clothing, and anything on the green turf. I remember one day something got into Sean, but this was a Sean thing. Sean was like Yo, let’s go to Lowe’s and go get the grass and picture everything on the grass. Once that popped off, we saw literally every other shoe store back in 2013 continue the wave, it wasn’t a lot of shoe stores at that time like today but it was like the OG guys around the US started picking up on it. Back then, you know people were stuck in their way, they didn’t want to change how they pictured photos. Some stores didn’t really even picture much but Sean went on and he started posting pictures of everything on the green and that really changed everything. Then we started taking photos of clothing on a little hanger but the hanger was hooked to something else, so it looked like the t-shirt was floating. We started seeing other stores pick that up as well, we would put things out for steals and give away thousands of free shoes. We used to do sidewalk sales for $5 and we kind of changed that narrative for a lot of places. We started to see the change in prices with other stores as well, but we’ve always tried to stay within what the market was at the time which was like a big thing. We had a good thing going in Richmond and one day, Chris and Sean pulled up to the store and were like, Yeah, we’ve got some news for y’all, we’re going to head to LA. At first, I didn’t like it because it was kind of a sad thing, but it was like, Hey man, if the company is going to grow, that’s what the next step is going to be. When the LA Store came around, it just took off like no other before.

NK: With Sean being one of the co-founders, the Air Max 97 was named shoe of the year. Can you give me a little insight on how big that was for the city and Round Two?

Dom: It was honestly amazing. We had people coming from all across the world come to Richmond. Big shout out to the boys in New York, they don’t play when it comes to the resell business and when they come for a shoe, they will get it. Sean, of course, showed us a couple of early samples and when I saw it I said this is a crazy shoe. This is going to be the next big thing for us and the city. Shout out to my homie and former co-worker Richie, he had the shoes early and he had his own personalized patches and was nice enough to let us post them and let us have them in the store for display for customers to see when they came in. Richmond as a whole was honestly on a lock from that point on. Like everything in and out has something to do with Sean Wotherspoon 97s. Super shout out to Sean for making that shoe come out in Richmond and I know it came out in LA also at the beginning, but if you also notice one of the very subtle details on the back of the shoe, its a denim tab and it says to LA to VA, that’s originally from the 104 West Broad Street to 202 West Broad Street in VA to LA location on Melrose. I was very lost in the sauce a little bit because it was a surreal moment for me to be around all of this. Some of the homies would definitely try to ask if I could get the shoes and all these different types of stuff from the store as we started to grow from the release. I had to be very transparent and let them know I’m only one person, man. Sean had thousands of people to take care of, so it was outta my hands at that point. I eventually got my pair so thanks to Sean for that and I didn’t have to pay so I was super excited, super thankful. I was smart enough not to wear them on the release day because there were some hungry guys out there but I did manage to have my pair and I still have those exact same pair to this day. Over the years I always picked up a couple of pairs because I was there when the shoe came out so I always made sure that I keep that a part of my history because I was actually there. By the way, Sean does not have a storage locker full of Sean 97s.

NK: Last question. Making this transition over from Richmond to Chicago, how has it been for you so far since you’ve been in Chicago?

Dom: I would say it’s been amazing, my option to move to Chicago was a very blessing, a very good blessing from Round Two. I was originally supposed to move to New York and some things end up changing in the company. I remember Luke called me and said changed plans, got some things going on and New York City wasn’t the right move at the moment. He was like, Do you want to move to Chicago? I told him yes within 30 seconds, I’m down to go wherever and for anybody that knows anything about me, I’m the roll with the punches type of guy, no time to complain, we got to go get it, we only got one life and don’t get to live it twice. So I moved to Chicago, and when I got here it was a little rough in the beginning because I didn’t know anybody. Chris took me in with open arms, I stayed with him and actually stayed with him in two other places before splitting. We lived together for a year in our 2nd apartment and I moved through the ranks in the company quickly while being in Chicago for two and a half to three years. Now I’m the GM at Round Two and it’s amazing, I appreciate those guys for putting me in this position and that’s just been my experience for Chicago. It is a very loving city and you just have to have something to offer Chicago.

NK: What else do you got going on right now?

Dom: I work pretty much every day at my workout facility located in West Loop, Chicago area, and continue to operate things at Round Two Chicago. I have a couple of shoots coming up with big brands that will be showcased very soon.

I just want to say thank God and also I want to say a shout-out to all the shops in Chicago for holding me down on certain pieces. I was an outsider coming in and they welcomed me with open arms. Shout out to the homie Cheddar who is a big part of Chicago when it comes to anything with sneakers or anything in that realm. Also, Shout out to Vic Lloyd, Vic is a very humble guy, he literally comes to the shop and checks up on me daily, he doesn’t have to but he does out of love. You can follow Dom on Instagram at @domdagr8.