Mike Gugat jokes that he was a sneakerhead before that term existed.
He grew up playing basketball and sought after Air Jordans. But when he went to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, he got talked into playing rugby, which meant needing a different type of shoe.
Gugat found himself at a local running gear store, where he was eventually offered a job. Gugat started to work with representatives from big brands like Nike. For more than 20 years, he worked in the athletic industry, serving as an executive at Mizuno and Adidas.
Eventually, the resident of DC’s Lincoln Park area caught the entrepreneurial bug and cofounded the kid shoe company jbrds in 2018. Now, the company’s CEO is using the signature accelerator of one of Maryland’s biggest public universities to make the company the go-to brand for children’s footwear.
