Young entrepreneur who used grandma's bedroom to set up booming shoe box business celebrates investment

Engineer Dan Hibbard, 24, was struggling to get by after being furloughed in 2021.

Due to his low apprentice wage, Dan, from Harrogate, struggled to live on a tiny furlough payment.

Together with his friend Aden from Knaresborough, Dan launched a shoe storage box brand 'Solecube' from his grandma's spare bedroom.

Solecube boxes can be used to create fully customisable sneaker walls and towers.

Dan claims the boxes also utilise UV technology to keep trainers the same colour as at purchase.

Solecube boxes can be used to create fully customisable sneaker walls and towers.

The boxes also utilise UV technology to keep trainers the same colour as at purchase.

Since launch, Dan has supplied celebrities across the country including professional footballers and rappers.

More than 50,000 of the boxes have been sold so far in just three years.

Now, Dan is celebrating a huge investment into his business – which he claims has led to a 890% increase in total sales in the last year.

A local investor spotted Dan’s inspirational story in the Yorkshire Post which sparked a surge in sales.

"We went from my nana’s spare room to her garage and now we have a fulfilment team that package and send all our orders from a warehouse”, Dan exclusively told the Yorkshire Post.

"We started by ordering around 50 boxes with £200/£250 each and now we are ordering containers full and they’re selling out fast.”

The five figure investment has transformed Solecube, Dan explained.

“We would love to break into America and find a distributor to sell our products and I am actually visiting New York at the end of the year with my partner so I plan on speaking to other sneaker heads and shoe shops and promoting Solecube whilst having a holiday too.

"We also want to launch new products at some point and we will continue to push our brand across the UK and continue to grow.”

Russ Millions, Digga D and Bugzy Malone are all clients of Solecube and have featured boxes in their music videos recently.

For more information, search Solecube.