If you love the Nike Air Max 95, then you will have heard of the Block P, Liverpool’s go-to spot for 110s. The Air Max 95 slippers you’ve seen all over you Instagram, that was them. The letter to Nike's CEO about taking over for a week, that viral moment was also them.

Located on 36 Renshaw Street, the Block P has helped define what the 110 means to Liverpool, a shoe deeply embedded within the city's culture and history. Establishing themselves as an unrivalled space for community, they are a perfect example of ‘build local, think global’.

Sitting down with owners Charlie McDonough and Sam Byrne, we got talking about all things Air Max 95, getting stuck into what exactly makes the Block P such an important space in UK footwear. Oh, and they might have settled the 110 debate once and for all.

Sam: Charlie set up a shop and I thought, right, I’ll go and work for him.. I told him I’ll work for free, on the condition that I can sell my stock in your store. It was only when I was behind the till that I really started to understand, this isn’t just about shoes. This is community. This is culture.

I always tell a story about a fella who came in, he wanted a pair of our Air Max 95 “Day of the Dead” for him and his son. It was his son’s birthday. He bought them, and I could see he was getting a bit emotional. So I asked him, “Everything alright, lad?”

And he was like, “Oh… I’ve not long lost my dad. He got me into 110s.” He showed me a picture of him and his dad in 1995 when the “Neons” first came out. Both wearing the “Neons” on a fishing trip.

This shoe, he’s lived his whole life with this shoe.. This is identity. He’s got memories. The only memories he’s got left of his dad are in that shoe. He met his wife in that shoe. The day his son was born was in that shoe. His son now wears that shoe. He’s passed that legacy on. That’s three generations.

Forget Block P and selling shoes. This is what it’s about. It’s really about fostering connection. It allows people to open up. The store is a safe space for people to be vulnerable.

We all have that common ground, the love of the 110. We’re a vehicle for the story of the 110 and what it means to Liverpool.

Sam: It was our first anniversary last summer, and we did an event. We said anyone in the queue gets goody bags worth of stuff, and the first person gets a pair of 110s for free. The shop shut at 6pm, and this guy had queued up from 8pm until we opened at 11am the next day.

He was like, “Yeah, I’ve been here since eight.” We looked at the camera and we were like f***ing hell. We decided to give him a pair of shoes and then a few weeks later he comes in and he says, “Is Sam in?” I come down and he’s like, “I never really told you what happened that day and why I was in the queue. I got kicked out of my flat and made homeless that day. I had nowhere to go. So I went to where I feel safe, which is Block P.”

He sold the shoes we gave him which paid for a taxi to a job interview and accommodation for a couple of nights. He got the job. Came back in, back on his feet and was like, “To celebrate what that moment means to me, I’m going to get a tattoo with the Block P logo.” When days get hard in the shop, and we struggle, that's what it’s all about. That’s everything.

Charlie: My first memory was being in Year 7, in the park. I didn’t come from a poor family but I was never given any money. I remember the girls we used to hang around with would take the piss out of me for wearing the same clothes all the time.

Obviously when you’re younger you don’t realise it matters, I remember being sat in the park and four lads walked past all in a pair of “Neons”. I was like “they’re cool”. That was the first time. Then I went to school the next day and the cool lad was wearing a pair. That’s when it clicked. I was trying to find my identity, and I latched onto the 110.

S: I don’t really have a specific memory. I remember buying my first pair of 110s.

C: I think that shows why we’re a good team. That’s more my area. There’s a massive amount I don’t know that Sam does and vice versa. That’s why it works well. If we’re both obsessed with the shoe, then what’s being missed?

S: I’ve got loads of pairs, but what I love more is what they represent. I think they’re sick shoes. I only wear 110s. But I didn’t start a shop for 110s. I’m not as passionate as Charlie.

C: I’ve always noticed whenever I’ve met people in their industry who don’t live what they rep, they always seem to fall off.

That’s why I think it is important for someone to come into the shop and see the staff wearing the newest pair. If you come into the shop and I’m wearing a pair of Converse trying to sell a pair of £500 110s, you’re going to think I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.

C: Any white midsole pairs are a big no. A lot of people, especially in Liverpool, they’ll buy their pair of 110s for the year, and come next Christmas they’re wearing a destroyed pair of shoes. You’re obviously not going to buy a white midsole pair, because they’ll be destroyed in a month. Whereas a black midsole, you can wipe that a million times and it’s still the same.

S: It’s functionality. If you’ve got a white midsole and you’re on the road, it just gets dirty. 110s are a practical shoe, which is why they did so well.

C: Leather’s a big no in Liverpool. Any leather toe box, bar like one or two pairs you can get away with. The colourways are mad, mate. You get the odd pair that are ok and people are socially accepted but most of the time they’re a big no.

C: I think for me, I’d love a special edition box, a sign that there’s been thought put into it. When the Liverpool pair came out, it literally looked like someone took a “Hyper Crimson” and changed it to red.

S: We’ve actually got mock ups. For me, it’s not so much Block P designing a 110. We’re a vessel to allow Liverpool to get a 110 that speaks for the city. I’d do a collaborative workshop with Nike, let the whole community design the shoe for us.

You’ve got to cultivate a real moment in time. It can’t just be, “Right, there’s a thousand pairs.” You’ve got to put work in to get them. The golden tickets, that’s why Lorenzo’s did so well. They dropped it in such a cool way. What’s going to do that is a product that reflects what we are as a city, what we stand for, bringing together our community.

S: It’s all about the bigger picture. If a shoe and the community we’ve built, helps people live a more meaningful life and feel like they’ve got purpose. That’s everything.

C: We want people to come down. I hate the idea that people feel like they have to buy something. Please, come and have a look. That’s not why we’re here. I’d love it if someone came in every Saturday, spent an hour looking round, and bought nothing.

C: Kasst is a good friend. Aystar is a really good personal friend too. Meekz has done a pop up at the store. There’s potentially something in the works in the next few weeks, but it’s not confirmed.

Ten years ago, we were looking up to these Scouse rappers and now they’re coming into the shop and they’re like, “You alright?” If you told a 16year-old me that I’d be like, no way. It’s crazy. Kasst filmed his 110 music video in the shop. People come in and they’re like, “Yeah, seen it in the Cass video.”

C: There’s two sides to it. I think it would work anyway because we’d adapt in whatever way we needed. Would it be a copy and paste? No. It was the same with the shop when it first opened, we adapted to what people wanted.

S: If we just sold 110s there, it probably wouldn’t work. So could a shop like Block P exist in London? No. Because a shop like Block P only exists in Block P. There’s only one shop that sells one shoe and does that.

We’ve been to Japan, 110s are massive over there, but there’s no shop that just sells 110s. You come in here, we’ve got thousands of pairs. It’s like an archive. The pivot from a resale store to an Air Max 95 archive. We can tell the story of the shoe. We couldn’t do that in London because the 110 is not as big.

People in London think, “Oh yeah, we love 95s” but you don’t have a clue what the culture means to the city. Liverpool’s relationship to the 110s is 300 years old. The shoe came out 30 years ago, but Liverpool is a dock city, a working class city, we’d spot trends from US sailors and bring them into the UK. Brands watch Liverpool. Buyers watch what Scousers wear. If it works in Liverpool, they take it to Newcastle, Glasgow, Belfast. If it lands here, it usually lands across the UK.

S: There’ll always be a core in Liverpool that only wears 110s. For that to change, something else would have to come in with the same depth of history and culture behind it.

C: Even if it did fall off, that’s fine. By then our brand should’ve pivoted. We don’t want to rely purely on the shoe forever. We want our own products to carry weight.

C: I had the idea in 2019. I had no clue how to even start. Got someone to design them, sent a screenshot of the drawing to a factory, and they sent back a sample. It was about 95% there straight away.

S: I remember when the first 300 pairs landed. Charlie rang me panicking saying, “Lad, we’ve messed this up. They look terrible.”

C: They looked flat and battered out the box.

S: We didn’t realise you had to air them out, trim threads, do proper quality control. Once we did that, they looked boss. You learn as you go. The slippers were the first thing that really separated us from just being resellers. £35 is accessible. People who couldn’t afford £500 95s could still be part of it. Some have even started collecting the slippers instead of shoes.

C: The first proper queue for them was mad.

S: The biggest moment for me was December 2024. Stormy weather, the Everton derby got called off.  It was torrential. We thought no one would turn up. The queue was wrapped round the block. We sold around 500 pairs just to people waiting outside. Then 2,000 units sold out online in about 30 seconds.

People were flipping them for triple the price on eBay instantly. That’s when you know, we’ve got something here. We built that moment ourselves. Years of reselling other people’s products, and now it’s ours. It’s community first. Product second.

C:  Seeing a queue like that, especially in the rain, that’s what you dream of. If we ever do a book, all the samples, the story of the slippers, the journey, that’s all part of it.

If Block P drops a book, I’ll be first in line. Thanks for sitting down and taking the time to chat guys, appreciate it.