A Cincinnati skyline sits inside Corporate’s Air Ship. The detail disappears when someone puts the shoe on, yet it offers a useful starting point for understanding the retailer. In this Jordan Brand collaboration, the city is more than a convenient campaign backdrop. It becomes part of the object and of the story founder Matt Tomamichel wanted to tell.
Corporate opened in Cincinnati in 2008. Fifteen years later, the Air Ship release gave a wider audience a glimpse of a business built through retail experience, relationships and community projects. Concentrating only on the shoe’s color misses an important part of that development: the connections between the store’s commercial work and educational or charitable activity.
Learning the business before opening the doors
In an interview with Nice Kicks, Tomamichel traced his retail experience to a Footaction job he started in 2002 while still in high school. He continued working weekends while attending Wright State University. That background places Corporate within a recognizable sneaker-retail tradition: learning to serve customers before taking on the responsibility of an independent business.
Liking shoes and running a shop are different kinds of work. One can happen alone; the other requires attention to other people, their preferences and their circumstances. Tomamichel’s early employment gives his later career a practical foundation without making the eventual outcome seem predetermined.
Cincinnati is equally important to the story. Corporate did not need to invent an interchangeable urban identity when an international brand came calling. Its references had developed in a particular place, which could then travel with a product beyond the local market.
A fifteenth-anniversary Air Ship
The teal Air Ship celebrated Corporate’s fifteenth anniversary on September 8, 2023.
The skyline on the insole works differently. Rather than relying only on large branding or an immediately recognizable sports reference, it puts a geographical signature inside the shoe. Someone familiar with the city may recognize it quickly; someone else may be prompted to ask where it comes from.
That is one of the more compelling possibilities of a boutique collaboration. An established model acquires a story that does not belong solely to its manufacturer. The result remains a commercial product, but it can also introduce the place and people behind a particular edition. Local knowledge becomes part of how the object is understood.
The launch also became a workshop
The project extended beyond a sales announcement. Bigger Than Sneakers documented workshops with Corporate in September 2023, bringing students and adults into conversations around the Air Ship and Tomamichel’s experience. A shoe became a starting point for discussing work, creativity and professional possibilities.
The organization records other joint activities, including a coat-and-toy distribution with adidas in 2024. These are specific, dated examples with identifiable partners. They provide firmer ground for discussing community involvement than a broad suggestion that every retail transaction automatically changes a neighborhood.
The distinction matters because a charitable event and a successful product release do different things. Their connection is meaningful when the activity itself can be described, rather than when good intentions are simply attached to a brand name.
Sneakers enter the formal dress code
Launched in 2018, Cincinnati Sneakerball brought Corporate and Bigger Than Sneakers together around formal clothing and sneakers. The event uses a shared interest as a setting for charitable fundraising. Historical beneficiaries listed by the organization include youth, healthcare and sports-access initiatives.
There is continuity across these projects even when their formats differ. A workshop begins a conversation; a fundraising event gathers participants; a collaboration carries Cincinnati into other stores. Corporate becomes easier to understand when those moments are considered together. The Air Ship may be the most immediately photographable part of the story, but the relationships around its release help explain why that shoe mattered to the retailer in the first place.
Sources and further reading
Interview with Matt Tomamichel
Bigger Than Sneakers: workshops
Related store histories
Sole Classics / Kingsrowe
Oneness Boutique
