While the rise of the sneaker has tracked the steady surge of streetwear and"ironic" style in fashion, the resale market for sneakers has boomed. Brands take advantage of the wildfires of social media and collaborations to grow demand for their products. Cynics will scoff at the hot air, but there's no denying that hype is a winning strategy for both brands and resellers alike.
StockX only sells authentic sneakers that are unworn and in their original boxes, and offers robust authentication to curb rising numbers of counterfeits. It bills a commission of 9.5 per cent and a 3 per cent payment processing fee from each sale, and according to Inc magazine, brokered over US$1 billion worth of transactions in 2019. The New York Times has also reported that StockX handles US$100 million in monthly gross product sales and has overtaken eBay in sneaker sales since 2019.
In July 2019, Miles Nadal, a Canadian investor and collector, splashed US$1.2 million on 100 pairs of rare sneakers at a Sotheby's auction with sneaker consignment store Stadium Goods. The top resellers globally, many of whom started selling sneakers on eBay, Facebook and Instagram, have reportedly raked in up to US$200,000-US$300,000 each year in revenue from resale, and have worked their way up the sneaker foodchain.
With data collected from Goat, Mr Rho found that half of the 10 most commonly resold shoes on the platform were Yeezy Boost 350 V2s and the median price of these was about US$470, a US$250 premium over their retail price of US$220. That's a 213 per cent gain for the seller. New York-based label Supreme, which originated as a skateboarding brand in 1994 and now has a valuation of over US$1 billion, is often considered the master of the drop. The brand releases limited-edition runs of up to 15 new products every Thursday at 11am. The week's special releases are revealed to the public on the Monday before, allowing the hype to build up in the days before the drop.
Drops have been increasingly employed, especially in the last five years, by sportswear brands like Adidas, with luxury labels like Burberry and Gucci joining the bandwagon. So much so that The New York Times christened 2017"the year of the drop". Limited Edt's Mr Chopra acknowledges that the culture has always been present but"remained somewhat underground until the past decade, when the level of consciousness and awareness has grown to mainstream levels". The push into the mainstream came with the changing faces of influencers driving sneaker fashion, which only accelerated with social media.
"You don't have to be an athlete, you could just be a kid that's curious about style," says Nick DePaula, the creative director of sneaker-focused media outlet Nice Kicks, in an interview with Business Insider. Jonathan Fong, co-founder of Street Superior, an annual sneaker and streetwear convention in Singapore says:"Growth here also has a lot to do with the influence of K-Pop." He cites K-Pop rap superstar G-Dragon and boyband BTS, both of whom have struck up partnerships with sneaker brands and have had successful releases.That's not to say that reselling sneakers is the road to riches for the canny teenager eyeing an easy buck.
But does the sneaker boom have legs and have they become a sector unto themselves, or will demand fade and prices retreat? At his Off-White Fall 2020 menswear show last week, Abloh pointed to the end of streetwear, showing a collection which was more suits than sneaks. And yet, photos of his highly anticipated take on the Nike Air Jordan 5, unveiled at the Off-White show, are already circulating online and written breathlessly about, months ahead of when they are expected to go on sale.WITH roots dating back to the 18th century, sneakers were originally made fully from rubber.
By the early 1970s, technological advances brought about a wave of new sneakers to the market, with many classics like the Adidas Superstar, Adidas Stan Smith and the Puma Suede released around this period. These and other models of the era played an instrumental role in the early hip-hop era as a sneaker of choice among disk-jockeys and breakdancers.
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