March 28, 2024

Entrepreneurs

Athletic shoes and the billion-dollar resell market

Amy Martinez | 4/26/2019

Among the vendors was Mitch Drake, co-owner of Genetic Soles, a sneaker consignment store in Jacksonville. He brought collectible sneakers to generate interest in his store. “When people see I have rare stuff like this, they’ll add me on Instagram and Facebook, which might lead to a sale,” he says, sporting a $1,000 Swiss Tavannes watch. In a glass display case: Three pairs of rare, limited edition Nikes created in collaboration with music producer DJ Khaled. Drake had snagged the collectibles for between $10,000 and $12,000 each from a sneaker connection on Instagram.

Meanwhile, Drake also stocked up on $5,000 in sneakers, T-shirts and other merchandise to take back to Jacksonville. “We usually try to be at a different show every month,” he says. Since opening in early 2018, the store has increased the value of its inventory from $15,000 to $100,000, he says.

Drake worked for eight years as a cook at a Chili’s restaurant in Jacksonville before he turned his passion for sneaker culture into a career. “For the longest time, I was wondering how I was ever going to get out of” the restaurant business, Drake says. “It took me two years, but I built my inventory up to about 150 pairs. My business partner also had about 150 pairs. We combined our pairs and started taking in consignment to fill up the store.”

Osorio now is one of Drake’s top consigners. Drake takes a 10% cut of each pair of Osorio’s the store sells. Osorio also sells through the sneaker market app StockX, which charges 8%.

While Osorio could sell directly to buyers and cut out the middleman, he’d have to spend more time developing an audience and market on social media, he says. “I’d end up spending hours and hours of my day doing absolutely nothing but replying to people,” he says. “I don’t do person-to-person transactions anymore — I just don’t waste my time.”

His interest in sneakers hasn’t waned, however — he currently owns about 100 pairs for personal wear. His favorite: A pair of Nike Air Jordan 4s. “It’s just a classic shoe,” he says. The most he’s ever sold a sneaker for? $4,000, for Kanye West’s Louis Vuitton “Jasper,” which originally cost $1,140.

Osorio says he’s now thinking about changing his major from finance to computer science. His next business idea: Selling his own bot service to sneakerheads.

Sneaker Event Biz

More than 2,000 people attended a Sneaker Games event in Miami in March. The company was founded by Erick Palma, who quit his marketing job at video-game company EA Tiburon in Maitland to launch the business in 2014. Palma says his next scheduled show will be in New York this summer.

“We’re still in building mode,” he says, noting that the business has yet to break even. “We have over 350,000 followers on social media. Our brand is out there, especially in the YouTube world.”

For the coming show in New York, Palma expects to charge an entry fee of $25. His biggest expense will be the venue rental. If 5,000 people show up, he says, and costs are kept to half of the revenue from that, he stands to make $62,500 in profit. “We’ll bring in big influencers and YouTubers and give people more reason to come out,” he says.

What Makes a Sneaker Valuable

As with any product, the sneaker resale market turns on supply and demand — the fewer pairs of a popular model that are available, the more money they’re worth. Several other factors also can make or break a deal.

  • The color scheme (colorway)
    Sneakerhead culture began in 1985 with the original Nike Air Jordan 1, which came in a Chicago Bulls-inspired black and red colorway called Bred. In addition to Bred, fan favorites include Shattered Backboard, a black-and-orange colorway scheme inspired by the uniform Michael Jordan wore when he broke a backboard while dunking in an exhibition game in Italy.
  • The collaborator
    One way to build hype around a new sneaker line or model is to harness the power of celebrity. Adidas has Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, while Nike has rapper Travis Scott, who unexpectedly released a new pair of shoes on the company’s SNKRS website during the Grammy Awards in February. The shoes sold out within seconds.
  • Cleanliness
    Those who resell sneakers resist the urge to wear them. Brand new, never-worn shoes are worth more than shoes with flaws or signs of wear.
  • Size
    When it comes to the secondary sneaker market, resellers try to acquire sizes that will fit the largest number of people. The most common shoe size for men in the U.S. is 10½, while a typical size for teenage boys runs between 7 and 9.

 

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