The Average Resale Price is going up. My average on the gross amount sold on StockX was $129.68. This number blows away previous resale averages which hovered between 98 and 107 dollars. Why did the price increase so much? As mentioned above, Space Jam 2, LeBron 8 Retro releases like the South Beach and an explosive Nike Basketball, lifted the high to premium tiered shoe sales which had been bolstered by the Dunk and Air Jordan 1 (in various iterations). The truth also lies in the fact that resale is becoming more limited. Sneaker culture has been screaming for resellers to die off. They are getting their wishes, but the funny part of this is those same people are still screaming for reselling to stop. What the buyers fail to realize is that they control demand. It’s a buyer’s market. Resellers are fighting each other for scraps. As StockX, eBay, Grailed and GOAT all advertise to bring more buyers to the platform, they should be strategically finding their best sellers as only a limited number of people are successfully reselling in substantial numbers. The casual reseller offers very little to third party platforms and due to the restrictions placed on reselling in stores, and due to the lack of inventory on the shoes that can be flipped, the BOT battle is heating up and anywhere shoes can be acquired is taking on the “Big Bank, take Little Bank” aspect.
How is Reselling Dying?
FootLocker has limited the number of shoes that can be purchased by one person. This is a limitation happening at all stores. FootLocker, however, has upped the ante by keeping track of what a person is purchasing daily. As I stated earlier, I could have purchased every pair of the adidas Crazy BYW Pharrell at 59.99, but the store would only allow me to purchase 3 pair total. I can’t purchase any more of those shoes. The shoe is now marked down to 19.99. There are some shoes marked down to a penny, but those aren’t sold to the public. Other retailers are as extreme. If the shoe is in-stock, you can purchase the same shoe twice, daily. While this would be fine if there was more to purchase, inventory is still low on shoes that can be resold purchased from retail.
Nike Clearance Stores are no longer allowing athletes to bring pairs from the storeroom with tops on the boxes. This doesn’t hurt sellers on eBay or GOAT. This will have major ramifications for StockX. Nike Clearance is also short on inventory.
Adidas is a non-factor in resale. Yeezy is too limited and when they are in abundance, they die on the vine.
New Balance resale only takes place on limited releases and like Yeezy, drop too many and resale is dead.
Brand of Sneakers Sold
5 pair of adidas. adidas is in trouble if we use resale as a measurement of brand heat. How does the brand recapture its momentum? Jerry Lorenzo has been at the helm for almost a year and we haven’t seen any adidas gear. Between Lorenzo and Kanye, adidas should be utilizing these guys to drive interest in inline product. Instead adidas appears to solely focused on collabs to cater to hype, when the collabs should be generating interest across the brand category. New Balance, Vans and other brands are not generating enough interest to be sold from retail outlets. Here are the brands sold.
Top 10 Shoes Sold
I’ve been talking about Nike’s Basketball resurgence. The evidence is in this chart. It’s a bit deceptive because while the G.T. Cut and LeBron sold above retail, if you bought them from mainstream sneaker stores, you didn’t make very much at all. The pairs sold here arrived on consignment. It’s still amazing to see the performance of LeBron and Basketball sneakers overall. This could be a sign that casual footwear is going to begin to take a slide as back to school moves kids to sneakers and adults won’t be working from home as much. This is a trend to watch very carefully.