Hosted by Jeff Staple, the panel welcomed StockX’s Josh Luber, Arun Gupta of Grailed, Unique Hype’s OG Ma and Leo Rodriguez representing adidas.
Resale platforms have become billion dollar investable businesses contrary to the thoughts and words of analysts in retail. Are the businesses a disruption for companies like Nordstroms or Macy’s? No. They are most certainly a disruption for urban retail e-commerce for stores like Jimmy Jazz, the Hibbett Sports acquired City Gear, DTLR/Villa and Shoe Palace. With urban retail the growth is slowing considerably as brands begin to function like startups by pursuing direct to consumer strategies. This leaves their wholesale accounts with few areas for growth. E-commerce is one of the last options for reaching a new consumer and as high end resale platforms like Grailed and StockX see downward trends, they will begin adding products that compete directly with the urban retail marketplace. Urban retail will be more affected by their cash customers slowly being integrated into the online shopping environment. I discuss this in my new ebook:
Nike’s Consumer Direct Offense, Amazon & StockX: The Disruption of Sneaker Retail
This video isn’t nearly long enough and it would have benefitted from having actual “power” users of both StockX and Grailed on the panel. While the owners of the businesses on the panel have insight, they are always going to be guarded in how they approach their answers. At the end of this year I will give insight into how much a person could potentially make on StockX as a full time job. That insight will include problems with the platform that actually show how retail could disrupt the fast growth of hyped resale businesses or how a better option could be generated with an understanding of the limitations and what works well in third party resale.
The standoff between the three panelists, Grailed, Unique Hype and StockX is probably the most interesting aspect of this discussion Grailed founder Arun Gupta seems to be the most knowledgeable of the group and it seems that the adidas rep is just a hypebeast who got lucky enough to be hired. Which is interesting, here is a shoe exec who has less knowledge about his brand than the people who’ve created businesses on the brand. adidas should be embarrassed.
The information that isn’t being discussed is the most important aspect of this discussion. Resale only happens because the customer allows it to happen. The adidas rep states that resale is simply a vanity metric. It isn’t substantial. What the rep doesn’t realize is that resale is a predictor of brand hype and the information/media/news generated about models that are valued trickles down to consumers who have aspirations to wear the more coveted item. This statement can be argued, but there is a reason a Tanjun for Nike sells. It’s the right price and it looks a lot like the Flyknit models that retail at a higher price. The same attachment for hyped products exist for lower end products because people want to be in the ‘in’ crowd.
This video doesn’t reveal anything, but it certainly reminds me that there is a thirst for information that Hypebeast is providing while retailers fail to create this kind of information and give their power away to digital platforms that also have their own sales channels… now that’s something to think about.
