Alright, everyone who is a sneakerhead and sells, buys and trades kicks has at one point worked through ebay or is currently working through ebay. I was an ebay faithful sneaker freak until I had one of those nightmare encounters on ebay and everything went to garbage. What that made me realize is that, ebay takes care of its buyers, but very rarely does it side with its sellers. So like many sneakerheads I decided to turn away from ebay this weekend. I got tired of the people claiming something was a replica or variant when it was as clear as day in the pictures and the boxes and the tags and receipts, that everything was authentic. What I did is what you are witnessing now, establishing my site as my homebase of operations.
I originally wanted my site to only feature my sneaker that I am releasing this year. I wanted arch-usa.com to be about ARCH. What I realized though, as many sneakerheads need to realize, is that this is my merchandise and ebay really doesn’t deserve to take a percentage of the sneakers that I have in stock. Especially when they tend to mistreat and side with crooked buyers who are simply trying to get over in some instances. While I had a ton of great experiences with ebay, it took one bad customer to completely change my opinion about giving ebay all of the fees that they were taking when I sold a high end shoe. So how am I changing over?
1. I decided to open up my shopping to my wholesale customers more instead of trying to make as much as possible off of every pair of kicks. The picture up above is a wholesale deal for a customer today. He wanted a box of Air Max 90 Infrareds and no one would set him up with any at a great price. Instead of buying for myself I bought for my wholesale connect.I didn’t kill like I would have selling them individually, but for a one day deal, it was a nice haul.
2. I decided to advertise a little. Ebay is a monster because it has so much on it. I hit up a couple of sites and paid for placement. It’s working so far. If sneakerheads stopped competing and began using networks like Niketalk, the messageboards on sneakerfiles (etc.) then they could establish their own means of reaching each other and other customers as well.
3. I am using the site as a bargaining board. This hasn’t worked just yet, but once I think the sneakerheads realize they can leave a comment and make an offer on kicks just like they can on facebook or similar to ebay, they will come and make offers.
I advise any sneaker head who buys and sells to consider taking back their power. While most people can’t get the same things as others, we all have something to offer and as a group, we can change policy at ebay and set the terms. Think about it, the sneakers are yours. You have paypal, google checkout, amazon and other credit card services and you can pay them. You can even set up bank transfers. When you have the product you have the power. I’ve moved and while it is slow right now, the future is bright.
Chris B.
