Buy and sell authentic adidas shoes on StockX including the adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Cinder and thousands of other sneakers with price data and release dates.
Source: adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Cinder
Resellers are despised. They snatch up product before regular people can grab a pair for themselves. They use bots, connections with store managers and they operate in many ways like a mini-mafia when it comes to hot releases. You can bet that on Saturday morning resellers will be sitting at their computers, proxies ready to snatch anything that appears to have resell value. Now more than ever brands should show support to their wholesale accounts and do something that would be unprecedented, but is needed.
A few quick numbers for small retail accounts website traffic numbers/month:
DTLR/Villa = 748,000 (Search is a 28% with over 38% of that paid for via ads)
Shoe Palace = 469,000
EbLens = Not Enough Data (This means that the store hasn’t created a robust e-commerce)
In comparison large retailers have totals far different:
Dick’s = 21.11 Million
FootLocker = 13.43 Million
Here is where this post will begin to get tricky. Resale isn’t looked upon by brand accounts as acceptable. Wholesale accounts and brands have put in place strategies to prevent resale. In the last year however resale out of retail has lost its steam. I speak to managers and ask them when was the last time they’ve seen the big bulk buyers and at every store they say, “Hardly ever. Maybe when there is a big Air Jordan 1 High OG release, but even the craze around the Jordan 1 Mid has died down and most of the releases don’t even garner raffle registrations.”
This doesn’t mean resale isn’t taking place. Resellers have begun to migrate to brand doors. Visit an adidas or Nike outlet and you’ll see groups congregating to buy from these locations. The product is on the floor and when an NMD at an adidas outlet is 39 dollars and resales for 80, there is money to be made. When a Jordan Retro shows up at a Factory Store or Clearance, there is money to be made. In essence, resale takes place via brands or small wholesale account outlet stores (City Gear Outlets or DTLR Outlets).
Let’s look at the numbers for traffic on 3rd party e-commerce platforms:
StockX = 18.33 Million
GOAT = 5.55 Million
Small chains have done themselves a disservice by failing to write better copy and by focusing solely on hot shoe releases to promote their websites. The marketing teams at those accounts aren’t focused on creating consistent content or better product pages. In failing to create a channel that moves from digital to brick and mortar with exciting merchandising, their site traffic doesn’t come close to two resale sites that don’t even carry inventory. Asking brands to give the chains a pass to flip shoes early and without building up their own platforms is folly, but just hear me out.
Asking brands to look the other way is a radical concept which will probably never happen, but e-commerce hasn’t slowed. The shoe pictured at the top of this post is the Yeezy Cinder dropping on 3-21.
Yesterday I took this snapshot. There were 253 pair sold at an average price of 398.00 on StockX. There are over 100 current offers being made for the model at 240 dollars or higher. These stores that are either cutting hours or closing stores if given the option could ask the brands for a one time exception. Considering that this would never happen, those retail outlets could buck the system and choose a company reseller.
Today the numbers have decreased but they are still well above retail. This bump would help smaller retail chains considerably.
For two years I functioned in the role of Company Reseller for a small retail chain that didn’t have e-commerce. The account holders didn’t know I existed. I pumped half a million dollars a year into the business. This helped that chain to survive long enough to eventually sell to another chain. I didn’t sell big releases. I was given an employee discount and I bought clearance items to help the chain keep their inventory rooms from overflowing.
While I realize this is a radical idea, if GOAT and StockX are still capable of functioning in some capacity for the time being it’s only fair that brands allow their small retail outlets this option. adidas moved beyond their wholesale accounts to drop a shoe directly through StockX:
10 Reasons Why The ‘adidas Campus 80s StockX IPO’ Was the Most Important Drop of the Year
This DTCTS (Direct to consumer through StockX) could be considered an unfair advantage, right?
I do understand that the smaller retailers are at fault for their failure to build their e-commerce to match with third party resale outlets website traffic. I get that. I’ve been begging stores to do better with building their own platforms. When you consider Stadium Goods is at 2.48 Million visitors a month and KITH has three stores but has web traffic of 887,000, more than Shoe Palace, DTLR/Villa and EbLens, chains with 50+ stores, it’s their own fault for the shortcoming in expanding their digital footprint. This is not a time for placing blame. This is a time for solutions. Right now every brand should internally contact their small chains and allow them to begin utilizing any platform they choose to move inventory.
Note: I realize using the Yeezy is easy, so I took a moment to browse EbLens website for sale/clearance items. Right now the brand has a number of kicks discounted. The Jordan 312 Low is on sale for 79.99. On StockX currently in sizes 7-10 the shoe is selling for 130.00 to 82.00 a pair. On DTLR/Villa there is a Jordan Women’s OG for 99.98 in sizes 7-8.5. On StockX the same shoe in those sizes is selling for 105-100 dollars. This is not a request for hot/hyped product Small chains could probably move 500 pair of kicks out of inventory. While that’s not a ton of money at this time it’s a freaking stimulus package for the retailer.