There was a moment two years ago that I would have woke up early and got ready to climb in the car to parking lot pimp at the Nike Employee Store. I would call up a crew of people and sit there with a 1000 dollars for each person to go in and get as many kicks as possible. I would pay them per shoe and in an hour 5 people would come back with 50 pair of kicks. They would have made 150-200 bucks in an hour… which was really like 30 to 45 minutes staggered because the line was long. I would then turn around and drop off before going out and picking up shoes from the local stores that hadn’t been picked up in the raffle.
I would do this especially when a Retro 11 was dropping. If there was one shoe that was a lock to resale/flip it was the 11. It never failed. Until this past year. Resale is a wrap even on a black Retro 11. Let’s check out the stats:
Saturday Morning 10:00 Search on eBay: Air Jordan 11 Retro Low Barons
Total Pairs Listed: 712
Sold Listings: 234
The Evidence: The pairs that sold were early before today’s release date. Today only 6 pair have sold. 5 Kids and 1 Mens. All at around retail.
Saturday Morning SNKRS Check: A full size run still in stock.
Think about the fact that a black Retro 11 low dropped and at 10 am you can still cop and it should become apparent that this business model, the flipping machine on GRs is out of the door. If the shoe isn’t extremely limited then you flipping is no longer a possibility. Does this disappoint me? Not really. If you’ve been reading, you already know I saw this coming and I haven’t really been flipping like that. My store is primarily close out with the exception of a few pair of shoes. I’m also rebuilding the store after shutting down my primary revenue stores.
I just had to write this because I was just shaking my head and thinking about the way things have changed.
Note: Interestingly for the first time in a while the Kids Barons are almost sold out. Kids shoes have been sitting and not selling very much at all in retros. When I say selling I mean that the shoes aren’t reaching flipping status. Shoe sales are still solid. When I talk about sales I’m talking resell. Also it’s important to note that sales overall are up and looking at the sale through on kicks the morning of the release is not really smart. The only reason I’m doing this is because there was a moment when SNKRS and eBay would be on fire for a Retro 11 and the system would be crashing on checkout; not so much anymore.