image consists of Pharoahe Monch and th1rt3en’s song Cult45 and eBay’s Authentication Program
eBay Sneakers’ recent growth looks amazing until you dig in to why the third-party platform’s numbers increased. In 2021 the company acquired SneakerCon and began an attempt at regaining the marketshare lost to StockX, GOAT and other platforms. eBay launched marketing campaigns with sites like Nice Kicks and Complex to buy cool. The acquisition of SneakerCon was supposed to solidify eBay’s importance in sneaker culture.
The problem was sneaker culture had become mainstream and devolved into commodification, pandering and an invitation to get rich quick by labeling kicks as alternative investment assets. eBay never needed to acquire an authentication and sneaker buy, sell and trade business. eBay needed real adjustments, but an interesting analysis should be considered based on year over year data from 2021 through 2023.
eBay’s sales grew in sneakers. Those who made the gimmicky decisions to introduce Zero Fees, Wear them Out pop-ups and the overinvestment into SneakerCon and collabs with hyped websites and influencers have obvious reasons to celebrate the sneakers department. However, there is data which shows there might be some conflation of WHY sales grew as it relates to the strategies around eBay Sneakers.
The dramatic increase in sneaker sales has probably been attributed to the marketing and decision making which has taken place. This is understandable. In one category, SNEAKERS + MENS, sales grew an astonishing 153%. In 2021 this search category was generating 170 million. In 2023 the category was at 431 million year-over-year. Why wouldn’t the team at eBay think “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc or because of this, this happened”?
SneakerCon looks like a smart purchase, until it doesn’t. Social media has been aflame with discussions on a divisive former president using the venue as a campaign stop. Long before this terrible decision by eBay and SneakerCon, the brand around SneakerCon was fading. Options like Tradeblock (a buy, sell and trade platform) have grown more popular. StockX remains a power in third-party ecommerce, and brands have taken on resale under the guise of sustainability (that’s a different story). Sneaker Culture and SneakerCon have become shells of the organic connection which grew the sneaker industry into a multibillion-dollar channel of sales.
Why Should eBay Care?
eBay is a business and with direct evidence of growth year over year. Soiling sneaker culture with SneakerCon’s “Cult 45” participation doesn’t matter. Or does it?
The growth shown in the chart above is emblematic of an unhealthy sneaker business. SneakerCon and all of the work in marketing done by the team at eBay was to regain ground in the more premium space of sneaker resale. What the data in the chart above doesn’t deliver is the amount of product entering resell via arbitrage.
Brands will begin to adjust product supply as inventory at retail is cleared. When this happens a return to premium resale prices will begin. Here is where eBay’s data allows for a discussion on how the growth and success of eBay Sneakers has been conflated with an influx of clearance product entering third-party.
Using the search Air Jordan + Men’s (a more premium data set) focuses on one of the two biggest selling brands in sneaker resale related to all of the activations done by eBay Sneakers. Nike controls the majority of resale… especially in the premium arena. The keywords Air Jordan + Men’s deliver these numbers:
Air Jordan on eBay continues to collapse. Sales are flat and the average price has decreased 10.5%. Nike sales have decreased across the board in average sale price, pairs sold and total item sales. In 2021 the average sold price on NIKE+Men’s was $142.96. In 2023 the average was $123.18. The total sales dropped from $251 million to $200 million.
Why did eBay’s sneaker sales increase? It wasn’t the marketing strategy, although it’s easy to think this is the case. Sneaker sales overall are slowing down, particularly at SRP. Resale is slow, but reselling discounted and arbitrage sneakers has increased because so many people dove into the reselling business. On the keywords SNEAKERS + Men’s, the number of sellers in 2021 increased from 90,000 to over 463,000 individual sellers in 2023. Adding this number of sellers can be presented as a good thing for eBay, but users should not ever be considered indicators of future revenue.
eBay had been performing poorly since StockX and GOAT came on the scene in 2016. The company was losing ground. 2021s low numbers were in line with the reality of sneaker resale slowing on the site. 2021-2023 saw an explosion in resale. This coincided with a bevy of reasons for the increase; too much inventory and Covid stimulus funds are immediate touchpoints.
2023 saw everything come back to earth as it relates to sneaker reselling. Nike and other brands overproduced SKUs and raised prices. eBay Sneakers feels like a division living in the moment of the growth shown in the overall “Sneakers” data set. The reality of eBay Sneakers lies in the “Air Jordan and Nike” data sets.
The Cult 45 problem for eBay won’t be addressed because sales have grown, but at the cost of culture. SneakerCon will gloss over the moment and hope sneakerhead’s short-term memory will place this in the rear-view window. In my opinion this is a moment of reckoning for sneaker culture. The soul of the community is at stake and eBay and SneakerCon require an exorcism, or they should be expelled from the church.