I watched a really interesting video about « The secret sneaker market » this morning, and I actually knew about it because I used to collect sneakers in high school but I discovered that this wasn’t really known by people .
I hadn’t a big collection like sneakers heads on the internet, who have about 300 pairs, but I had 3 or 4 rare pair of sneakers which allowed me to earn a little bit of money.
There’s a real secret sneaker market in the world, and people don’t suspect that, indeed, you can earn a lot of money with what seems to be just simple shoes. For example, there are some Nike shoes, designed by Kanye West, which were sold approximately 300$ by Nike, now they are reselled for more than 2,500$!
It’s incredible, but it’s real. Collecting and reselling sneakers allows people to earn some money, but Nike uses this phenomenon to earn more and more money, and they really know how to do it … Nobody can sell an iPhone at a higher price than he bought it, because Apple sells iPhones to everybody, unlike Nike which puts some limited sneakers for sale, so it makes the value of the shoes in question raise.
For example, when Kanye West signed up with Adidas, Nike reselled some Yeezy’s for 250€, it was out of stock in a few minutes of course, but the value of this sneakers literally declined on Ebay (5000$ to 1500$ !). So, sneakers heads just make advertising for Nike, and nike sells millions of shoes, to millions of people.
That’s how it works, it’s marketing. To continue the comparison with Apple, every year, before the new iPhone's release, there are some « Iphone lines » in front of every Apple store in the world, Nike lines occur 104 times more than Apple’s! It’s incredible, isn’t it?
So to conclude, even reseller can earn a lot of money, Nike save money thanks to them, because they don’t have to advertise for some shoes (have you ever seen an ad for a Yeezy shoe, however after the Air Mag (Marty Mc Fly’s shoes in « Back to the future ») Yeezys are the most expensive shoes released today.