How To Resell Sneakers
Resell sneakers : Background stuff
You may have heard of sneaker reselling before, but maybe not how big it is.
This might not be common knowledge, but the sneaker resale market is actually over $5 Billion annually, making it bigger than some companies traded on the public stock market!
Whether you want to add this skill to your repertoire as a side hustle or if you want to dive all in and make it a full time income, we hope you take the time to open your mind to this and read up on the crazy world of sneaker reselling!
If this is your first time hearing of the aftermarket of collectible shoes, you probably have a lot of questions.
We hope to clear beginner questions up in this article.
Ok let’s dive right in !
How to know which sneakers to buy
You’d be shocked to realize that sneakers like this:
Sell for prices like this:
And look just like these!
How do you know the difference between shoes that go for nothing, and shoes that go for tons of money?
The short answer is: experience and education.
Take time to look up websites like Hypebeast and High Snobiety to get a gauge of what kinds of shoes people pay big bucks for, and follow their latest news until you continue to get an understanding of this mysterious market.
To get a little more specific about which brands of shoes to buy, you should definitely stick primarily to Nike, with some Adidas on the side.
Nike owns the Jordan and SB brands and Adidas owns the Yeezy brand, each of these sub-brands being the most popular and valuable on the resale aftermarket.
Another thing to look out for is celebrity sneaker collaborations.
One example is a Nike Retro Jordan collaboration with Travis Scott.
These go for a whopping $2000 on StockX.com, a top website for sneaker market data, and also a source for buying and reselling sneakers.
Since this is such a big market, there are many apps out there to support it, so let’s dive into some of the best.
Best apps for reselling sneakers
StockX
Known as “The Stock Market for Sneakers”, StockX has only been around for about 5 years yet has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and now valued at over $1 billion.
First timers have endless fascination awaiting them on the website.
Red and green tickers appear scrolling across the bottom just like on CNBC, but the prices represent individual sneakers and their brands.
Each shoe will reveal its individual price chart and premium, which can sometimes be as high as 1000%, or 10x above retail–and sometimes even more than that!
Not only is StockX.com good for price research, the site can be used to sell sneakers on.
However, most diehard sneakerheads are hesitant to buy or even sell on StockX.
The next app is a much more reliable sales platform with better reputation among the community.
GOAT
Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs Eddy Lu and Daishin Sugano, GOAT (that is, Greatest Of All Time) in 2019 made major moves after raising $100 million, and has since established itself solidly a platform you need to get on as a shoe reseller.
It’s way less complicated than StockX is, yet holds helpful data in terms of quick price checking.
If you were able to get the shoes in person on the day of the release, I recommend using GOAT as from my experience, people buy in a higher volume on the release day on trusted platforms like GOAT and StockX.
You can also sometimes list the shoes for a higher price than eBay, although in the case of StockX and as a new GOAT seller, the fees will probably work out to be slightly higher than if you were to sell on eBay.
eBay
Of course, you can sell anything to support hustle on eBay, but sneakers have their advantage due to some recent eBay changes.
The standard selling fee for most platforms is a 10% cut, which used to be true across the board for basically all products on eBay.
However, as this original marketplace saw the newcomers, GOAT and StockX, coming for its market share, it decided to create an offer that shoe sellers couldn’t refuse:
0% in platform fees !
When shoes are worth $1000 at times, this is $100 saved compared to GOAT and StockX which both have around a 10% commission!
Although this is great in theory and it’s always good to maximize on margins like this, eBay is having a hard time getting back buyers who have transitioned over to trust marketplaces like GOAT more than eBay, which at one time was absolutely littered with fakes and scammers.
We suggest you use eBay for historic collectible models, but not so much for selling new models.
As a buyer, you will be able to get better prices on eBay since the sellers don’t have to deal with platform fees, so always cross check prices between all the platforms we mentioned.
Selling sneakers for cash and in person
A great thing about the sneaker resale market is that it is fairly liquid and established across the entire world.
If you live near a city, it’s highly likely that your local shoe market is more active than you would think it is.
Doing business in person allows you to establish more personal relationships with the option to deal in cash, which some buyers and sellers prefer.
Here are a few places you can resell sneakers for cash:
Craigslist
Although this platform has a slightly shady reputation, exercising some caution and common sense will allow you to capitalize on opportunities.
Simply search “Air Jordan” and you’ll probably see numerous results pop up.
Compare the Craigslist price to those on the previously mentioned platforms, and you may see a decent profit.
It’s recommended that you use Craigslist primarily as a buyer than as a seller.
Facebook Marketplace
The Marketplace section of Facebook is fairly new but it has gained tons of traction in the recent years, especially during Covid lockdown where the activity seemed to be higher than ever with a lot of stores closed.
When you have a good valuable sneaker knowledge base, which you can get by doing research on StockX or Six Figure Sneakerhead’s blog, you’ll be able to sniff out opportunities which could result in as much as a few hundred dollars in profit in just one pair.
How much can you make reselling sneakers?
Given that the sneaker resale aftermarket is a growing multi-billion dollar market driven almost entirely by self educated individuals, it’s not totally unrealistic to expect a mid level full time income if you dedicate yourself to specializing in it.
However, it’s not the best idea to jump full in on reselling sneakers if you don’t know what you’re doing, so educate yourself as much as you can or simply follow news and jump on sneaker resale opportunities when they come out–every month, Nike and Adidas come out with limited sneakers that have resale value.
One example from last year was a collaboration between Nike and the beloved Ben & Jerry’s.
Released for a retail price of $100, the sneakers resold for a whopping $2000 at one point and still to this day actively trade for a 15x profit at $1500 on average for most sizes.
The ordinary person would have passed up on this sort of opportunity!
Of course, the game is more complicated than just going on Nike’s site and buying the shoes for $100 and flipping them for a $1000+ profit.
The people who do this are highly specialized and understand all the ins and outs of running a sneaker operation, which sometimes includes operating software called sneaker bots that allow the user to buy not just one but even multiple pairs of the shoe before any human can.
Although there is criticism of these people having an unfair advantage over the general population, if you really want to win in this game, it’s not a bad idea to go by the old adage: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”.
This is exactly why I created Six Figure Sneakerhead,its Winner’s Circle and the flagship and highly reviewed Hypemaster Playbook: I wanted to give individuals a huge leg up in the market–it’s the resource I wish I had when starting in the sneaker resale game.
Thank you for reading guys and if anything I hope this opened your mind up to how sometimes there are potentially huge opportunities like the sneaker resale market that fly under the radar for the normal person, but allow those few in the know to cash in!
About the author:
JV is the creator of Six Figure Sneakerhead, which he hopes to be the #1 resource for sneaker resale education, allowing individuals to plug into the exciting and potentially highly lucrative business of shoe flipping.
He enjoys teaching and helping people to reach their full potential and to find freedom in entrepreneurship and in life.
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