Resellers Are Hurting the Sneaker Game

It is safe to say that sneaker culture has been on the rise for a while now, because of how interested people are in rare or exclusive sneakers. The only downfall of the sneaker game is that with booming interests means that there are people willing to spend a lot of money on trying to get the sneaker that they want. This causes problems because it is starting to become a culture of people getting shoes to resell instead of to wear and show off.

Long are the days where you could wait in line at a Footlocker or any other sneaker store to be the first to get your hands on a really anticipated sneaker. Now most sneakers are released online which has caused many problems with actual people trying to get the sneakers they want. Most of the time you will get into an endless que waiting for your turn to checkout the sneakers that are in your virtual cart. This is where the resellers have the upper hand though.

Resellers have forever been a problem, but with shoes being sold online they have only become worse. Most people who buy shoes to resell them have programs that for short we will call bots. These bots send out hundreds of checkout requests as soon as the shoes are sold online to put them in carts and checkout in order to beat regular people to it. That is why most of the time people are stuck in que times only to get the sold-out screen after a few minutes.

As the name suggests resellers buy multiple pairs for the purpose of reselling the shoe online or in person. Now, instead of spending $130 USD you are spending three times as much if not more. For example, the Travis Scott AJ1 was originally sold at retail for around $175 USD, but now after they have been sold out are going to cost someone who wants them over $2,000 USD to buy the sneaker off a reseller.

Unfortunately, there’s really nothing we can do about it, but there are ways that some sneaker stores are trying to make sure the shoes get to the hands of people who actually want them for themselves. One of these ways is used by the SNKRS app where it is set up as a raffle instead of releasing them as a first come first go. In my opinion resellers are hurting the sneaker game because people used to be able to go to a Footlocker and purchase a pair of Jordans. Now, it is very unlikely to see a pair of Jordan’s being sold at an actual in person store. Not only this but it makes people not want to wear the sneaker because of how much they paid a reseller for it.