(5/8) The sneaker hangover.
(Note: This isn’t totally meant to make anyone feel some sort of way. This is a commentary on my personal journey and what I’ve observed about the market over the past few years…usually, when I find or come across information or make a connection that I deem interesting, I like to share it with anyone who will listen. And if you’re here, you’re probably listening. )
So while Adidas was busy pumping out tons and tons of shoes, most of us couldn’t care less (at the time). Because we just wanted what we wanted and didn’t care what the ‘perception’ of said sneakers was. I wasn’t really looking to make a bunch of money on the shoes I bought, I was just looking to rock ‘em and hopefully figure out a way to fund the next pair. I definitely got caught up and ended up buying a few pairs of ZX Flux’s…and a few pairs of NMDs…and I was happy with them until I realized that I just wasn’t wearing them. No biggie. Time to sell and on to the next one.
But IMO, there were two things that converged right around 2015 that really launched sneakers into the stratosphere.
The first: I almost hate to even bring this up, but I want to say that the launch of StockX in 2015 kicked off the beginning of thinking in terms of just ‘money money money’. It brought so much exposure to the sneaker market that previously wasn’t there and the subsequent gold rush really put things in motion. A lot of people took note when sneakers went corporate and StockX ‘validated’ the marketplace for outside money. Which was pretty damn impressive. That’s not to say that StockX was necessarily the cause of anything, but it certainly became a factor in how we tend to perceive sneakers today. Sneakers were headed to the mainstream as it were. And if StockX wasn’t there to lead the charge, someone else *definitely* would have. So there’s that.
But this isn’t a referendum on Adidas and it’s not a referendum on StockX. It’s a glimpse into my own experience as a sneakerhead and what I observed and felt throughout these last few years.
So, to recap, a brief summary of what I observed:
2000-2015 - sneaker drought. Not enough supply on the market.
2014-2016 - Adidas captures attention with a handful of models.
2015-2016 - StockX drops and puts numbers to things.
That ‘putting numbers to things’ may have unintentionally been the beginning of the loss of innocence. (And social media, too). Instead of just buying a pair and enjoying it for what it was, we became willing participants in the commodification of sneakers. It makes me think about what ‘Beckett’ did to baseball cards. People used to collect cards of players and teams they loved, and when Beckett put numbers to everything, a lot of people reconsidered what they were doing and why…it was a subtle change but it definitely had a massive impact.
A similar thing happened here IMO.
StockX changed the ‘game’ forever. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved shoes and always will. But a subtle shift occured and suddenly ‘extrinsic value’ can be considered a real thing.
Disclaimer: I don’t use StockX often as the majority of shoes I’m into are shoes that most people don’t value much above. But it definitely made acquiring certain shoes a bit harder for me (considering I wasn’t about to spend ‘market’ price on anything going above retail). I do think it is a very valuable resource for people who look at this as a ‘business’.
The second: Instagram.
I remember when I first heard of Instagram around 2011, it was an app a couple of friends were using to make their pictures look ‘old-timey’. Basically filters. And then in 2013 I started building websites for an ad agency and IG became one of the apps we had to constantly test our development against. I remember telling my bosses ‘I don’t use IG and I don’t care to create an account’. Their response was that I *had* to use *someone’s* IG in order to test functionality. So my project manager gave me her login and I started poking around the app.
It took a few months and a lot of coercion from one of my friends, but I eventually came around and saw Instagram as my primary source of ‘sneaker news and content’. It was no longer Niketalk or the forums. It became IG. Even on NT we all shared our IG handles and created our own space there. And I don’t think I was alone - I think A LOT of people in sneakers migrated over to IG.
Both of these events weren’t exactly ‘bad’, but they set the stage for overkill for a guy (like me) with a penchant for collecting and obsessing over collectibles. There was never anything like the combination of StockX and IG for the items that I collected *before* sneakers, so it was easier for me to dive in deeper and fully immerse myself into things…
(I love when I write something and then start googling it and see that someone else already wrote the same thing like 100x better and several years before I even thought of it lol):
Anyway…again…this is MY experience. This is how all of these events I observed affected me and ME ALONE.
Changing the game wasn't all bad. You could argue that the sneaker marketplace enabled everyone to arrive at a common valuation of sneakers, and this valuation justified spending money on -- and operating profit-making businesses for -- weird and wonderful services that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors: shoe cleaning services, valuation and legit checks, repair, preservation, customization, aging of new shoes to look like old shoes, sneaker construction workshops, ink pens that emulate glue stains on vintage pairs, sneaker art, and cannibalizing new pairs for parts to refurbish vintage pairs. On that last one: Is there any other industry or hobby that does that?!?! So StockX lifted more boats than just the resellers'.
On point.
Just a minor correction (I just have to!) -- StockX wasn't the leading factor in sneakers becoming mainstream -- that happened long long ago. Rather, StockX was the leading factor in *sneaker reselling* or *sneaker as a business* (SaaB?) becoming mainstream.
But I do agree... When you think of today's sneaker purchases as investments that will fund that really expensive PE that is your holy grail, the game has fundamentally changed. I conscientiously refused to play that game because money causes passion to fade and I wanted to preserve my passion. Well... ok... There was one time I doubled up on Air Jordan III Animal Instinct so that I could sell a pair to Flight Club...