Like many traders, Johan Aguirre makes a daily check on his holdings’ ups and downs across an electronic spreadsheet.
Aguirre, however, isn’t analyzing stocks, bonds or cryptocurrencies. He specializes in an increasingly tradable asset class — sneakers — on his favorite shoe reseller platform, StockX.Sometimes, he’ll pick up only one pair; at other times, he’ll buy in bulk.
“If it’s a shoe that I know I can sell,” he said, “typically I’ll buy the whole inventory that’s presented to me. And from the moment I know the sizes and the styles and the product code, I list it on StockX and it’s live right away.”
Aguirre, 31, is part of the evolution of the multibillion-dollar worldwide sneaker resale market, which is looking less like a hobby these days and more like an occupation.
Most are small-time entrepreneurs hoping to earn some spending money on one or two pairs, maybe dreaming of snagging once-in-a-lifetime kicks that might bring five figures in the thriving secondary market for basketball-inspired shoes.
But for Aguirre, this is a serious second-income business. Aguirre says he sold $50,000 in sneakers last year and estimates he cleared about $7,000 in profit.
“The sales depend on the shoes I list,” Aguirre said, “but it can get to the point that I’m selling more than a hundred pairs of shoes a month. It’s almost become a full-time job.”
Dedicated resellers like Aguirre drive the action at StockX, which Chief Executive Josh Luber helped found in 2016 with the idea of bringing Wall Street to streetwear.
Now Luber’s pushing the investment angle even harder by striking exclusive deals with manufacturers to sell products through blind auctions in something StockX is calling a “sneaker IPO,” for initial product offering. There’s benefit for shoe companies and deep-pocketed buyers, but the product-drop-via-auction approach could leave behind the small-time sneakerhead that was the core of the resale market.
Sneaker resellers have been around for decades, but it took the likes of Ebay, Craig’s List, Facebook and Instagram to enable a vibrant secondary market, said Matt Powell, vice president and senior industry advisor for the research firm NPD Group.
NPD’s last study of the global reseller market estimated sales at $1 billion in 2016, a total that Powell said could be as high as $3 billion today but “no one really knows.”
That compares with a retail sneaker industry of about $100 billion in sales worldwide, up from $55 billion in 2016, Powell said.
Investors lately have been showering money on resale platforms.
In February, retail giant Foot Locker announced a $100-million equity investment in Culver City-based GOAT Group, which a year earlier had raised $60 million and acquired Flight Club, another sneaker sales marketplace.