"The Sneaker Game" A Documentary

yeah these are all kind of chords I think there's a 350 to 400 pairs yeah most people are not doing it anything close to full-time I've had yeah well over a million dollars in gross sales yeah it's definitely a business [Music] [Music] so reselling is basically getting any shoe whether it's available limited and selling it on the secondary market no yeah for profit I mean that's the goal I probably didn't realize until after my first year of really doing it because before that you know I always just looked at it as kind of this hobby that you know I I mean I was really into but yeah one 2016 came I think it was you know that's when the first Kanye shoe started releasing with adidas the retail on the first Adid is Easy's the 350s they were $200 retail and you know I mean I never got too many I got maybe five to ten pairs of each release you know I didn't sell any of them I just held them all for a year so and when I went to sell them all they were probably between I mean depending on what size you had they were all between a thousand and two thousand dollars it was just a guess especially guessing off how the Nike Kanye releases when and how much in value they went up or stayed up in value I'll never forget the day that the red Octobers drafts you know I was there when it happened and I was in line for them and yeah I I lost but in this room I'm also these are just you know a bunch of different Jordans the IV they've been holding on to from last year that I've acquired this year and uh yeah flash in there you can step in if you want it's really back yeah yeah so the models in there are Jordan 13 Jordan ones Jordan 11 shorten three is in Jordan fours yeah that's actually all that's in there um some of them I am some of them I'm selling now it all just depends on how I feel the markets going I've moved around seven to eight thousand pairs of shoes that first year I probably did around two hundred thousand in gross sales but then the next year you know I probably doubled that and then the year after that I didn't double it I probably went up another 50% and this year it's consistent as far as last year so probably what I have right now would probably be around fifteen hundred pairs of shoes in my stock that's actually a lot more than I normally have like I'd say the three years before this you know I definitely had under a thousand pairs each year but this year there's just been a few things that you know I couldn't pass up and I just spent everything I could this year I'm probably selling around sixty to seventy a week yeah I'm always profiting so I very rarely lose on a shoe like out of the thousands I've moved you know I mean my much less than 1% I've had yeah well over a million dollars in gross sales yeah it's definitely a business you know I was never expecting it like I was actually now starting to go to school part-time and you know I just thought this would be some nice income as I was going to school and then yeah next thing you know just as I'm dropping out of school because it's too much to do um well I mean you got these unions these are also very popular shoes that are probably around $1000 as well I only have four pairs these but um there are two or one color issue or another color they made - yeah now those are nice yeah mixing the emotional aspect of it with the shoes could definitely mess up your business but I've seen people definitely give up some very good profits to wear the shoes I personally do not keep anything I I just don't really care I used to care in the beginning but you know after just going through so many and so many releases it's just like how much can I really care for a new shoe if there's profit to be made I'm selling it if I'm gonna buy one for myself it's basically gonna be some workout shoes what else you know what I have some of the Travis Air Forces this is like one of my best purchases in the aftermarket it's like I I mean I only got a you know I think six or seven of them but you know I got them all for around 250 275 you know I think it's like a half year later now we're a little bit more and they're all around like 650 700 oh yeah I mean this is a good example of what can happen to a shoe is worth it yeah exactly I mean so this is I very rarely do this but I happen to do it with this shoe and that was good yeah definitely I made all my first sales through mostly Twitter and a little bit of eBay how would some prices I would look at the flight Club prices and normally just do a little lower than their prices yeah there was you know there wasn't any other platform like that there was you know a few consignment shops other than flight club but it wasn't anything like it is now like now there's multiple different consignment shops that you could choose from or look at but yeah everyone just looked at flight club back then and now all my sales are through the two main platforms which are goat and stock X I used go a lot in the beginning it's the platform it was just really easy to use compared to stock ex and especially when you got into the selling big amounts you could list many at the same time which would stock ex I could only list one shoe at a time so it wasn't really worth it to me they're both kind of set up the same it's you know I'm the seller I list my shoe for a certain price and then once a buyer buys it I have two to three days to ship it out and I ship it to the platforms so then they this is the big part of it as they authenticate the shoes and then they ship it to the buyer so technically the buyer has no worry if the shoes are fake or not I personally have never dealt with fakes I have always either just bought from retailers or the people I know who I know are legitimate in that sense and if there was ever any type of risk I just didn't take it oh yeah now it's I mean it's still consistently all over Twitter all the time and so yeah there's I mean there's so many fakes for every single possible shoe that comes out now so I just set up all the boxes first you know and then I'll look over every single shoe put it in the box then use the label printer and just stick the labels on each yeah so 35 or going to the post office and I got a drop 28 UPS yeah long day I mean like it's the same one guy just see every single time like yeah he knows like when I walk and he you know if I only walk in once it's like a surprise to him because normally I'm making multiple trips in and out to bring the boxes in he doesn't mention anything to me unless it's an absurd amount or if it's like you know only a few or 5 to 10 packages he'll be like oh this is a light day for you I go Sertoma I would say is 40-plus on a day yeah the UPS Store I've I've more recently been sending out more there so they're not as used to it as the post office but you know I come in a couple times a week with 20 or 30 packages and yeah each time they're just so surprised I normally do get asked by my business and I talked a bit about it but uh yeah it's just a simple explanation of it so these are the animals yeah I think these came out last year as well yeah these are the ammos these um it depends on the size but I sold uh I sold a couple I think 11s for around 400 and like one of the smaller sizes for almost 500 all right I think I've sold around 10 or so of them and I have maybe ten laughs a lot of it is the blogs but most of it it's all based off of Twitter and I think that's yeah that's where I got most of my information from definitely like the one of the blogs did put out a list of like the 25 top people to follow and that is really what I did and when I did follow those people I just became closer with some of them and they really did get valuable information from an outside view you would never understand or see it because I guess well everyone who's on Twitter who you know does the similar or same thing to me it's considered sneaker Twitter it was a lot smaller when I first started it's continuously growing now though and more people are trying to get into it well I think it's a lot easier in a certain way now but um to actually be able to get into it and see the information that I was getting years ago but as far as how easy it was to get the shoes and things like that it was much easier years ago so in here it's a lot of Jordan ones or off-white Nike shoes and some Yeezys that are a bit more just sought-after yeah yeah so yeah there's it's I mean this room I'd say the majority has drawn ones yeah these these are all the drawing boxes and yeah these are most of them are from last year a chunk are from this year but I'm just holding them to see what they can do this I mean this whole sneaker resale industry I mean it was always somewhat around but the 2011 Jordan 11 Concord release it really brought it to a whole nother level at least what it seemed like to me I mean I personally didn't buy any back then but my brothers actually did and the hype on that release was one of the craziest things ever I think that helped bring outside people who weren't that interested in shoes into the industry because they saw how much demand there was for something like that the first pair I sold for a profit it was the Jordan for breads back then honestly it was basically everything anything that was limited and availability basically sold when it came to nike adidas or anything it was rarely did the model matter anything basically like like every collaboration sold a lot of even like the Nike basketball stuff was selling which now that industry is dying you know but uh yeah and adidas really wasn't much of anything back then these are just some of the easy clays that came out a month or two ago that I was just gonna hold on to for a little bit I think around 70 pairs people have different opinions about this part of it people think that Kanye helped Adidas brand as far as selling all these other models with them which I do believe that there are some truths that because no matter what there would not have been the hype that there was behind you know a few a couple of different adidas models without Kanye like I don't deny that they wouldn't have sold still just as far as the resale aspect I don't think would have been there as much at first everybody was very skeptical of the whole you know Kanye adidas they thought like oh they'll just be able to do you know some collaborations that are small in quantity and that'll be it you know just a few releases but you know each release just kept going really well for a diva's it seemed and like the hype behind them was just insane and you know then as it moved on to like the second model of the easy with adidas they you know the hype just really continued and they really up the quantities it seemed like of the second versions of the easies and the demand just never went away surprisingly yeah the Pharrell's those did really well with them and the NMD I mean in general that was the huge model that you know also started at the end of the year when Kanye had joined Adidas and those really took off for that year and I mean there's still one of the best-selling models just resale wise they don't do much anymore yeah so I mean for that I'd say for like a good year to like it was the majority of divas it's not that Nike didn't resale anymore it's just as far as what I was getting in my inventory adidas was clearly much more than what I was getting from Nike they're crazy they are nice as far as the resale business goes it's clearly back in Nikes court like they definitely release the most things that resale for a profit edita is not so much anymore but that's mostly just because you know they took their popular models that did resale and they just up the quantities drying them out and at that point it's like you can only resell something so much if it's not limited yeah I think I think Nike over producing certain shoes is exactly what made adidas grab that hype in the first place and now it seems like the kind of opposites happening with Adidas and Nike is grabbing the height back there are plates are pretty nice yeah so I think the original 10 drop with off-white when Nike was great like that really grabbed a bunch of hype I feel like that you know just wasn't really anywhere at the time cuz adidas even then you know they were losing the hype with all their over producing with certain releases yeah I got maybe around 10 pairs of them I didn't get each one but I got a few of a different one I I think I got a few hyper dunks a couple Blazers few air maxes maybe that's probably a I did get one pair of the press toes luckily yeah the Jordan one was the best and the prices now are just insane on them I think it might have been 220 retail at most and the resale prices on them now are probably around three to five thousand dollars the off White's they'll always be eliminate enough that they will always sell for money basically unless Nike really really like produces that many of them I have some of the Witherspoon's and so these are the very popular a Mac shoe last year nice though every single year at Nike I think it's March 26 that it's like their airmax day or whatever an each year I feel like they try to do something special for and the year before people had voted for what design they wanted to see on the air max the next year and the shown Wetherspoons I guess were the most voted at a time and they were they're pretty nice shoe and everything but yeah for some reason though the hype was absolutely insane on them I don't know the exact torito knows either when it comes to these clubs or limited use the retail compared to the normal models it's usually a bit different but I would say I don't think the retail was anything over 200 and not right now this shoes selling for I think a thousand to twelve hundred yeah I have a few I wish I had got more but yeah about did hit for me on this release a few of them I did get myself as well maybe close to 10 but yeah mostly about sohbah is basically you know an automated program that can go onto a website and buy a specific shoe for you when I first started they were they were barely around like if people were using them you know it was only a handful of people now I mean just over the years it's just consistently gotten to be more and more and now there's you know a bot for every possible site multiple bots for the same sites you know and then anyone who really is running BOTS now they're running many BOTS at the same time not just one the bot business is basically its own separate business from the shoes and people will create you know developer will create a program and they'll they'll sell it for most of them I'd say for between 100 to 300 dollars yeah per person per copy in the beginning that's basically how it was there was just BOTS that were out like a few main ones and there was just you know they just always had them available so anyone if they wanted they could buy them now now yeah basically there's so many BOTS coming out but the whole thing with the bots now is they sell out so the bots themselves you could resell technically but um yeah there's actually a separate resale business for the bots now the bots will when almost every single time there has been so few circumstances that they don't win yeah I mean the websites have been saying for years now how they're trying to stop the bhaskar they're trying to combat the bots but it's like how much has it really worried so so Nike created the sneakers app and I think that was partially an attempt to stop bots because when I created that to have an account with the sneakers app you needed to verify a phone number but at this point people have learned ways to get around that so having to verify a phone number doesn't really mean anything anymore yeah the sneakers app is totally about it and it actually doesn't work have to tie or it doesn't work for most people out of the time and it still ends up probably getting in manual users hand most of the time but with the sneakers release there's you know especially if it's something popular there's probably more than a million people trying so it's just total random lock at that point but I also have the it's the 95 Stu that's not just the ones yeah well the 95s are just a bit different those are just a few of the crazy-looking pairs that are pretty popular so hype yeah how would you explain it cuz it's like popular but it's like what's trendy I guess I guess so I guess some hype could also be considered what's trendy in a certain way yeah the culture almost creates the hype around the sneakers I think sneaker Twitter definitely builds the hype around certain shoes and drops because you know sneaker Twitter once they get a hold of that certain picture or something like they'll either really be talking about it saying how like this is gonna be such a good release and I think then that starts to leak over into you know the general public in some way because when they keep seeing someone say like this shoe is gonna do really well or this shoe looks really good you know mass just follows like the masses just always follow it's a whole follow thing yes so there have been many shoes along the way that you know me like not just me you know many people who do what I do as well we will think something won't do that well and then it'll do really well on the resale market but that's also because those same people will be passing and not buying up the pairs so then more pairs are just actually getting into the people's hands who want to wear them so then it comes down as a there's not many leftover pairs for resale market I can give you an example like these two jordan v trophy rooms that just released about a month ago they um i don't think that they ever would have really sold under retail i think they would have still been profitable to some extent but because so many people did not think they'd be profitable a lot of the people who end up getting a lot of pairs of shoes like that they didn't really go for them or they only got a couple pairs which then once again that just means that people who really want I'm probably got more of them in their hand and that just makes you know so then the supply and demand that's just what changed it like there's way less supply at that point and the demand just shoots up especially when I release happens nobody knows exactly what's gonna happen so it's like after the release happens that's really when the prices start to get decided I did not because I was one of the people who didn't think they would do that well you know yeah but I mean you can't I mean you really can't though because there are just so many mistakes like that that everyone makes and I mean the majority of the time I am right within what I do so I don't really worry about that stuff well I've never sent out you know 50 plus well I mean I've maybe sent out like 40 to 50 before but never over 50 in a day yeah I've never not been able to use the printer you know so I've never came in contact with the Benjamin kicks guy or whatever but it's been a thing on sneaker Twitter for years now like he's corny people make fun of him you know and stuff and like yeah see he didn't I don't think he ever got big like that it's just his dad clearly is some millionaire and you know he had some in with celebrities and I'm not sure how his actual business is from what it seems like it's it was more of like this fake you know how should you call it you know was four it was it seemed like his business was mostly for show it didn't yeah it didn't seem like he was really profiting I mean he said he was but it didn't seem like that was actually the case I I mean yeah I think so I think he I mean I don't know how much he doesn't eat more honestly but that those first years that he was doing it I would think that my numbers now are better than that he said his gross was like over a million but I mean me along with many others do not believe that and like if he could show me proof I would gladly you know salute him or but like yeah no I don't think that's true a lot of things he would get as well he's getting it already on the after market or he's getting it early he's not paying retail prices for things and it's not that he's not profiting as well it's just him paying a higher price already he's he's taken a bunch of the profit he would've got out of you know out of it I so rarely do the only way I pay resale value is if I really think a shoe is going to go up that much from value later on so I think it was the shedder backwards or whatever you know he posted a picture with like a ton of pears and like that was really when like sneaker Twitter got ahold of that picture and they were just like making fun of him because what he I mean at least what people said he bought his pears for were higher than what the rescinded up being and once again he probably still sold them early enough that he profited but nothing like nothing like he makes it seem I mean he definitely has who knows how much family money because even to be able to do that that's not his money that he's using and I mean not to take away from it it's just yeah he's making it seem like he's like self-made or something which is not the case I never used my parents money for it yeah I always use my own money never use my parents yeah I mean not that my parents didn't help me with other things along the way but yeah as far as the business I never put any anyone else's money into it I mean I understand at this point especially since I have more inventory that insurances this at this point so it's actually really difficult and you can't insure them for the value that they're actually worth you have to you have to you know it I mean it depends on the insurance policy but there's um there's other ways I guess to make up the profits that you wouldn't be getting back the insurance companies will only pay what you pay for the shoot I think reselling will always be there in some aspects but um as far as how it is right now I don't know if it'll stay like this I know I say here but it's true it's always been true to a certain extent though I've just found ways around what I think is gonna end yeah now especially after my first year you know like I really thought like yeah like this will just be the side profit you know and I'll just go to school but um yeah each year I think it's gonna die and somehow it's been getting better it's really just chasing the hype or what's popular but ya know this is just what I got last week that I still just need to get rid of I bring downstairs yeah but a lot of it also sold already so I'm just gonna wait till tomorrow so I take what I sold then I'll put the rest down

Channel: Taylor Maher

Views: 601,253

Rating: 4.7257876 out of 5

Keywords: sneaker, sneakers, shoes, nike, jordan, airjordan, air jordan, resell, complex, hype, documentary, nyc, bk, upstate, brooklyn, bleacher report, br kicks, sneaker shopping, hypebeast, new york, bape, supreme, bots, snkrs, basketball, sports, lifestyle, streetwear, urban, fashion, clothing, style, flipping, hip-hop, rap, adidas, yeezy, kanye, ball, film, cinema, cinematography, hustle, million, money, stock, goat

Id: iXae9pMBcR4

Length: 30min 22sec (1822 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2019