By Francesca DeCesare
The amount of shoe resellers has certainly risen in the past couple of years. The idea of these resellers is to sell shoes for a higher price than what they are normally sold for in order to make profit. In most cases this works because certain brands, especially Nike, releases only a certain amount of shoes at a time, or ever. This is an example of the law of supply. The demand for these shoes is very high because there is a limited supply of them. This is also an idea of scarcity, a low supply but a very high demand. This limits the amount of consumers as well as the consumers choices as to what they could purchase.
Jordan 1s and Dunks have become very popular amongst Generation Z. “Jordan 1 is a classic American invention, its design, form, and function exploding into a cult of personality that is bigger and broader than anyone ever expected”(Wilbekin). These shoes are known to be ranging from $100 to even $5000. These shoes are a luxury good with close substitutes such as cheap replicas of the real shoe or even another brand of sneaker. No matter the price, these luxurious shoes are purchased left and right.
So, how do these resellers make a profit from the shoe reselling business? Well, in order to even buy the shoes faster than the general population, they wait in excessively long lines or take time to appeal to their buyers on their instagram profiles. Resellers even use “bots” when purchasing online. “AIO Bot is a sneaker bot that helps sneakerheads and resellers buy exclusive sneakers online, at retail”(aiobot.com). These bots essentially allow the reseller’s checkout process to be tremendously quicker than the rest, which allows them to beat others at buying them. This process along with standing in lengthy lines just to earn little profit is economically not worth it. There is a high opportunity cost when partaking in shoe reselling. This was also proven in 2022 when the reselling business was basically failing. “They don’t have the financial resources to hold product for long enough to see the market rebound, so it’s not worth buying to flip right now”(Sakany). For all of chaos and unsteady income, reselling shoes has gone to almost be a waste of time. The little to no profit has made it difficult for this business to keep going.
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