Prior to StockX, sneaker buyers had campouts on eBay, sneaker stores, and internet forums to connect with other enthusiasts and find the most coveted shoes.
Five years later, the impact of the data-driven secondary marketplace extends across technology, the secondary marketplace, the sneaker business, entrepreneurship, hype culture, or even the entire retail store. The company’s period was interested in spreading the wave of Instagram’s rise while bringing marketplace mechanisms to the growing popularity of this segment. Nevertheless, StockX is not alone in targeting the growing for-profit sector.
E-commerce startups and tech firms have emerged to target this connected cultural customer, and StockX has had to run fast to maintain its product and marketplace lead. Meanwhile, external changes could have a big impact on sneaker prices and General Z is gradually determining the future of this market. It is a fast-moving business, and critics for understanding the future of how StockX leads and competes.
The culture of sneakers has long been alive, with Instagram and social media allowing access to subcultures around the world, such as sneakers and streetwear, and making them mainstream. Sneaker conversations and communities that once hosted on online forums such as Twitter feeds from NikeTalk, Reddit and Kicks on Fire began to spread around Instagram in 2013 as the platform grew. “A scroll through Instagram in the morning – what the algorithm gives you and depending on what you’re following – can investigate what’s happening to you without reading a word, and in this case, it’s to see what’s happening in the global sneaker community, which Instagram Not just put it together, [but] made it in a sense, ”sneaker journalist Rush Bengtson forgot.
He can also tell how it widened the community around sneaker stores. “Before Instagram, you only heard about work there or someone who actually had a pair of shoes, but now without going to the town where the store is, you can see what’s on the store shelves, you can see the outside of the store, you actually have it. You can talk to people who are running it or to people who are designing things for it. You can be a more integrated part of this community without having your own home.”
Instagram brought a sneaker culture to the public and so it was time for StockX’s to launch in 2015, especially with their focus on hype footwear as it entered the mainstream.
The company offers the easiest entry point of purchase for outsiders, including its bid / asks to format, its one-click buy-sell and its authentication method. With each purchase, outsiders who knew very little about the sneaker market became associated with a culture that had previously created so many barriers to entry.
