The sneaker market is in decline. The sneaker convention is adapting to stay current
On a recent Saturday at a sneaker convention in Fort Lauderdale, Jay Samuels stood behind a table full of Nike and Adidas sneakers he was hoping to sell.
“Hey, $50!” he yelled as he held up a slightly worn pair of Kanye West Yeezys, now relics of a bygone era following the musician’s acrimonious split from Adidas. After failing to attract a buyer, he picked up another shoe and yelled “$100!” People still didn’t bite. Neither pair quickly sold.
Even though it wasn’t long ago that rare sneakers were sold for three times their retail price, the energy at the Samuels’ table at Sneaker Con, a traveling event now in its 15th year, felt more like that of a neighborhood garage sale.
“It’s changed a lot,” Samuels, owner of the Wynwood retailer Sneaker Buyers, said of the sneaker business overall. “But everything changes with fashion. You always just got to keep up on what is the next trend.”
The sneaker marketplace has regressed significantly in recent years. In 2012, Kevin Durant’s Nike KD IV “Aunt Pearl” sneaker originally sold for $95 and was resold for three and four times that on sites like eBay.
Today, the re-release of the same sneaker that was once limited is available at retail for $130 and did not sell out upon its return. Times have changed. Sneakers are no longer being resold for two to three times their retail price, making their resellers a large profit.
Allapattah native Myrick Mitchell has been reselling rare sneakers for over 10 years, something that made him a little money on the side while he worked in marketing at a corporate job. When the pandemic started, he became a full-time entrepreneur and launched Token Miami, an online store that is now a brick-and-mortar business.
Mitchell focused primarily on reselling sneakers to meet his customers’ requests at a time when sneaker resellers made significant profits on goods with relatively low costs.
“Maybe like a year or two ago, sneakers were really big, and clothes weren’t,” he said. “Now it’s all about fashion. People would rather spend money on clothes than they do shoes. They can recycle shoes. But the clothes they want to like, they want to post it on Instagram and social media, and they can [just] wear the same shoes.”
Mitchell is one of many sneaker business professionals trying to stay afloat in a changing market. Even though footwear sales are in decline, business for Mitchell and his team hasn’t suffered because he said they have a clientele that is focused on overall fashion rather than just sneaker trends. Finding the right apparel can be as important for clients as finding the right footwear, he said.
Mitchell has adapted by selling more clothing, and his team uses data and analytics to see what footwear sells the most and strategizes from there.
While the sneaker market has cooled off, you couldn’t tell from the hundreds of people waiting in line to get into Fort Lauderdale’s Broward County Convention Center for Sneaker Con on Jan. 11.
What started as an event that mainly functioned as a marketplace for buying and trading limited-edition and rare sneakers has become more of a sneaker and streetwear museum for attendees to see and take pictures of shoes, regardless of whether they want to buy them. The experience of being around such rare items has become an attraction in itself.
At one table on the convention floor, attendees gawked at the 2011 release of the Nike Air Mag, the sneaker worn by Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future Part II.” The $24,499 pair of shoes had lights in the heels, just like the ones in the movie. At another table, onlookers watched in awe as Shareef O’Neal, son of former Miami Heat star Shaquille O’Neal, had a pair of KIZO sneakers custom dipped in dye.
Jabari Lewis, 30, is a DJ and one of the organizers behind Sneaker Con. His passion for unique footwear developed from his New York City upbringing. When he became a DJ, he saw the importance of dressing stylishly, and that tied directly into his affinity for the latest Jordan sneakers.
As sneaker enthusiasts carrying shoe boxes swirled around him, he was optimistic about economic trends in the sneaker market and sees them as cyclical. He noted the sneaker market experienced a similar lull in the mid-2010s.
“It fluctuates all the time,” he said. “Right now, the season that we’re in is the same season that happened a few years back. The market was at a low. People just kept buying and buying and buying and then boom, one day the market just shot up again and more people became resellers.”
Since Sneaker Con got its start, buying limited-edition sneakers has evolved and become a more digital phenomenon, where online marketplaces like StockX gauge the value of limited sneakers over time. In previous decades, people often had to visit a major city to find their favorite sneakers. Now, they can find a pair in minutes on a smartphone.
Shoppers are also now seeing discounts on new releases as soon as a few weeks after even a high-profile drop — another sign of declining consumer interest. But Lewis sees the clearance prices as a way for potential future collectors to get into the market without spending a lot of money.
“I respect the fact that the market is where it’s at right now, only because it just gives more people the opportunity to get into this business if they didn’t know how to get into it,” he said. “It’s a great time to get into the business side of this, versus you trying to figure it out when it’s hot and it’s at an all-time high. I actually appreciate that there’s a pause in the market right now.”
Back at Samuels’ table, the entrepreneur continued shouting prices to a sea of potential customers. Just like the sea, the sneaker marketplace has its waves, ebbs and flows.
“You just got to keep up with what people are into at that moment, because fashion is just [here] for a split second and then it changes,” he said.
%20Cropped.jpg)