Welcome to the third installment of Sneakerhead Survey insights.
Prevously we looked at basic sneakerhead demographics like age and number of pairs, and then we reviewed percentage of income spent on sneakers.
Today we break down who sells sneakers and for what purpose.
The survey question:
The results (based on 1217 respondents):
- NEVER – 33%
- STRATEGIC – 25%
- OCCASIONAL – 37%
- PROFIT – 5%
- Other – 3% of respondents wrote in a response, but we reviewed these and determined the appropriate category which to allocate. There were several interesting responses though, including:
- “I am the robin hood of sneakers, I buy multiples to sell close to retail to help out people who cannot get them”
- “Want my own boutique, smaller sizes are hard to come by & males run the community”
Insights:
At a high level, the results are not surprising.
- One out of every three sneakerheads has never sold a pair
- 62% sell sneakers in some way or another, but are also collectors
- If anything, 5% feels like a pretty high number for the percentage of people who are in the game solely to make money. On the other hand, it’s pretty close to what we found from other research:
In one analysis we found that 1% of Retro Jordans end up on eBay. In another analysis, our dissertation on Nike’s business model, we explained that eBay is approximately one-quarter of the entire market, and therefore 4% of Jordans are resold. At a 4% resell percentage it might make sense that 5% of the people are just in it to make money.
Of course, that’s probably just a coincidence, because we can assume that most (if not all) strict resellers are buying more than one pair of each shoe. Either way, it’s helps make this post a little longer and give the appearance we spent more time on this analysis that we actually did.
Where do you fall on this reseller spectrum?
If you haven’t taken the Sneakerhead Survey yet, please do so. It takes five minutes and will earn you release day karma.
