HOW STOCK X BUILT A BILLION DOLLAR SNEAKER RESALE EMPIRE
When Josh Luber, co-founder of StockX, was in the sixth grade, he started his first business: selling Bubblicious to his classmates. Covertly, because they weren’t allowed to chew gum in school.
“It was a great business,” he says. “Good margins. I used to hop the fence behind my house, go to the Acme grocery store, and buy four packs of gum for $1. Each pack had five pieces, and I could sell them for a quarter apiece.”
Like a lot of ’80s and ’90s kids, Luber also idolized Michael Jordan. He was 6 years old when Nike released the first Air Jordans, and begging his mom for a pair became a constant refrain. (Her answer: a constant no.) Post-college, after cashing a few paychecks from his furniture-store job, he went to Foot Locker and dropped $125 on a pair of Air Jordan 11 Concords: white fabric tops, shiny black middles, undulating taupe soles.
The sneakers were more than a fashion statement. For Luber, that purchase commenced a quest to understand and capitalize on the economics of the $130 billion universe of sneakers, particularly those that are released in limited quantity, usually ones designed in collaboration with zeitgeisty athletes or musicians.
Almost two decades later, Luber sits in a corner office at the downtown Detroit headquarters of StockX, the resale marketplace he co-founded in 2015, which has grown from a fantastical idea about building a “stock market of things” to a company of nearly 1,000 employees, valued at more than $1 billion. Thanks to the internet, sneakerhead culture has grown from local networks of hobbyists into a booming global business. Driven by collectors who see rare sneakers as investment assets or a way to make a quick buck–by, say, flipping a pair of sold-out $125 sneakers for three times that much–the market for resale sneakers and streetwear in North America is estimated to be $2 billion, according to the investment firm Cowen, and projected to reach $6 billion by 2025.
Luber, 41, looks like a skateboarder who got airdropped into an office. He wears baseball caps, ripped T-shirts, and hoodies. His office is a shrine to the ’90s-era touchstones that defined his youth: The surface of his desk is inlaid with Ken Griffey Jr. baseball cards and dotted with figurines (Bart Simpson in one corner, Homer in another). Two matte-black metal shelves display rows of like-new sneakers, a rotating gallery culled from Luber’s collection of more than 400 pairs.The market for resale sneakers and streetwear in North America is estimated to be $2 billion.
He points to a pair of vermilion mesh high-tops–Yeezy Red Octobers, the last design Kanye West-produced for Nike before moving to Adidas. “That’s probably the most expensive shoe here. They’re around $5,000, but I haven’t worn them,” he says. “They’re technically the companies. If I wear them, I have to pay for them.”
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