Background

Sneakers are a multi-billion dollar industry and that’s just at the retail level. Within the past ten years, a secondary market for shoes has emerged as consumers have become more and more willing to purchase their favorite new pair of kicks at premium prices. This has led sneaker reselling to become an extremely popular side hustle. Since I was young, I always loved shoes. As I’ve grown, sneaker buying and selling has become a hobby of mine. I aim to explore which shoes have the most hype, which shoes garner the most profits, and what shoes ultimately flop and are sold below retail.

Gone are the days of waiting in line outside of a store to grab a new pair on release day. Now users across the United States and world can easily join draws and log on to attempt to purchase coveted shoes at retail. Stock X is an easy and secure way to purchase and sell shoes.

Data Dictionary for StockX data
variable description data_type
brand The brand of the sneaker categorical
model The model or name of the sneaker categorical
colorway The colorway of the sneaker categorical
retailPrice The original retail price of the sneaker numeric
releaseDate The date the sneaker was released date
deadstockSold The number of deadstock pairs sold on the StockX platform numeric
averageDeadstockPrice The average price of pairs sold on the StockX platform numeric

Summary Statistics

Below are summary statistics comparing average sale prices on StockX vs retail prices directly from stores. On average a shoe sold on stockx is $60 more than from a retailer. The standard deviation of sale prices on stock x is about 85 dollars more than that of retail shoes. In general, retail prices do not exceed $225 dollars and dip below $80 for adult shoes. Whereas StockX high standard deviation is driven by coveted releases which resell for hundred to thousands of dollars. This is seen in the drastic difference in maximum price between the two.

Summary stats on average deadstock price
mean std_dev min max
200.9155 141.4894 50 2319
Summary stats on retail pricing
mean std_dev min max
142.2161 50.29425 40 580

Diving In

This graph shows pairs sold by month. This relates primarily to the season. As March and December make up the largest sales by month and represent the winter and spring seasons. This trend is also seen in the cyclical nature of May to July and August to October, as every three months or so companies release their styles for next season. December is also a popular time for sneaker purchasing due to the holidays.

Top 10 shoes by total sales through StockX
item brand retail deadstockSold averageDeadstockPrice totalsales
Nike Dunk Low Retro White Black Panda (2021) Nike 110 233962 191 44686742
Jordan 11 Retro Cool Grey (2021) Jordan 225 115541 317 36626497
Nike Dunk Low Retro White Black Panda (2021) Nike 110 135108 261 35263188
Jordan 1 Retro High OG Patent Bred Jordan 170 59732 330 19711560
Nike Dunk Low Retro White Black Panda (2021) (Women’s) Nike 100 109763 179 19647577
Nike Air Force 1 Low ’07 White Nike 90 160119 115 18413685
Jordan 1 Low Fragment x Travis Scott Jordan 150 12730 1417 18038410
Jordan 4 Retro Lightning (2021) Jordan 220 62965 285 17945025
adidas Yeezy Slide Onyx adidas 60 112758 145 16349910
Jordan 4 Retro White Oreo (2021) Jordan 190 47020 346 16268920

Six of the top ten shoes by sales have over 100,000 deadstock pairs sold. This indicates that this shoe was a larger general release but was still highly coveted by consumers. The clear most popular shoe here being the Panda Dunk Low, which is seen twice in the top 3. While it may look like a double entry, this shoe has been released multiple times which explains the extreme difference in average resale price between the two. When they were released in their first batch, they were extremely popular and were more limited.

Top 10 sneakers by total profit
item brand retail deadstockSold averageDeadstockPrice totalprofit avg_profit
Nike Dunk Low Retro White Black Panda (2021) Nike 110 135108 261 20401308 151
Nike Dunk Low Retro White Black Panda (2021) Nike 110 233962 191 18950922 81
Jordan 1 Low Fragment x Travis Scott Jordan 150 12730 1417 16128910 1267
Jordan 11 Retro Cool Grey (2021) Jordan 225 115541 317 10629772 92
Jordan 1 Retro Low OG SP Travis Scott Reverse Mocha Jordan 150 9617 1195 10049765 1045
adidas Yeezy Slide Onyx adidas 60 112758 145 9584430 85
Jordan 1 Retro High OG Patent Bred Jordan 170 59732 330 9557120 160
Nike Dunk Low Retro White Black Panda (2021) (Women’s) Nike 100 109763 179 8671277 79
Nike Dunk Low White Black (2021) (W) Nike 100 60174 234 8063316 134
adidas Yeezy Slide Pure (First Release) adidas 55 53792 203 7961216 148

This table highlights the shoes with the highest total profit garnered. For larger scale resellers, a blend of accessibility in the form of released quantities and resale value are of the greatest importance. The Yeezy Slide onyx only retailed for $60 but fetched a resale price on average of $145 which is a percent increase of 141%.

Top ten shoes by average profit per pair
item brand retail deadstockSold averageDeadstockPrice avg_profit
Jordan 1 Retro High Off-White University Blue Jordan 190 1285 2319 2129
Jordan 1 Retro High Travis Scott Jordan 175 2253 1855 1680
Jordan 1 Retro Low OG SP Travis Scott Jordan 130 890 1804 1674
Jordan 1 Retro Low OG SP Travis Scott Jordan 130 890 1803 1673
Jordan 4 Retro Off-White Sail (W) Jordan 200 1271 1575 1375
Jordan 1 Retro Low OG SP Fragment x Travis Scott Jordan 150 4062 1515 1365
Jordan 4 Retro Off-White Sail (W) Jordan 200 2553 1562 1362
Nike Air Max 1 Travis Scott Cactus Jack Wheat Lemon Drop Nike 160 199 1514 1354
Jordan 1 Low Fragment x Travis Scott Jordan 150 12730 1417 1267
Jordan 1 Retro Low OG SP Travis Scott Reverse Mocha Jordan 150 9617 1195 1045

This table highlights the top 10 shoes by average profit per pair. This table is entirely made up of shoes that involved collaboration with another brand or individual. This market has been dominated by collaborations with luxury brands like Off-White and Sacai and musical artist Travis Scott.

This bar chart illustrates the power of collaboration within the sneaker market. Travis Scott collaboration Jordan 1’s fetch nearly $1000 more than the average Jordan 1 on StockX.

Bottom ten shoes by average profit per pair
item brand retail deadstockSold averageDeadstockPrice avg_profit
OFF-WHITE Out Of Office OOO Low Tops White Black White OFF-WHITE 580 387 393 -187
Common Projects Original Achilles White Common Projects 415 3237 246 -169
Common Projects Original Achilles White Common Projects 415 1677 269 -146
Alexander McQueen Oversized Ivory Black (W) Alexander McQueen 490 1154 371 -119
Nike Air VaporMax 2020 Flyknit Summit White (W) Nike 220 1862 108 -112
Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% 2 Black Metallic Gold Coin Nike 250 825 154 -96
adidas Ultra Boost 1.0 DNA Triple Black adidas 200 226 105 -95
Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% 2 White Pink Nike 250 338 155 -95
Nike Air VaporMax 2020 Flyknit Newsprint Nike 220 1389 125 -95
Nike Air VaporMax 2021 FK Black Metallic Silver (Women’s) Nike 200 1202 107 -93

These are the shoes with the highest average losses per pair. These shoes are high in retail price and no shoe had over 5000 pairs sold through StockX. This is particularly interesting as the list consists of luxury brands and shoes from Nikes vapor line.

Considering Nike and Jordan’s domination of the previous tables, it should come as no suprise that both Nike and Jordan are doubling the next closest competitor in Adidas. Adidas also has a significant lead on other competitors within the graph, highlighting the disparity within the sneaker industry currently. Nike and Jordan has a major advantage in sales and profit. This highlighting their ability to release in large quantities, as well as focusing on coveted limited releases that fetch massive prices on StockX. While Nike and Jordan product breadth is superior, these brands ability to generate hype surrounding releases is what truly seperates them.

Jordan and Nike are both owned by Nike, and they primarily release their best shoes via their app Nike SNKRS. Users are able to view Nike’s upcoming release calendar, browse shoes currently available within the app, and most importantly purchase shoes as they release. This is offered in 2 ways via Nike SNKRS. The first is through a draw process, which gives the users ten minutes to enter “the draw” and within the next hour a notification of whether or not the user “got ’em”. This is for drops with the most hype to ensure users have some level of access. The other is a standard purchase at the time of release.

This process does not always run smoothly and due to the sheer volume of users, wins are rare. In gathering tweets surrounding the app itself and some coveted releases, I believe that the biggest releases will garner negative public sentiment as users desire to purchase these shoes at retail elicits anger as retail prices soar.

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Nike SNKRS has a negative total sentiment, which stems from the nature of the app itself. Users have strong feelings when the results of the draw are released. Win and won are the most common words in positive tweets regarding SNKRS as wins are few and far between for most. The most common words eliciting negative sentiment surround losing.

item brand retail release deadstockSold averageDeadstockPrice avg_profit
Jordan 1 Retro High OG Chicago Lost and Found Jordan 180 2022-11-19 31685 420 240

The Lost and Found Jordan 1’s were the first Chicago colorway installment of the Jordan 1 High since 2015. However when conducting sentiment analysis surrounding these shoes, the reaction is negative. This is largely due to the high demand of the shoe as users could not access the draw and did not get pairs. This negative emotion did not have any affect on pricing as pairs sold on StockX go for over $400 on average.

id item brand retail releaseDate deadstockSold averageDeadstockPrice avg_profit
2000 Jordan 1 Retro High Lucky Green Nike 180 2023-04-15 5100 193 13

This example highlights the same shoes, only in different colors. The hype surrounding the Lost and Found Jordan 1, including the high resale value and profits ultimately led to a negative sentiment. Consumers were eager to get their hands on this shoe and expressed their displeasure via twitter. The Jordan 1 Lucky Green, received positive sentiment, although anyone reselling would surely take a loss. This meaning that those who wished to purchase the shoes for themselves had the ability to, and those that didn’t had no feelings that the missed out. For those that had only seen the sales data, they would almost certainly guess that the Jordan 1 Lost and Found would have the higher psoitivity score due to its high sales volume, resale price, and average profit. However this relationship is inverse due to the larger population of consumers that aren’t granted access to purchase, and the general negative sentiment toward the SNKRS app itself. Which would lead consumers to complain, especially due to the level of attachment people have to popular and nostalgic shoes like the Jordan 1 Lost and Found.