By Cameron Rubner
So you tried to get the Off-White Jordan 5’s yesterday right? Did you get them?
If you say yes you’re either lying or you have a bot (can you tell I’ve never copped a pair of shoes from SNKRS?).
Because I live out west, shoes drop on the SNKRS app at 7 a.m. so while I set up reminders for the drop, I overslept and didn’t get a chance to try to buy them, (not that that was going to happen anyway.
With online releases, the implementation of raffle systems, and now thanks to the pandemic, in store first come first serve sneaker releases have sadly become a thing of the past.
Not that the first come first serve releases aren’t corrupt too. This means that online releases have become the primary source for buying hyped sneakers.
With sneaker culture seeping into the mainstream, and the absurd resale value some shoes can hold, more people than ever are trying their hand at online sneaker releases.
So let’s do some simple economics real quick; supply and demand. If there are tens of thousands of people trying to get a shoe at once, and there are only a few thousand shoes, this will result in a shortage of shoes, and a surplus of unhappy consumers.
This makes sense as to why me and many others haven’t been able to purchase sneakers from the SNKRS app. So what’s the solution to this? MAKE MORE SHOES!
Yes, exclusivity is still kind of cool, but because of the scarcity of silhouettes like Nike SB Dunks and any Off-White Nike collaboration, this results in people having to pay hundreds sometimes, thousands over the retail price.
Kanye was right in 2015 when he said, “Eventually everybody who wants to get Yeezys will get Yeezys.” I want to live in a world where everyone can get the shoes they want, and gatekeepers get mad seeing someone wear their special shoes.
But of course, there’s still a problem with that even exhibited by Kanye’s Yeezy line itself, over-saturation.
There’ve been about a million color-ways of the Yeezy 350 V2 and (before the time of Corona) if you went out in a crowded place you were almost guaranteed to see a pair.
So can companies like Nike take a note from Kanye and expand the production numbers of sneakers without beating a horse to death? Well, I’m going to leave that to companies like Nike, I just want to be able to buy a pair of damn sneakers.
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