
StockX Is a Stock Market for Nikes and Rolexes - bookofjoe
https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-website-is-the-stock-market-for-nikes-and-rolexes-1543251772
======
jackschultz
It's tough to avoid complaints when you're a bigger company, but when I hear
StockX, I'm forced to think about the multiple complaints of fake selling
through them.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/Sneakers/comments/9tqfv6/i_received...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Sneakers/comments/9tqfv6/i_received_fake_jordan_1_breds_from_stockx_today/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/Sneakers/comments/9uqafs/stockx_sen...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Sneakers/comments/9uqafs/stockx_sent_me_a_fake_pair_of_unc_ow_aj1_and/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/Sneakers/comments/9jaj4r/exposing_s...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Sneakers/comments/9jaj4r/exposing_stockx_selling_fake_sneakers/)

Can't be a good thing for people to think that about a company.

~~~
nchlswu
Apparently you're expected to authenticate 1 shoe a minute

[https://niketalk.com/threads/what%E2%80%99s-it-like-to-
work-...](https://niketalk.com/threads/what%E2%80%99s-it-like-to-work-at-
stockx-i-quit-after-1-day.677537/)

~~~
offWhiteYeezy

      > The only decent song they 
      > played was ruff ryders anthem.
    
      > My coworkers were arrogant and 
      > unfriendly. Imagine a bunch of 
      > clowns that only rock off whites 
      > or yeezy’s.
    

Goodness gracious! The horrors!

Then again...

    
    
      > They quickly examine the shoe, 
      > check the bottoms and inside to 
      > make sure its not worn, sniff it, 
      > and put the green tag on it.
    

...

    
    
      > sniff it
    

I think I can understand the moodiness now.

------
tantalor
[https://stockx.com/adidas-yeezy-boost-350-v2-cream-
white](https://stockx.com/adidas-yeezy-boost-350-v2-cream-white)

Lowest ask: $230, Highest bid: $425

At first glance this is backwards because "buy low sell high". Then I realized
those prices includes all sizes. So if you look at each size it makes sense:

Size 12: $233 ask, $215 bid

Size 16: $572 ask, $425 bid

The ticket/graphs show sales at all sizes, which is useless as an indicator of
trends at the sizes you want/have.

------
southphillyman
The whole value add of this company vs Ebay is that they are supposed to have
"experts" verifying the authenticity of the shoes. I recently read an account
where they pretty much hired someone off the street and had him verifying a
shoe per minute on his first day. I ordered a pair of Yeezys from them 2 weeks
ago and was some what concerned with the fact they verified and shipped my
pair out the same day they received it from the seller...

------
fromthe718
I'm a decent sized reseller and stockx is amazing.

First off all my sneakers are legit and purchased straight from the company
(adidas from adidas.com, nikes from nike.com, etc). I tried setting up a
website to sell my sneakers and I didn't fare well as nobody really trusts
some random site.

Stockx legitimized my selling, taking care of that entire issue. I get less
money than I would through direct sales but I have zero legwork. I automated
the process so as soon as I receive product, it's posted on stockx for sale.
When sold, I simply print the shipping label and take it to the UPS store.

I know that there will always be issues with legitimacy but if they continue
making it easier for legit sellers to move product, we'll crowd out the
scammers who don't have nearly as much volume. Authenticating a pair of shoes
shouldn't take that long. When releases happen, stockx gets a large number of
the same exact shoe. They can compare one sellers to anothers and see if there
are differences. If I send in 10 pairs of Yeezys that are legit, they'll be
able to spot the 1 pair someone sent in that isn't the same.

Also in regards to Mr. Lubers statement about restocking. It's less common
than you think and very rare sneakers are often never restocked at the level
necessary to destroy demand. In fact, in some instances a company will put out
a rare sneaker years later (Jordan Brand calls these "retros") and
unfortunately the quality has slipped over the years. So retros that are worse
quality remakes of older models can raise the valaue of originals. I usually
sell unsold pairs before restocks happen as it brings the value of them back
to really profitable levels.

------
trevyn
I had the unique and very dystopian experience of StockX irrevocably banning
me (as a purchaser) from their platform because I hit some fraud flags. No
requests for verification or alternate payment method, just an outright "no,
we won't sell to you, period". I emailed their CEO, no reply.

No troubles with goat.com, so they get my business instead.

~~~
ryan-c
Any idea what you hit?

------
roywiggins
> Mr. Luber, co-founder of StockX, an online trading platform for sneakers,
> streetwear, handbags and watches, hates when companies disrupt his market
> strategy. “The one thing that breaks the supply-and-demand model and the
> purity of it in the secondary market is when brands artificially f--- with
> it when they restock stuff,” said Mr. Luber

What purity? You're running a resale market for shoes that are scarce in the
same way rare Magic cards are scarce: entirely at the whim of the company.
That's what supply-and-demand is like when there's a monopoly on supply!

~~~
auspex
Except WotC destroyed the printing plates for the rarest cards. So they would
only ever be able to reissue but never reprint.

~~~
CydeWeys
Regardless of whether you want to call it a reissue or a reprint, doing so
for, e.g., the Power 9, would decimate the secondary market value of those
cards, as a lot of that value comes from people who buy them to play the
Legacy or Vintage formats. Obviously collectors would still place a premium on
the originals (assuming you could actually tell them apart), but it would
still have a devastating effect on the "investors".

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Right, which is why you should never see such things as an “investment”, but
rather as a collectors item.

~~~
CydeWeys
There's plenty of people that make full-time livings on buying, selling, and
trading collectibles, Magic cards included. You just have to accept that if
you live by the sword, you can die by the sword too.

The trichotomy I use is investment, speculation, and depreciating asset.
Examples of the first would be stocks in a publicly traded company or an
investment property with positive cashflow. Examples of the second would be
cryptocurrencies, trading cards, or rare automobiles. Examples of the third
would be consumer goods or commonplace automobiles.

It really grinds my gears when someone says something like "You need to invest
in a good gaming PC." No, that's not an investment. It's not even speculation.
It falls squarely into the depreciating asset (i.e. worst) category. You're
guaranteed to lose more and more money on that over time, until it loses all
value.

------
css
TIL the Wall Street Journal thinks tracking prices longitudinally is a stock
market. Where on StockX can I buy a share of ownership of a luxury watch?

~~~
gammateam
It pretty literally says that it is a secondary market and not your
interpretation of the headline.

Its more like the journalist and developer knows how to make a product
relatable. Take notes.

~~~
AznHisoka
The headline says "stock market" for Nikes. I interpreted it as sort of like a
game where you could flip Nikes or bet on the price of them or something.

If it's a secondary market like Ebay, say so. That's _much_ more
straightforward.

~~~
gammateam
The subtitle says secondary market, after saying something relatable in the
headline.

~~~
iamdave
_The subtitle says_

Getting to this point would have required reading past the headline.

~~~
gammateam
Which less people would have done if the headline said "Secondary Market"

------
throwaway18664
StockX is an interesting company. I am a former employee there from the
engineering side of things. While a lot of great people work there and they
are a “hot” startup in Detroit, I would never recommend anyone take a position
there. Their leadership is unfortunately not a very trustworthy set of
individuals and their culture is very toxic. They attract a lot talent because
they can pay for it.

In the early days their authenticators took great care to verify every item
that came in and they were proud of the service they provided. It sounds like
they have had a tough time scaling this part of the business.

------
curiouscat321
On a different note, StockX is a Detroit-based startup. It's awesome to see
the area's tech scene begin to thrive.

~~~
jrjfjfndjkd
Not that it’s not bad UI but the high and low bids are for different sizes.

------
KaiserPro
From what I can see there is no way as an end user to verify the quality of
the goods being shipped.

The whole point of an exchange is the things being traded are fungible.

I see lots of rolxes being traded, but are they real? have they been used? are
they grey imports? I don't see how you're supposed to trust anything thats on
there.

~~~
zjaffee
The real value add that Stockx provides is verification of authenticity where
they employ specialists to do the verification work. Their competitor GOAT
also does the same thing but focuses on sneakers.

------
aluminum96
There's already a large and trusted market for reselling verified used
Rolexes: HQ Milton, Bob's Watches, Crown and Caliber, the list goes on and on.
This doesn't seem very new, at least for the watches.

------
neonate
[https://outline.com/5LPxXv](https://outline.com/5LPxXv)

------
ramoz
Why does something like this work vs eBay?

Sorry if this was addressed in the article, but there was a paywall to read.

~~~
bookofjoe
Excerpts from the article:

Tracking sneaker values has long been Mr. Luber’s obsession. In the late
2000s, he was a strategy analyst at IBM in New York who spent his nights
trawling eBay for data on how much sought-after shoes were selling for on the
secondary market. He compiled those figures into Campless, a sort of Kelly
Blue Book for sneaker-resale value. But Mr. Luber wasn’t satisfied with eBay.
His beefs weren’t limited to the bad photos that sellers posted or their habit
of selling fakes. What really bugged him was the absence of price
standardization. One dealer might peddle a pair of Nike Dunks for $100 and
another might list the same shoes for $300. Mr. Luber envisioned a more
orderly market, with a New York Stock Exchange-style ticker, that would make
the value of a pair of sneakers transparent, in real time. When those Dunks
sold for $100, everyone on the market would know about it, thus forcing other
sellers to knock their prices down to the going rate.

Around that same time, Dan Gilbert, the founder of mortgage lending company
Quicken Loans, noticed that his teenage son was flipping sneakers on eBay for
profit. Intrigued, Mr. Gilbert founded a research team on sneaker reselling
who discovered what Mr. Luber was working on. Mr. Gilbert bought Campless in
2015 and the pair joined forces (along with COO Greg Schwartz), launching
StockX, “the stock market of things,” based in Mr. Gilbert’s hometown of
Detroit in February 2016.

Further mitigating risk for the buyer, StockX acts as a middleman for payment
and does not release proceeds of the sale to the seller until the shoes have
been verified. Carlos Chavez, 34, an engineer and part-time sneaker seller in
Los Angeles, prefers using StockX (or GOAT, a newer rival app) to eBay, after
he experienced a “chargeback,” in which PayPalfroze his proceeds of a sale for
two weeks because the buyer used a counterfeit payment.

“I’ve sold on both eBay and Grailed but the big reason I prefer StockX for
shoes is to not be scammed,” said Mr. Chavez, who in September used his funds
from flipping sneakers to finance a vacation to Oaxaca with his wife. In a
statement, an eBay spokesperson noted that it offers a money-back guarantee if
a buyer identifies a counterfeit and that since 1998 it has had the Verified
Rights Owner Program (VeRO), which allows brands themselves to more easily
report fake items on eBay. Further, in October 2017 eBay launched “eBay
Authenticate” which inspects and validates luxury items such as Prada handbags
and Rolex watches.

~~~
anongraddebt
I would pay $5-10 a month for a service that summarized articles in brief
bulleted lists, and placed 'highlights' \- like your block of excerpts - at
the bottom.

~~~
bretpiatt
There is a startup doing that for books:
[https://readitfor.me/](https://readitfor.me/)

~~~
anongraddebt
Thanks for the rec. Not sure the information density of books has yet reached
its nadir like news articles, such that I would pay for this.

