Blog Detail

To walk into the 3,000-square-foot Stadium Goods store in SoHo is to be confronted by rows and rows of pristine, shrink-wrapped athletic footwear. Look closely and you might be a little stunned by the price tags.

On a recent afternoon, for instance, a pair of white Nike Jordan 1’s by the fashion designer Virgil Abloh (Off-White, Louis Vuitton) originally priced at $190, was selling for $2,750. (No wonder it was enclosed in a glass case.) Nearby was a rare pair of Adidas PW Human Race NMD TR, designed by the musician Pharrell Williams. Price tag: $12,350.

This is clearly not Foot Locker.

The high-end sneaker market is big business these days, and the three-year-old Stadium Goods, a consignment reseller of rare or limited editions, has established itself as the Tiffany’s for sneakerheads.

Sneaker fanatics have been around for decades, with swaps and buys largely happening on eBay or as personal transactions. But it’s only in the last few years that the reseller market has accelerated and gone sharply upscale. John McPheters, who co-founded Stadium Goods with Jed Stiller, says the shift has been driven by “men who are now learning from childhood how to treat fashion as a sport — the way that women have always treated fashion.”

The point is not utility, but rather about expressing identity. “Sneakers are the single most flexible and acceptable way to communicate personality for these new shopping-obsessed men,” Mr. McPheters said.

Stadium Goods is clearly riding that wave. In January 2017, it secured $4.6 million in new equity funding by Forerunner Ventures (backers of, among others, Warby Parker and Bonobos) and the Chernin Group. Earlier this year, the European luxury group LVMH (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Givenchy), bought a minority stake for an undisclosed amount.

Article curated from NYTimes.com - Click here to read the entire article.