Sneaker resale… so hot right now. And, these days, it’s attracting more than your average hypebeast.
Case in point: Online luxury fashion marketplace Farfetch just acquired online sneaker marketplace Stadium Goods for $250m (blowing its $20m valuation from last year out of the water).
Not so farfetched
Farfetch is one of the biggest online luxury retailers in the game. This year alone, the company went public at a $6.2B valuation and is on track to hit over a billion in sales.
By acquiring Stadium Goods, the company’s diving even further down the sneaker wormhole, further blurring the lines between luxury and tennis shoes.
Why not? According to Farfetch’s CEO, José Neves, sneakers are already the fastest growing category on the platform.
Welcome to the Sole Rush
Investors are finally starting to smell that get-rich-quick foot stink: LVMH, the investment arm of Louis Vuitton’s parent company, threw cash into Stadium Goods earlier this year, and some of its rivals are also lacin’ up while the sneaker-wave is good.
GOAT and Flight Club joined forces in February, with $60m in new funding from Index Ventures, while StockX hauled in $44m this year.
The trendiest of trends
Volatile fads rule the fashion world, and each of these companies is hedging a different bet on what the future of sneaker growth will look like.
Stadium Goods and Farfetch have their money in luxury, GOAT and Flight Club are betting on sneakerhead traditionalists, and StockX is trying to get people to see sneakers as an investment opportunity in an entire “stock market of things.”
