A Glimpse Of The Two Level Market Of Domestic Shoes With A Value Of One Billion Dollars

In addition to bitcoin, artwork and platinum bags, the value of 10000 Yuan Limited sports shoes is the "luxury" of many young people. And the two level market of sneakers at the historic moment is also due to the growing popularity of sneakers.

StockX is the leader of the European and American markets. It successfully turned the sneakers into a currency. Other websites, such as GOAT, Stadium Goods and Bumps, have also included shoes, street clothes and other goods, and have raised more than $200 million in venture capital. StockX announced the completion of its new $110 million financing in June 26th, with a market value of more than $1 billion, and has hired a new CEO to expand its business.

According to investment bank Cowen analysis, the two tier market of North American sneakers and street apparel currently valued at $2 billion is expected to reach US $6 billion in 2025. Josh Luber, the founder of StockX, believes that the volume of China's sports shoes market can reach US $one billion, and the mature platforms such as StockX and Goat have announced plans to enter China this year, which is expected to keep the sports shoes hot.

According to Wei Zhiji, co-founder of the magazine Digger magazine, the two tier market for shoes has started trading since 2010, and from the trading area of tiger shoe to the shop of Taobao Tmall, the shoe market has become lively. In addition, NBA has been developing in China for more than 30 years, and many fans have grown into sneakerhead fans. Reality shows China has hip-hop and this! The popularity of hip-hop, in addition to affecting the younger generation of sneakerhead, has further brought the "shoe culture" "exotic" into the discussion of local pop culture. "Including the difficulty of matching, and the reasons why the star airport Street clap the feet and so on, all can affect the price trend of a sneaker. If economics is a function, it has too many variables. " Wei Zhiji said.

The popularity of the two tier market of sports shoes is also a reflection of the upgrading of consumption in the field of subdivision. Sports shoes have become a powerful symbol for millennial men and more and more women.

"Shoes culture" has become more and more popular. People will love this thing more and more. This draught will definitely become hotter and hotter, and its bubble is not as serious as other tuyere industry, because there is indeed a supply and demand relationship. It is not something just needed, so compared with other industries, market pricing is more scientific and rational. Wei Zhiji said.

At present, there is a lack of perfect appraisal system and lack of large-scale platform in the domestic shoe market. All these provide market opportunities for such platforms as poison, UFO and Nice.

In the Chinese market, the biggest seller of shoes trading is poison. In April of this year, the drug got A round financing from DST (Digital Sky Technologies). Although the amount of investment was not disclosed, the valuation of this round of investment has reached one billion US dollars and joined the "unicorn" ranks. It is reported that last year, it received tens of millions of dollars of financing from Gao Rong capital, Sequoia Capital China and Pu se capital.

The poison was originally only a group of senior basketball players gathered by the tiger forum. They were keen to share the topic of identification of the shoes, and naturally formed the "high concentration of shoes culture". Yang Bing, the founder of tiger hunting, who had been exploring the profit mode, soon saw the business opportunities in the sports shoes market, and hatched poison in 2015, thus naturally forming a closed loop of community, content and trading. It is reported that its GMV in 2018 has exceeded 10 billion yuan, and "once over" has once become a "slang" in sneakerhead's discussion on the authenticity of sneakers.

The poison has also been challenged by whether the sneakers are genuine or not. It also reflects the problem of more fake goods in the domestic market. It has become the biggest selling point of Yoho, Buy UFO.

Last year, the UFO on the double eleven line belonged to the Yoho! Buy business platform. At present, the endorsement of Yoho! Media platform and the registered 20 million registered users can play a role of backstreaming for UFO. Li Zhe, chief of UFO, revealed that GMV has reached 1 billion yuan since the launch of UFO.

For brands such as Nike and Adidas, such websites like UFO can bring fresh feelings to their shoes eco circles, bringing new exploding points around their Jordan and Yeezy series. So far, the two companies have adopted a non intervention attitude towards the online scalping market. Nike's chief financial officer said in March that the company did not focus on resale business, nor did it launch a plan to cooperate with the resale platform.

Although sports shoe brands do not get any profit from resale, they can benefit indirectly from the agitation of the market. John Kernan, a research analyst at Cowen, told New York Times that the brand side was careful in controlling the supply of hot products, and the act of "hunger marketing" would stimulate a sharp rise in resale prices.

Li Zhe believes that the domestic two tier market is more intelligent than overseas market. For example, the shoo dealers get news from the Raptors to win the championship, so that the price of a Air Jordan 1 Retro High "Pass The Torch" (commonly known as AJ1 Leonard) sneakers suddenly suddenly soared, and even once exceeded 30 thousand yuan a year ago. Of course, although there are opportunities for coincidence, but generally speaking, whether a sneaker is in line with the current trend can decide its appreciation.

"The shoe dealers have their own one or two hundred WeChat group. They are running the sports shoes" financial market "efficiently, and the shoes become a calibration object, like bitcoin. Li Zhe said. Another unique phenomenon in China is that shoe dealers can keep the stars on the spot with the help of star news. At present, 40% to 50% of the sneakers belong to overseas sources. UFO has decided to set up an appraisal team of three or four people in Hongkong this year. This will also ensure faster delivery of overseas goods to the domestic market.

The domestic variables are more complicated, which is obviously the market situation that StockX and other platforms need to adapt to after entering the Chinese market. However, Wei Zhiji believes that this helps to make this crazy market return to reason. "China's sports shoes consumption market is large enough, the existing platform can not monopolize the market, and there may be" a few parts of the world "to last for a long time, so foreign platforms come in, so as to bring a boost to the market rather than competition, so that the original domestic platforms work harder to cater to the needs of consumers, and the real benefit may be domestic shoe consumers. Wei Zhiji said.

As Gartner L2's senior analyst Liz Flora has said, "It sneaker" has become a new "It bag". For luxury brands, these platforms that sell mainly sports shoes may pose a threat to traditional fashion and luxury electric business. "Whether Nike, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Rolex, these brands can not ignore the online two tier market, and it is hard to turn a blind eye to the evolving distribution channels." StockX CEO Scott Culter said.

In an interview with New York Times, Luber said that StockX's bigger goal than continuing to sell Jordans is to replace the static retail price with stock market trading. In the case of Luber, static retail price is "an outdated concept". Under such a mechanism, buyers will tender for new products, and the price will depend entirely on supply and demand.

"I think this industry also has a way of dropping cars and sharing bicycles. People will burn some of their money in order to cultivate user habits," Wei Zhiji said. "But now the price of shoes is very transparent, the profit margin of this industry is basically constant, so the core of the final competition is the supply of goods. If your combination of goods and timeliness of goods are colorful, it will definitely occupy a large proportion in this market."

However, as the two level market of local shoes turns to maturity, the major platforms are also trying to break through their business models. What StockX and many overseas second-hand trading platforms are trying to do is break through the estrangement between the primary market and the two tier market, and cooperate with more and more brands of hot sports shoes. Today's consumers are gradually getting used to buying the first hand and second hand goods on the platform like StockX. The boundary between the primary market and the secondary market is becoming more and more blurred in their eyes. Therefore, for a long time, skeptical brands who are directly involved in the secondary market are likely to be ready to enter the secondary market.

But Luber also realized that everything was difficult at the beginning. "It is impossible to persuade these brands to get rid of retail prices now, but behind this crazy idea is slow change," he said. It is worth looking forward to, perhaps after StockX enters the Chinese market, Luber can display its crazy ideas in China.