I have received several text messages and calls from guys aspiring to get into the “shoe game” ; and 99.9% of them ask for the same thing- air jordan sneakers. I do my best to tell them to discard the idea in their heads but they don’t listen; they all think they will make a fortune reselling sneakers and for reference they name guys like Sole supremacy on ebay who has supposedly sold about a million worth of merchandise ( mostly jordans). But one thing they fail to understand is that selling a million dollars worth of products doesn’t mean your profit is a million dollars. So what I decided to do was to study the Air monarch 4 and the space jam sales from January 28-29; I gathered up a sample of 26 pairs of each of the shoes and I will show you their profit margin and you can decide for yourself whether you are a smart sneaker reseller or not.
I’m only going to focus on the average sales from both histograms. You can clearly see that the monarch sales’s chart has a bell- shaped curve with literally no outliers- and most of the shoes sold at an average of $53 and free shipping. The space jam ‘s chart shows an average sale of $280+ $15 for shipping.
INTERPRETATION:
The most important things in business are the return on your initial investment, a quick turnaround and the easiness to acquire the product of interest. The monarch 4 are one of the easiest shoes to come by and over the past 5 years I’ve been able to find them for as low as $15 and I haven’t paid more than $21 for a pair. So I’ll assume at $51 the initial investment is roughly $20 especially for bulk buyers. Now the space jams are another story; they came out in December and accessibility was very hard and the initial investment on them is $233 ( coupons weren’t allowed so you had to pay full price).
eBay and paypal selling fees are about 10% and shipping is roughly $12- that would be our standard in this case.
Monarch 4:
Investment: $21, Selling price : $53, eBay/Paypal fees: $7.42, Shipping: $12, Profit:$12.58 x12= $150.96
Space Jam:
Investment: $233, Selling Price:$295, ebay/Paypal fees:$41.3, Shipping: $12, Profit:$8.7 x7=$60.9
So for an investment of ( $252) $21 x 12 pairs of monarch, your profit is $150.96 ( a 60% return on your initial investment). And for the space jam , for an investment of ($1631) $233×7 pairs, your profit is $60.9 ( a 4% return on your investment).
So I’ll ask you again : Are you a smart or dumb sneaker reseller? Will you make the necessary changes to invest wisely? Will you laugh at your buddy next time you see him walking around with 20 pairs of crocs to sell?
Dope article!