Streetwear business is booming: the sneaker cult is taking on enormous proportions

Thursday 17th December 2020

Streetwear business is booming
The sneaker cult is taking on enormous proportions

The streetwear trade is no longer an underground phenomenon. On online exchanges such as StockX, in addition to fashionable brands, rare shoes such as securities are traded. The cult has long been popular with investors too.

The hype about rare sports shoes and streetwear doesn't stop even in the pandemic – on the contrary. The StockX sneaker exchange, which sells coveted handbags and watches in addition to fashionable brands such as Supreme or BAPE and rare shoes such as Jordans and Yeezys, is growing rapidly and is being valued more and more by donors. The Detroit-based company announced it had received $ 275 million in a financing round at a total valuation of $ 2.8 billion.

The online exchange, founded in 2016, on which sneakers in the style of stocks are traded, is very popular – it was only in June 2019 that StockX's valuation cracked the one billion dollar mark in a financing round. The soaring shows how much the coveted streetwear business is still booming. According to its own information, StockX increased sales in 2020 by over 75 percent to more than 100 million dollars. In total, investors have already put $ 490 million into the company. The shareholders include a holding company owned by rap mogul Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter.

The fact that the retail of limited streetwear has long since moved from an underground phenomenon to a major commercial event is not only evident from the development of StockX. In November, the fashion group VF Corporation bought the streetwear brand Supreme for 2.1 billion dollars (1.7 billion euros). The label with the red and white logo emerged from a small shop in Manhattan's trendy SoHo district, which was initially the hub of the skater scene. Supreme is now an international fashion chain with branches in major cities such as Paris and Tokyo.

The cult of rare sneakers can also be seen again and again at auctions. In New York this week, a pair of porcelain and leather sneakers was auctioned for $ 126,000. The auction house Sotheby's announced that 72 bids had been received for the unique piece designed jointly by the sporting goods manufacturer Adidas and the porcelain manufacturer Meißen. This is a world record price at an auction for an Adidas sneaker, said spokeswoman Adrienne DeGisi. In the summer, a pair of Nike Air sneakers from basketball legend Michael Jordan at Sotheby's even brought in $ 560,000.