Limited Edition Inquisition: Part 1
Being a sneakerhead is a fascinating hobby, profession, obsession, religion…there are numerous ways to classify it. I remember when I was a little kid and there was the proposition of going to the toy store, I would opt for going to the shoe store instead. A new pair of fresh kicks trumped the Power Rangers any day of the week for 5-year-old me. Sure enough, this intrinsic fascination steadily snowballed into a full-blown obsession. Over the years, I became engulfed in the world of sneakers and during that same time the growth of the sneakerhead world expanded into an astoundingly grand arena. With that growth, fascination and frustration have trailed closely behind.
If you look at the resale market of sneakers in 2016, otherwise known as the “grey market”, it was an industry that grossed over $1 billion. That’s right, $1 billion. Hence the ‘profession’ designation above, because for some it is a full time job that pays the bills. But if you’re an average person without an inside connect, the popularity that the sneaker world has gained is both exciting and infuriating. It is wonderful to see what has been designed over the years, and also to know that my curious trips to the shoe store as a kid weren’t in solitude. But along with this excitement there has also been continual let-down with just how limited these sneakers can be.
Currently, the hottest shoe on the market is Kanye’s “Yeezy” by Adidas. And it is damn hard to get. The most recent release in the U.S. had a supply of only thousands of pairs, and a demand from millions of people. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say Adidas had 4.1 million requests on release day for a 4100 pair inventory. That’s a .1% chance of getting this shoe. That’s absurd. But it also poses an interesting dichotomy between limitation and demand. On one hand, I am rubbing my genie lantern and wishing for more inventory. It would be nice to see them produce more shoes to give the average person a chance. At least, that would make getting up at 6:30am on a Saturday seem slightly more justified. However, at what point does inventory dictate demand? For instance, if Adidas instead made 41,000 pairs there would be a 1% chance of copping. That is still astronomically low. But say they made 4,100,000. The demand could drastically alter. Buying them at 6:30am on Saturday could be close to a 100% guarantee, and so would buying them at 9:30am on Monday because they probably wouldn’t sell out in minutes, or ever.
The Yeezy is the perfect shoe for this conversation. Objectively, it looks like a knit moccasin on a weird ribbed sole — half slipper half runner. On foot, it is incredibly conformable and truthfully fairly stylish yet still quite odd. Overall, it is a strange shoe. If its production numbers had been in the multi-millions, I find myself asking if they would be a shoe bought off the shelves. The answer is very hard to discern; being engulfed in the hype that surrounds these shoes can be blinding. Yet it is the same blindness that fuels the thrill of the chase. The first and only pair of Yeezys I bought was for retail price, through Adidas, beating 1/1,000,000 odds. I have never felt more alive. Since then, I have robotically woken up at 6:30am for every Saturday release to try again.
Yet, there are actual robots available that make purchasing them substantially easier while diminishing disappointment and thrill — applications that cost money and threaten sneakerhead authenticity. To bot, or not to bot?
P.s. As you may have figured out by now, the shoes above are in fact Yeezys. Specifically, they are from the first iteration of the ‘Yeezy 350’ whose design was referenced above. Even more specifically, they are my 1/1,000,000 pair.