Do you like shopping for bargains on clothing and shoes? Have you considered reselling sneakers? 

Tia Hall started Sneak City five years ago, and today she and her business partner Anastasia Lemley make $350K per month between their online store and two retail locations. They started out buying valuable sneakers like the Jordan Brand at thrift stores for just $50. Now their business is one of the best places to sell sneakers. 

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Get to Know the Sneaker Resale Market

The sneaker reselling industry includes two main segments:

1. Retailers and Ecommerce Stores: A sneaker business using this model will buy shoes in bulk and sell them in their stores.
2. Used Sneaker Resellers: These companies focus on used rare sneakers that they can cheaply buy and sell for more on the sneaker resale market.

The combined industries have nearly $75.3 billion value and are expected to continue growing by 1-2% annually. Check out the table below to find more statistics about the sneaker game.

Now that you’ve got an idea of just how profitable this industry can be, let’s look at the different routes to getting your share.

How Much Money Do I Need to Start Reselling Sneakers?

You’d be surprised how little money you need to become a shoe reseller. Tia started reselling shoes and other clothes at thrift stores. She told us:

You can easily start with less than $1,000 if you have your own website and more than 1 pair of shoes to sell, but if you want your own retail store, you’ll need $100K+ normally.

What Are the Best Shoes to Resell?

The sneaker community is looking for rare sneakers that are stylish. Check this list of brands you should look for when buying:

• Limited Edition Sneakers
• Nike Air Jordan
• Original Air Jordans
• Yeezy’s (Kanye West Shoes)
• Nike Air Mag
• Hoka Shoes
• Hey Dude Shoes
• Golden Goose Shoes
• Mephisto Shoes

Tia explained:

Check out our interview with her below.

What Are the Most Expensive Shoes in the World?

The most expensive shoes in the world cost a whopping $20 million dollars. Antonio Vietri created the Moon Star Shoes from meteorite, 30 carats of diamonds, and solid gold. You’re not likely to get your hands on these, but there are plenty of other valuable shoes you can resell. Check out more of the most expensive shoes.

About Sneak City: From $50 to $350K/Month Selling Sneakers

Sneak City is 5 years old and started out of Tia’s parents’ garage as a way to make money during college. Her sneaker reseller business became too big for her parents’ garage, so she got her first retail store, which she also uses to ship the shoes she sells on online marketplaces. 

Sneak City is currently making $4.2 million per year and is an omnichannel seller using Shopify.

They told us:

How to Start Reselling Shoes

Flipping shoes can be a profitable side hustle. Tia told us what a day looks like in the sneakers reselling business. Her day consists of five primary tasks while buying and selling sneakers.

1. Buying Shoes
2. Repairing and Cleaning Shoes
3. Photographing Sneakers
4. Adding Products to Instagram And Website Through Automation
5. Shipping

Let’s look at each of these steps in greater detail. 

Step 1. How to Buy Shoes for Resale

You’ll want to understand sneaker reselling before you buy sneakers because people will try to sell you fake shoes. Avoid getting tricked by a side hustle when people sell used sneakers. Tia told us:

It’s important to remember this because when you resell sneakers, the resale value is normally already specified by major resellers. The goal is to buy low, sell high, and make money on the difference.

You’ll want to know:

• Where to buy shoes
• How to tell if shoes are fake
• How much to price used shoes
• How much to pay for used sneakers

Let’s start by discussing the best places to buy shoes.

Where to Get Cheap Sneakers to Resell

There are a lot of places you can go to find a new pair of hyped shoes to resell in the sneaker world. You should consider the following locations when looking to start a side hustle reselling shoes:

1. Wholesalers/Distributors: You can buy new Nike shoes and other brands that have limited releases from wholesalers and distributors. Flipping items this way creates profit from the difference between the wholesale price and the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP).
2. Reselling Apps: You can find shoes on online services like Offerup, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. You’ll be responsible for meeting the person, assessing the shoes’ value, identifying fake ones, and negotiating price, 
3. Thrift Stores: Many people get into making money reselling shoes by starting at thrift stores.
4. Facebook Groups: There are multiple sneaker reselling Facebook groups with more than 1,000 people in them. You’ll be able to find some there. You can check for ones in your area as well by adding your city to the search.
5. Sneaker Con: Many locations have shoe conferences and trade shows where sneaker reselling occurs. Find niche market conferences.

Tia has used many of these strategies but explained:

Keep reading to find out how to detect counterfeit shoes.

How to Know if Shoes Are Fake

Tia provided a list of ways to check if used shoes are fake. They include:

1. Nike does not use stitch guides. If you can see the holes of a stitch guide under a black light, the shoes are fake Nikes.
2. Check for a chemical smell. If it smells like chemicals, they are fake. If it smells like dirty feet, it’s harder to tell.
3. Check the box. If you know what a Nike box looks like, a fake box will often be “too bright.”
4. Shoes are too soft. Fake Nikes don’t use real leather, but instead use low grade materials.

You may also come across shoes that have the GOAT clean certification. If you do encounter this label, this is a good thing. It means the previous reseller sent the sneaker into GOAT and had them certified as legitimate clean resell sneakers.

Next, let’s look at how to value shoes.

What is the Sneaker Resale Value?

You can look at the prices of shoes on online marketplaces like StockX and Goat. Tia recommends checking the shoe price on StockX. Shoes that sell on StockX are always new shoes. If they do not pass their inspection, StockX will send them back to you and return the customer’s money.

This process makes StockX’s price the highest value you should expect to get for a product. You can also check other online marketplaces to get a better range of prices.

How Much to Pay for Used Shoes 

Tia explained she will normally take the StockX price minus 30% to get the price to pay a customer when she buys used shoes for reselling. IBIS World recommends keeping purchases between 43.8% and 71% of revenue. So Sneak City is paying on the high end of what most people or companies pay when buying and selling shoes.

Check out the Sneak City video where they buy $100K of shoes at Sneaker Con.

Cleaning shoes is the next part of sneaker reselling.

Step 2. How to Clean Shoes

Sneaker resellers can’t sell sneakers without cleaning them. You’ll want to make sure the shoes look nice and smell nice. It will make sneaker reselling easier, keep buyers happy, and potentially increase your seller rating. 

Nobody wants to buy a pair of old sneakers with mud that smell like feet. Take the time to learn how to clean and sanitize the shoes before flipping sneakers. All you really need is some soapy water, and they’ll clean up nicely. Check out the video below.

Some terms you can search to find common ways of cleaning Nikes and other shoes include:

• How to clean leather shoes
• Clean white shoes
• How to clean suede shoes
• How to remove odor from shoes

Next let’s talk about photographing sneakers.

Step 3: Photograph Your Sneakers

Sneaker reselling requires pictures of the shoes to help people understand the condition. Depending on where you list the sneakers, you’ll find different photography requirements. Here are some common types:

• Amazon: Main image should be jpeg, png, tiff, or gif with a 1600 pixel long side. The product should fill 85% of the image and the file name should be identical to the title of the listing. Learn more.
• StockX: Reselling sneakers on StockX does not require pictures because they already have the pictures, and they only allow sneaker reselling of a brand new pair. You’ll have to send the shoes to StockX for them to inspect them before you get paid.
• GOAT: Sneaker reselling on GOAT requires pictures if you have less than a 100% seller rating, the pair sold is used, or the new shoes have defects. The photos will be rejected if you can’t see both shoes clearly.

When in doubt, go with Amazon photography rules for reselling shoes on the secondary market. Customers are used to the white backgrounds. On your own site and social media, you may also want to use photos like the ones in this guide on photographing sneakers.

Step 4. Where Can I Sell Shoes?

We asked Tia about the best places to sell sneakers and she told us:

She went on to explain that after she takes pictures, she posts them to Instagram, which she considers one of the best places to sell shoes. From there, she uses automation to add the sneaker resell listing to Shopify, pushing the listing to other places to sell used shoes, including:

• Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media
• Shopify
• Google
• Email
• Wholesale Channels
• Handshake
• Amazon

Tia said they use:

You can learn more about Shopify Sales Channels.

Don’t forget you can resell shoes on apps like GOAT and StockX as well.

Step 5. Shipping Services Are Crucial

Shipping is a major part of sneaker reselling. Tia told us that the first thing she does every morning is prepare for shipping the shoes that were sold overnight. The common providers of shipping in the US are FedEx, UPS, and USPS. If you are buying and selling sneakers on platforms like GOAT and StockX, you’ll need to ship them to the platform to be verified.

Now that you know how to resell sneakers, let’s look at how Tia grew Sneak City.

How to Grow a Sneaker Flipping Company

Tia gave several pieces of advice on how to start reselling shoes that are specifically focused on growing the business. We’ll discuss:

1. The importance of a job when starting out
2. How to set Up a sneaker store 
3. How to grow the business
4. How to increase your social media following

Let’s look at each item in the list.

Start Sneaker Reselling as an Employee

You’ll probably want to have a job when you first start because sneaker reselling is expensive. Retail prices of Nike, Adidas, and other shoes can quickly add up. In fact, sneaker culture has shoes with a resale value of up to $50K at the time of writing. 

Most of those shoes are tied to a famous basketball player like Lebron James or Air Jordan. Rappers also have a niche market that often attracts sneaker culture. Check out some of the highest offers for people wondering how to sell shoes online.

How to Set Up Your Sneaker Reseller Locations

You’ll need to consider the layout when you open resell shoe stores. Tia gave some ideas on setting up a store.

1. Choose a location.
2. Buy security cameras and a roll-down gate, and consider hiring an overnight security guard.
3. Separate shoes between one-offs, bulk shoes, and high-value shoes.  
4. Keep one-offs on one side, bulk shoes on the other side, and high-value shoes behind the counter.
5. Wrap the high-value sneakers to keep them in good condition. 
6. Keep each shoe brand together and sort them by size with the largest size at the top and the lowest size at the bottom. 

Tia and her partners were hesitant when they opened their first store, but looking back on the experience and with greater confidence after their initial success, they discussed the importance of growth.

Importance of Growth

Tia warned:

She started in her parents’ garage but grew to the point they asked her to get a space after a few months of running her side hustle selling Yeezys and Vintage Air Jordans. So she bought her first standalone location. When one store wasn’t enough, she opened a second retail space. Tia recently upgraded one of her resell sneaker stores to a mall with $13.5K monthly rent. She told us:

 She explained,

This brings us to another point of how to resell sneakers: exposure.

Social Media for Sneaker Resellers

For those wondering where to sell shoes, Tia told us:

Sneak City’s Youtube store has 130K followers, and it helps them sell more sneakers at the resale price. She explained how to resell shoes without it feeling like you are creating special content. 

They also travel worldwide with custom merch and record videos about how to start reselling sneakers.

Frequently Asked Questions About Selling Shoes

What is the biggest expense for shoe resellers?

The primary expense to buy and sell sneakers on the resale market is the cost of the pair of shoes. Other expenses you should be aware of include shipping and boxes, which cost approximately $1 per box when you buy the boxes in bulk.

How to Sell on Stock X

1. Sign up for StockX
2. Select a payout method and currency 
3. Create a listing 
4. Print a shipping label
5. Ship shoes to StockX within two business days
6. StockX verifies your shoes
7. Get paid

Head to StockX to learn how to shoe resell on StockX.

How to Sell Shoes on GOAT

If you want to resell an Original Air Jordan or other sneaker on GOAT, you’ll need to:

1. Apply to sell on GOAT (They don’t give a timeline for approval because they only allow enough sellers to verify all transactions.)
2. Wait for approval
3. List items using SKU
4. Take pictures of the shoes
5. Print a shipping label
6. GOAT inspects shoes
7. Get paid

Learn more about how to sell your Nike Air Jordan sneakers or other shoes on GOAT.

Get Started Selling High Quality Sneakers

We’ve discussed where to sell sneakers, interacting with potential buyers, the best place to sell sneakers, and how to sell on GOAT. 

If you’re ready to start reselling shoes, consider checking out some of our other blogs to get familiar with all the business registration requirements.

Then tell us: Where have you had the most success reselling your sneakers?