A SneakerCon shoes exhibition held in Shanghai in May Photo: IC

A designer surnamed Song, in Beijing asked, his friend in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, to buy him a new pair of Air Jordan 11 Low "Navy Snakeskin" sneakers at the official price of 1,399 yuan ($204) a couple of months ago. Now the price of the sneaker in his size has risen to around 1,600 yuan on resale platforms.

"A price rise of 14 percent in such a short time, it's a good way to manage money," Song told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The designer, in his late 30s, has a sneaker collection of more than 500 pairs, worth at least half million yuan in the aftermarket. And his collection continues growing. 

Besides the "Navy Snakeskin," he has bought at least five pairs of limited edition shoes this year.

The number of sneaker collectors like Song is growing in China, their hobbies have given birth to a new thriving industry, as brands like Nike, Adidas and Li-Ning started selling limited edition sneakers co-branded with celebrities; and scalpers are increasingly attracted to the profiting business.

China's sneaker aftermarket is worth over $1 billion, lifestyle news site Highsnobiety.com reported in January, citing business insiders.

DU, the biggest online app for people to buy sneakers and the first app providing the service of identifying genuine and fake sneakers in China, said on its front page, that it has identified nearly 20 million pairs since it launched its business in 2017.

The number of second-hand sneakers on Xianyu, Alibaba's flea market platform, has also exceeded 2 million. The platform has also started inviting professional sneaker appraisers to provide identifying services.

The trend reflects Chinese consumers' improving purchasing power and the growing need for cultural identification in their consumption, analysts said.

Bullish market

Buying and selling sneakers at prices several times, or sometimes even dozens of times, the original prices, Chinese sneakerheads or sneaker fanatics have run an aftermarket boom.

After the Toronto Raptors won the 2019 NBA championship on June 13, the price of Air Jordan 1 Retro High "Pass the Torch," which is co-branded by Raptors player Kawhi Anthony Leonard, reached a prices of 39,999 yuan, 30 times higher than the original price of 1,299 yuan.

Although the price has fallen, the sneakers are still marked at least 16,999 yuan on DU, and the golden sizes are well above 20,000 yuan.

And 30 times is not the biggest price rise on China's sneaker aftermarket. 

The price of Nike Air Yeezy 2, the last sneaker edition co-branded by Nike and US rapper Kanye West before the latter ended his cooperation with the brand in 2012, has hit the highest selling price of 100,000 yuan, more than 50 times of the original price of 1,999 yuan.

The price fluctuations have made sneaker owners' mood variable and created the myths of "strike it rich" by reselling. There is a saying that "if you have missed the bull markets of real estate and virtual currency, join the sneaker market now."

Unlike sneakerheads, many of the newcomers to the market do not have an emotional connection with the shoes and the stories behind them, what they care about is the business model that can make them profits.

Wan Kun (pseudonym), a former employee at the sneakers information platform flightclub.cn, is familiar with the scalpers' business model. "They hire people to take up the headmost position in advance when limited edition sneakers are on sale at a certain place, and raise the price later after gaining control of most sources of the goods," Wan told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Recently, Wan found that there are many sneaker investment WeChat groups that have a minimal financial requirement of 1-2 million yuan for sneaker resellers to join.

As myths of scalpers earning hundreds of thousands yuan a year attracted more people to join the game, the business tricks from the heated property market are introduced to the sneaker aftermarket. 

Sportswear brands launch limited edition sneakers with celebrities to promote their brands and use a lottery system to sell the limited products to their diehard fans.

Sneaker information platforms even provide an index for price fluctuations, and column writers are writing market observations that sound like stock comments.

However, analysts warned of the potential risks for later joiners. There are limits on the price rises of mass products like sneakers, even if they are claimed to be a limited edition, Tian Yun, vice president of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, told the Global Times.

Stronger buying power

The heated games have pushed up the prices of sneakers, and make it much harder for real fans to get the sneakers they like. 

"Now it's basically impossible for us to buy any pair of our favorite sneakers, when they go on sale in stores," Song said.

When Song's parents bought him his first pair of Air Jordan in 1998, it cost 1,250 yuan, which is quite expensive in relation to the income levels in China at the time. 

China's average disposable income per capita in 2018 was 28,228 yuan, but the amount in 1998 was only 5,425 yuan.

However, more and more young people in China are willing to pay higher prices to get the particular pair of sneakers they like immediately. 

Although most of the popular sneakers are controlled by professional scalpers, sneakerheads are still willing to pay even after the prices are raised. 

"Even if the sneakers are several times more expensive in aftermarket, which is normally not more than 10,000 yuan, I will accept the price, because 10,000 yuan in 2019 still sounds cheaper than 1,250 yuan in 1998," Song said.

Sneakers are getting even more popular among younger generations.

A 16-year old high school student surnamed Li in Beijing, told the Global Times that because they have to wear school uniforms, footwear has become the only way for them to show their cultural identity.

The unit sales of Air Jordan sneakers are innumerable in China. 

According to the data of a sportswear shopping site shihuo.cn, there were 815 different kinds of color matching of Air Jordan 1 selling on the platform in April, and more than 60,000 of them are sold monthly.

According to a report of Insight&Info Consulting, a Chinese industry analysts group, the market size of China's sport footwear in 2017 was 102.5 billion yuan, and the market size was estimated at 113.4 billion yuan in 2018. 

Pop life

Maybe different sneakerheads have different favorite pairs of sneakers, but all of them share similar experiences of how they got into sneakers. They are the millennial generation and Y generation who grew up in the globalized pop culture. They share similar enthusiasm for sports games, music videos, movies and comics that they grew up with.

Almost every sneakerheads will gush out their passion for their collections, all the stories of the stars who have worn the shoes and their unique experiences of watching certain games or the concerts.

Sneaker Con, the world's biggest sneakers trading fair, came to Shanghai in May, for the first time on the Chinese mainland.

While foreign and domestic brands were showcasing their new technology and designs during the two-day event, sneakerheads were trying to cop rare kicks and make more friends.

On social media networks like Douyin, sneakerheads are showing their finds in short videos. 

In a sneaker Vlog posted by a blogger Surnamed Jiang in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, he and his friends explored the exhibition with great passion.

A Sneaker Con staff member said, in the Vlog, that the amount of support is far beyond their expectation; some foreign vendors have decided to explore the vast market and are making a big push for their business here.

Jiang has posted dozens of Vlogs talking with friends about the sneakers they love buying, experiences like waiting in lines, and their tour to the Marvel theme park. His posts have received active responses from netizens.

For young sport fans who have hundreds of thousands of spare yuan in their pockets, sneakers are a better way to manage the money than to deposit it in a bank or stocks, according to Song. "If I'm putting my money in something, I want it be what I like and understand," Song said.

He estimated that in China the number of sneakerheads like him, who own not less than 500 pairs, is well above 50,000.

In 2014, Song organized his own sneaker exhibition in a friend's café in Beijing, dozens of his friends went to the event, and he had also made more friends there. He got more feedback from netizens after he posted photos on his social media account.

"Through sneakers, friends can share ideas about music, arts and sports. It's great to feel the connection brought by sneakers," Song said. 


Newspaper headline: Shoe frenzy