From stores selling sneakers to people in the underground community reselling sneakers for more money. Majority of the people in the sneaker community has made a secondary market to sell shoes. On Complex an online blog/magazine, research shows that the market is upwards up to 1 billion dollars. In the older years of the sneaker culture, workers in the shoe stores would help the resellers get shoes to sell for more money, but now in 2016/2017 they are able to get their hands on robots and secret website links. Online robots were used to automatically buy the shoes fast when they release on the website.
Instead of getting one pair the robot can buy multiple pairs until it sells out. Due to the hype of the shoes, company commercials are dying out. The shoes are usually posted up on instagram because of the decline in youth watching television. In 2016 musicians were coming out setting trends because of the collaborations they had with Adidas, Nike, Puma,etc. Musicians play a humongous role in the culture because they would wear the shoes and all the fans would go and buy it because it is hyped. Therefore sneakers will be even harder to get due to the sellout and the demand for the sneakers.There are websites and stores that sell shoes too. Some of the stores are RIF, Nicekicks, Goat, Foot Locker and Round Two.
This year has been one of the most important year for shoes in quality and materials. Sneakers that has good quality with hype will sell out of stock, which will lead to the creations of fakes. The “Replica” market of fake sneakers are getting better and better each year by copying the shape of the shoes, color and upgrading the quality on the fakes. High end sneakers are also getting in trend this year also because of how simple the sneakers are. Possible sneaker collaborations with different brands can also cost shoes to sell out faster and make it to the secondary market. Due to high demand for shoes popular brands such as Nike and Adidas has been saying that it will be harder due to the materials they use for it.