Sneaker shopping has turned into an almost impossible mission
Like two peas in a pod could be the catchphrase that links mission impossible to sneaker shopping in the 21st century. The two seem to go hand in hand these days as buying sneakers has moved far from what it used to be. Has it always been this difficult to cop a pair of cool sneaks? No. Will it continue down this road? Probably.
It’s like wanting something you can’t have. Sneaker brands operate on the psychology of decreasing their supply to keep the demand high, driving consumers crazy. Nike release the latest colourway of their super sought-after Dunk Lows, the moment you’ve waited days for, and before you know it, you’ve been beaten to the punch by a long line of hypebeasts in the same boat as you, or by the sneaker bots that are ready to pounce at the speed it takes a person to blink.
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Designed to help people purchase limited availability stocks, sneaker bots are programmed to administer pre-recorded click motions to deceive sophisticated bot mitigation software. They autocomplete the checkout process online and give you access to making multiple purchases using sneaker proxies. In recent years, bots have become a favoured source for obtaining hard-to-get sneaker releases. But since the rise of them, sneaker brands have discovered their loopholes and have since tried to complicate the buying process for bots in order to level out the playing field and ensure all customers have a fair chance. And while it has come close to eliminating them, there still continues to be a back-and-forth conflict between the two. So, on top of limited sneaker supplies, bots are dominating the market, further preventing any ordinary buyer from obtaining their long-awaited dream shoes.
From all kinds of sneaker launches over the years like Yeezy, Off-White x Nike, Adidas by Raf Simmons, Comme des Garçons x Converse, ones that have resurfaced in the last couple of years and generated a lot of hype have been the Nike Dunks and New Balance 550s. The two brands revived their infamous sneaker silhouettes about a year apart, with the Dunks making their comeback in 2020, whilst the 550s relaunched the following year. Both have executed the same selling treatment: countless colourways and random release dates.
First released in 1985 only as high-tops, the Nike Dunk sneaker was initially designed for basketball players (hence the name), boosting moves like blocking and turning. Today, the sneaker style has returned with a Dunk Low alternative, which has proven to be far more popular, and with lots more colours to choose from. The New Balance 550s originally debuted in 1989 as a low-top counterpart to the brand’s 650 silhouette, their most popular basketball shoe at the time. Its comeback has followed the trend of relaunching after all these years, just as Nike has done with their Dunk shoe. They landed back in the sneaker section at a time when Dunks were flooding the market, going toe-to-toe with their Swoosh competitor, propelling into the spotlight instead.
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Ultimately, the distribution of both shoes is almost identical. Despite the difficulty to derive a pair of either due to the swarm of people (and bots) ready to snatch a pair, it's no doubt that the two sneakers have generated hype most likely due to their affordability and different options of colour. However, given the restricted supply of their distribution, they still remain hard to obtain. With the rush of knowing you only have a few seconds to grab them, the craving for these sneakers only increases. And while the only alternative to missing out on their release is to buy them resale from sites like StockX, GOAT orGrailed, the cost has skyrocketed by sellers trying to make profit. Sneaker shopping has become a vicious circle of competition and frustration, so how can the market change their strategies to accommodate to consumer needs?
