Behind the scenes of reselling

Off White, Air Force One at a sneaker convention in LA

Those who are lucky enough to pick themselves up some clothes from Supreme or any other hyped streetwear brand are then faced with a dilemma, keep hold of the piece and show it off to all your friends or resell the item and make you money back and then some!

There is a stigma behind Hypebeast clothing that it is all overpriced and expensive, which is true for some pieces such as the P-2B short parka jacket, which is the most expensive piece currently on sale by Palace at £458. However, the iconic Supreme box logo tee shirt will only set you back $25.

The confusion comes from resellers, these are the people that exploit the hype behind the clothing and will purchase the items for retail price and then resell the items to the people unfortunate enough to miss the drop for an extortionately inflated price. Take the humble box logo tee that I mentioned earlier, a reseller will charge anywhere between $80 to $120 for a $25 tee shirt.

Some people have even created entire businesses and opened up shops just to resell their clothes. Some can argue that this is a bad thing in the streetwear market as these people are exploiting the brands marketing strategy but then others could say that they are making the brands more available to the people that were unable to purchase the items at the drop, or even paying a higher price not to wait in the queue for a couple of days.

A big thing people don’t realize with reselling is that on ebay the fees are something like 10%, and then I believe there are paypal fees as well about 3%. So let’s say you buy a piece for $400 and sell it for $500, you are not gonna make $100 but more like $30. So you gotta find the pieces with really good margins, or just sell a ton which turns into a full time job, to be able to make any decent income.

Some sites are better for this for example StockX.com provide a fast and secure trading service with minnimal fees, while other sites such as depop take a heafty percentage of your profit.

The best was to resell clothes in the current market would be in perosn, this can be difficult for people living in rural areas however for people living in larger cities could attend streetwear selling conventions, where hundreds, sometimes thousands of people turn up with their clothes and handfulls of cash to sell and trade.