How the streetwear spirit is transforming mainstream retail

A couple of years ago a New York Times journalist joined the snaking line outside the Supreme store in Lower Manhattan, New York to gauge the mood of young skatewear obsessives and concluded that, for a younger generation increasingly turning its back on bars and clubs, queuing up is the new going out.

Supreme has since opened a bigger store around the corner on the Bowery to cope with demand, while outposts in San Francisco and Brooklyn have joined a scattering of select stores across the globe, including one in London’s Soho and six in Japan.

Online, direct-to-consumer selling remains at the core of the company’s business, but it’s those long queues that have piqued the interest of retailers looking to inject a bit of excitement back into bricks-and-mortar.

Just last month there were long lines outside the Wembley branch of Ikea, on the outskirts of north London. Like the Supreme crowd, those braving the overnight chill to claim first dibs on Ikea’s limited-edition collaboration with founder of fashion label Off-White and Louis Vuitton menswear artistic director, Virgil Abloh, shared a yearning for exclusive product.

That streetwear is one of the key drivers of mainstream, and indeed high-end, fashion is no great revelation. But the way that concepts like limited-edition ‘drops’ have been taking hold of the high street could spark huge changes in the way we shop, not just in terms of clothing and footwear.

“People want their identity to come through in all aspects of their life, so we wanted to explore if we could help them also make that statement in the home,” says Ikea’s creative leader for communication, range and supply, Linda Fisti.

“We asked ourselves if we could nurture an interest for design and design history with younger generations coming from street culture.”

The influence of streetwear is also starting to be felt in mainstream retail’s burgeoning embrace of the secondary market.

A recent report from US second-hand clothes seller ThredUp, in collaboration with GlobalData, claims that resale has grown 21 times faster than retail over the past three years and that the market will be worth $51bn (£39bn) in the US alone by 2023.

A large number of consumers buying into resale are millennials and Gen Z, from whom the concept of pre-owned chimes in with both their sustainability concerns and financial considerations.

This is a trend Selfridges has already caught onto. This summer the department store hosted a three-month pop-up with Gen Z friendly social selling resale site, Depop.

Furthermore, Business of Fashion reports that resale is now a primary gateway for consumers into the luxury sector. Just this week (26 November) luxury accessories resale site Xupes opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in London selling pre-owned handbags, jewellery, watches and art.

Trading culture

Valued at $1bn (£770m) online marketplace platform StockX was set up by Josh Luber in 2016 as a trading platform for ‘sneakerheads’ who collected and sold rare or deadstock trainers and footwear.

Shortly after the valuation in June Luber stepped down as CEO, replaced by Scott Cutler, formerly president of secondary ticketing platform StubHub and senior vice president at eBay, both businesses StockX increasingly finds itself compared to.

The business prides itself on a totally transparent pricing model. Potential buyers are shown clearly how prices are determined and historic price points are also made available. This means that the going rate for a pair of shoes will always be consistent, still something of a rarity on similar platforms.

We live in a world where consumers will expect uniqueness and experience-based solutions.

Linda Fisti, Ikea

Occasionally it can act as a pure trading exchange with users buying and selling rare trainers as commodities, changing hands without the seller having ever having physically owned the shoes.

The platform is impacted by their suppliers’ strategy. If, for example, Supreme begins releasing more product as it looks to keep expanding globally, the average user could quickly be turned off. But as long as the pieces keep shifting and other brands come into play to balance things out, StockX can flit easily between product cycles.

Any product to be sold must first be given the all-clear by a team of authenticators, who go through a long checking procedure that analyses everything from packaging to the way the product smells. It is then tagged as authentic and shipped out to the buyer.

Some 100 authenticators are currently employed in six centres around the world, including London. So trusted has this process become that there’s even been a problem with counterfeiters creating fake StockX authentication tags.

However, the platform is now looking to enter a new phase that will eventually see it less focused on the secondary market, explains Deena Bahri who was appointed as StockX’s first CMO in September.

“We see a broader opportunity with resell-plus-retail. I think that the platform we created can be applied in retail as well, for consumers and suppliers to trade products,” she states.

The StockX ‘IPO’ auction model has already proved a big success with brands looking to go direct to consumers, who in turn set the price of a product, often a limited edition or reissue.

“We just did one of these with Adidas in October and it was a great success,” explains Bahri.

“They relaunched a heritage model from their archive, bought in three designers to reinvent the look of that shoe and launched it as an exclusive limited edition on our platform.”

StockX allowed all of its global users to bid on these reissued Adidas Campus 80s to determine what price they were willing to pay. Adidas itself didn’t set the price.

In turn, the brands get some valuable access to data and consumer insights.

“It’s a really unique way for a brand to release product to market,” says Bahri. “It’s just the beginning, but it does show how we’re able to influence the major suppliers and add value.”

Inside the billion-dollar fashion resale economy

 

So far StockX has conducted three IPO auctions. The first was with Nike, which last month announced that it was ending its two-year retail partnership with Amazon partly to focus more on its direct-to-consumer strategy, but also amid concerns about authenticity, counterfeiting and a lack of brand control.

Nike is keen to cut back on its retail relationships, from 30,000 in 2017 to a targeted figure of just 40 over the next few years. Announcing the Amazon split, a Nike spokesperson said: “We will continue to invest in strong, distinctive partnerships for Nike with other retailers and platforms to seamlessly serve our consumers globally.”

Those platforms could well include StockX, especially given incoming Nike CEO John Donahoe’s eBay background.

We see a broader opportunity with resell-plus-retail.

Deena Bahri, StockX

Entering a more mainstream retail arena is still a reputational risk for StockX as a brand which has cultivated a reputation around authenticity and street credibility that has allowed it to quickly transform from local niche to global phenomenon.

As a marketer, Bahri is keenly aware of the trade-off involved in making the transition from underground to mainstream. “I think we have to work very hard to stay true; to understand the customer truth and understand our own truth and make sure the two intersect,” she explains.

“I think as long as we do that well, we will continue to be loved. StockX and the products we sell fit into that intersection between music, culture, fashion and sports. We can still be on-point and relevant within the culture.”

Meanwhile, at Ikea the plan is for more collaborations and drops, including with Saint Heron, the creative collective founded and run by Solange Knowles.

“We live in a world where consumers will expect uniqueness and experience-based solutions,” says Fisti.

“However, it also requires brands to stand for something more than just cool design. Consumers will turn to brands they feel stand for something that they can relate to and believe in.”

Streetwear’s love of creating a buzz around brand engagement is changing the way products are marketed, distributed and consumed. Excited? Join the queue.