Story by PJ Morales
Photos by Kaitlyn Dang
In one house on an unassuming wooded residential road among the dozens in Carrboro’s suburban housing developments, up the stairs past chicly-adorned furniture and framed family photos, a 16-year-old Chapel Hill High School junior sells some of the coolest Nike and Adidas kicks on the market — a business operated entirely from his bedroom.
Krish Gandhi, known as @_carolina.kickz_ on Instagram, has always liked sneakers. When he was 13, he started watching YouTube videos made by entrepreneurs who had their own sneaker reselling businesses. Soon after, a lightbulb went off in his head.
Photo by Kaitlyn Dang
He could do it himself.
He went to local discount stores like Ross, Marshall’s and Plato’s Closet, bought some pairs of sneakers and resold them for a profit. At first, even his parents questioned the business model.
“I think at the beginning (they) were a bit skeptical,” Gandhi said. “But after a while of doing it and trying to make money, I think they understood it.”
“Trying” is an understatement. Today, Gandhi juggles the stresses of ACT preparation, varsity baseball practice and playing in his basketball rec league, all while maintaining an ever-changing inventory of 70-80 used pairs of sneakers for sale at any one time.
“There are so many pairs up there,” Gandhi’s mother, Deepika Gandhi, quipped.
He estimates he has made upward of $6,000 in profit from his sales, selling some high-value versions of Adidas Yeezys for nearly $500 apiece.
Despite not being old enough to drive alone for most of his business career, Gandhi’s experience in the sneaker resale business isn’t unique. Many high school students have jumped into the business, thanks to seeing content creators on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. The free time teenagers had during the COVID-19 lockdown didn’t hurt.
It’s a profitable business: in 2020, the global sneaker resale business reached $6 billion in sales and is expected to hit $30 billion by 2030, according Cowen, an investment bank and financial services company.
Photo by Kaitlyn Dang
Some people want a pair of Jordans because they saw His Airness wear that very same design in a game, hence why original (or “OG”) colors are more valuable. Others want them for the same reason they want an expensive watch or ring — most pairs are released in limited runs, and people will pay to be a member of that exclusive club, even for a pre-worn pair.
Teenagers and upstart entrepreneurs such Gandhi play a critical role in its success, doing much of the buying and reselling that fuels the entire resale industry.
And it’s an economy that goes through the same ups and downs as the “real” economy. Many content creators on the Internet are theorizing a “sneaker recession.” Popular pairs of shoes once unavailable at big-box retailers like Foot Locker are starting to appear at those locations again, albeit not for long enough or in enough sizes to satisfy demand.
But using the lessons they’ve learned from reselling, Gandhi and his young peers are trying to weather the storm, some holding onto multiple pairs of shoes for months until their prices — they hope — bounce back up.
“Every shoe has its certain value that’s gone up and down,” Gandhi said.
Ty Baker, 28, got his start by selling sneakers on Instagram as part of an entrepreneurship class during his sophomore year at the UNC Kenan-Flager Business School in 2012.
Photo by Kaitlyn Dang
He waited in line at malls for hours, all to buy limited-release shoes he could flip for a profit.
“My sophomore year at Carolina, I got a bedroom to myself in Granville, and I used the other half just for sneakers,” Baker said.
Today, Baker is the co-founder and co-owner of SWISH, a sneaker resale and luxury streetwear store with locations in Durham, Fayetteville and Winston-Salem. SWISH sells both new and used sneakers, as well as clothing items from brands such as Gallery Dept. and Fear of God.
Photo by Kaitlyn Dang
Baker had the same kind of success Gandhi had, and with COVID-19 shutting down much of his post-grad work as a personal trainer, he parlayed it into a multi-location enterprise in time.
“A lot of people that do this, they have that kind of entrepreneurship mindset, and I was in the same boat,” Baker said. “After doing it long enough, you can kind of tell who has it and who doesn’t. And I know there’s a negative connotation to reselling sometimes, but the kids who are good at it, they have to work really hard.”
They have to deal with the same issues, be it general economic downturn or what sneaker sellers have taken to calling “drop fatigue.” If Nike or Adidas chooses to release lots of shoes or many iterations of a similar shoe in close proximity to one another, the resale value of those shoes will drop.
Photo by Kaitlyn Dang
It’s anyone’s guess just how long that value will be down before bouncing back up. Granted, drop fatigue mainly affects new, or “deadstock,” pairs of shoes fresh from the retailer.
Both Baker and Gandhi also deal in used sneakers, whose prices are a bit stickier for a few reasons. It depends on the quality of the shoe when it comes in, how long ago it was released and how popular they still are, as well as the effort it takes to clean up a shoe and make it resellable.
“If the pair that I’m looking at in hand has paint chipping, or the back tabs are cut off, or there’s really bad heel drag, it’ll obviously take off a lot of that value of what you can sell for, and (I can) see if it’s even worth it,” Gandhi said.
But used or new, Baker and Gandhi both operate in an industry with an underlying principle: someone is going to want a pair of sneakers that you have, and they’ll be willing to buy it. For that reason, neither cited heavy hits from the current economic downturn.
“I would say it affects the sneaker industry a little bit less than it affects some other industries,” Baker said.
That means the resale industry is more accessible than others. All it takes is a pair of sneakers and a seller’s mentality and you’re in business, even if your goal isn’t a full-time gig.
Photo by Kaitlyn Dang
Eric Flores, 19, is a civil engineering student at UNC-Pembroke. He estimates he’s made about $1,000 from selling sneakers, a hobby he picked up in high school that went from slow to side hustle.
“You don’t need a large capital to start,” Flores said. “You can just hit on like one — my friend hit on the (Air Jordan 1 High Chicago) when they came out, and I think he sold them for like three grand.”
He doesn’t do it much anymore these days, with classes and life keeping him busy. But in his heyday, Flores was able to make some pocket money and even sell a pair of Travis Scott Air Jordans for a $600 profit. It’s an experience he wouldn’t have been afforded were the industry not as accessible as it is.
“I still hop online on the SNKRS app to see when stuff drops,” he said.
Recession or not, there’s always going to be someone that wants something they don’t have, and they’ll spend the money necessary to get it. For Gandhi, Baker and Flores, that means there will always be a new potential customer.
And having just turned 16, Gandhi, a seasoned reseller with several years of work in this vibrant, ever-shifting economy, will finally be able to drive to the post office by himself to ship his products.
“I get my license in a month, so I can drive myself then,” Gandhi said. “But until then, it’s my parents or my friends.”
