Last month, on a late Sunday morning, Tia Hall was having breakfast with her friend when a series of alerts popped up on her phone.
“When we have website sales, we have this clear thing on our phone,” said Ms. Hall, who owns Sneak City, a Seattle store that sells new and used sneakers. “We were eating our oatmeal and then thing thing thing thing.”
All those sales were for off-white shoes, Mrs. Hall said. Within an hour, her inventory (about 20 pairs) was sold, including a Nike Air Jordan 1 design for $7,500.
By then, Ms. Hall had learned what had caused the rush: the announcement that Virgil Abloh, the designer of Off-White and the artistic director of Louis Vuitton for men, had died at the age of 41 after a private battle with a rare form of cancer.
In the immediate aftermath, sales and searches for Mr. Abloh’s designs reportedly skyrocketed on resale websites. But prices also rose, as seen on StockX, the “Nasdaq for Sneakerheads” where sellers set asking prices and buyers can bid. While Mr. Abloh designed a range of clothing and accessories for Off-White and Louis Vuitton — as well as water bottles for Evian and homewares for Ikea, among other curiosities — the sneakers he released in collaboration with Nike had long been a fixation in the overactive sneaker market.
For example, on StockX, a pair of Jordan 1s were sold on November 28, the day of Mr. Abloh, for $10,500; for the rest of the month, the shoe price did not exceed $7,549. (It was originally priced at $190 in retailers in 2017.)
For those familiar with Mr. Abloh, this came as no surprise. He was someone who could deftly pull the strings of the hype machine and bridge the gap between streetwear and high fashion — and he did it all “in limited supply,” says Caitlin Donovan, who oversees handbags, streetwear and sneakers. at Christie’s. America.
“Obviously, the secondary market would see a huge spike,” she said.
But the rise also raised ethical questions — not just for the large and somewhat anonymous brokering platforms like StockX and Goat, but also for the relatively smaller players in the sneaker game watching prices skyrocket.
It was a dilemma that Jaysse Lopez of Urban Necessities, a large consignment store in Las Vegas that sold more than 300 pairs of Off-White shoes the day Mr. Abloh died, first considered a few years ago. He had a chat with his wife (and co-owner) about how people can manipulate the market when someone with a loyal following dies.
“I asked the question, was it fair that items jumped two, three, four or five times as much as they were worth before that person died?” said Mr. Lopez. “So I’ve actually built in limitations.”
If his senders want to change their prices, Mr. Lopez won’t allow more than a 15 percent raise without manager approval, a system being tested for the first time, he said, following the death of Kobe Bryant, another Nike employee, as sneaker sellers came under scrutiny for profiting from renewed interest in his line.
Mr. Lopez also happens to be a collector of Mr. Abloh’s work. About a week before the designer’s death, he organized a pop-up store at eBay in Detroit, where he showcased “the 50,” a series of 50 Nike Dunk Lows designed with Off-White, for which he spent over two months and $27,000. needed. collect. It may have been the first time all 50 were put on public display by a private collector. (He has no plans to sell.)
“I understand the value is going up, but it also has to be reasonable,” he said. “I just think from a moral standpoint that the focus in the first few minutes or hours shouldn’t be on ‘How much can I benefit from this?'”
At Sneak City, which doesn’t ship but has a buy-sell-trade model, Ms. Hall hasn’t changed prices between hearing about Mr. Abloh’s death and selling his products, she said (unlike many StockX sellers).
Since then, the store has replenished some of its stock of previously owned Off-White sneakers and prices have risen.
“That’s the nature of the sneaker market,” said Ms. Hall. “Now when people come in to sell shoes, we consider StockX as a price reference and have increased our offerings to reflect the market.”
When Mrs. Donovan learned of the death of Mr. Abloh, she initially wanted to remove a large batch of Nike x Off-White sneakers that were set to go up for auction in December, “out of respect,” she said. (Shipped in October, the lot’s estimated value started at $60,000.) In the end, she decided not to advertise the listing or post it on social media.
Yet people found the list and death of Mr. Abloh took “a giant leap in bidding overnight,” said Ms. donovan. The auction closed on December 9 at $62,500.
Ms. Donovan follows the market today and said the initial frenzy has calmed down, but she expects resale value to remain strong. (The elevated StockX prices gradually declined in the days following Mr. Abloh’s death, although, from lists of recent sales, they appear to be generally higher than when Mr. Abloh was alive.)
“I think the idea that I couldn’t have some of his bigger influence on fashion made people really want to go out and get a piece of it,” said Ms. Donovan. “For some of the larger pieces, it will remain that way. If we get further away from the new designs, it could actually go up.”
