Sneaker Release Saturdays: A Chance to Build Trust and Win with Online Customers
It has become very clear that for the resellers who operate online, sneaker bots are threatening the long-term viability of the sneaker release game.
On many release days, more than half of reported web traffic is actually attributed to bots. Unlike physically waiting in line at a brick-and-mortar store, with sneaker bots targeting online releases, resellers who are trying to profit off of the resale of limited release sneakers can emulate the requests of 100s to 1,000s of online customers.
Sneakerheads have taken to social media to discredit the integrity of the online retailers hosting the releases. They have voiced a level of despair to the idea that they could actually obtain the next limited shoe being released, at least without buying some bot themselves. While many sneakerheads are convinced sneaker shop retailers don’t entirely care due to the logic of “as long as they sell the collection,” recent interviews with owners and basic marketing and sales strategy principles suggest otherwise.
Fairness: The foundational need to keep the trust of customers and sneakerheads
In our discussions with sneaker shops, we have seen three main approaches to managing the sneaker releases — raffle drawings, in-store releases, and online releases. While all of these approaches have their benefits, the drawbacks and long-term implications of each approach should be considered by retailers in the amount of trust and customer experience they offer:
| In-store Release | PROs | CONs |
| Retailers sell the limited editions sneakers in their bricks-and-mortar shops, and fans line up outside of the store ahead of the release | Likely to put sneakers in the hands of real fans | Risky to manage such a high physical demand at door-opening time |
| In-person wait time deters resellers | May sacrifice other sales on release day due to focus on one product | |
| Controls quantity sold to one buyer | Misses majority of online data tracking | |
| Raffle Drawings | PROs | CONs |
| Retailers assign numbers to subscribed customers and randomly select numbers to distribute the limited collection | Removes online traffic surge that attracts reseller bots | Removes the hype of the release time |
| High likelihood to sell the sneakers to existing customers | Heavy manual effort to administer and distribute | |
| Online Release | PROs | CONs |
| Retailers sell the limited edition sneakers online through their e-commerce sites | Generates hype & social proof amongst community and customers | Risk of overloading website due to elevated levels of traffic and traffic surge at release time |
| Provides greater reach with ability to service large quantity of customers | Attracts the use of bots by secondary market resellers | |
| Collects digital insights and online customer data |
When evaluating the options, prioritizing fairness and taking measures to regain the confidence of true customers will drive long-term value from collectors and fans.
Regaining the Trust of Collectors and Customers
Realistically, footwear retailers are carrying the weight of the hype that sneaker brands are boosting. With a huge amount of coordination, advertising, and administration of the release (and any fallout from the event), the profit on the limited sneakers is likely eliminated. Somewhere along the growth and hype, bots and fraud entered the sneaker game and impacted the integrity of the releases, and became yet another major item for retailers to address with each release.
With the perceived bot takeover and backdoor ways to obtaining limited release sneakers, the trust of collectors and followers for sneaker companies and shops is waning.
While raffles and physical waiting lines at bricks-and-mortars are the short-term strategies to hosting more fair releases, retailers still need to develop a more repeatable method for managing sneaker releases that achieves a significant level of fairness and approachability for customers.
How the market leaders are conducting releases
As the footwear segment has grown nearly 50 percent since 2009, the space has become crowded and competitive. In our discussions with dozens of sneaker shops, footwear, and apparel companies, clear winners and losers are emerging.
Instead of limiting the strategy and the results of the campaign to each release or to only Saturdays when releases happen, market-leading sneaker retailers, who are attracting unprecedented attention by the amount of traffic they are seeing on release day, are taking the long view. In this sense, the emphasis is on customer lifetime value (CLV) as key criteria to a successful sneaker release strategy, with the impacts of successful releases being seen the other six days of the week as well.
Many sneaker enthusiasts epitomize the classic example of the “80/20” rule, where 80 percent of revenue comes from 20 percent of your customers. This is also where delivering a positive experience for these collectors and brand fanatics can result in returned business to buy the t-shirt, sweatshirt, joggers or socks that are going to go along with those sneakers.
The leading retailers are also using a variety of technologies to capture customer data on release day. They turn around and apply this data to do immediate customer retargeting and building a story for continued marketing towards these customers. This data helps further cement the position with convinced, trusting customers to provides insight on how to service them with the appropriate offers for the next sneaker release or the additional apparel that fits the tastes of the customer.
To support a more holistic view to making the most of releases and increasing CLV, the market-leading retailers are leveraging tools that level the playing field against bots. While in-store lines and customer raffles get to a certain level of fairness, they do not provide the sustainable approach that a top retail brand should achieve.
Instead, leading sneaker sellers are embracing online and using it as a proving ground to win the athletic apparel and footwear segment, despite the infiltration of bad bots and fraud. With technology like bot defense and virtual waiting rooms, the battle against the bots can be mitigated, and retailers can get the most pairs of sneakers into the hands of real customers, whose trust is earned and value realized, far beyond each Saturday’s release.