A lot of you may see people like us as resellers and I don’t blame you because more or less that is true. However, I don’t completely agree with the term because I see us more as curators. The main dividing line between the two in my opinion is that resellers generally don’t put much thought as to what future trends and consumer demands are as their main focus is what sells now in the short interim. Curators generally take a longer term view as to what future trends would be, what consumers want and predict demand and supply. With that said, curators are more patient by nature because it takes time for their predictions to play out on the market and resellers on the flip side are generally very impatient as their main goal is to sell as much as they can before prices drop and supplies flood. We all know this trend very well as we can always expect prices to be top notch the first few days of re-selling and then it slowly starts dropping as people that are willing to pay top dollar become less and less and prices will reflect the updated demand in the market.
When I first started Netmag, it was first a trial and error to see what type of shoes I wanted to sell. When I first tried re-selling I realized actually how HARD it was to land pairs on release date without proper connections. By nature I’m not a person that likes to be at places with loads of people and I don’t like to fight others or line up for something that is only $200-$300. The time I spend waiting in line overnight, I could have used it productively doing something else. The only time I had some sort of success was one time the Nike employee store had a huge restocking of Jordans (Glow 4, Laney 5, Fire Red 3,5s, Kobes) and they only limited 1 pair per customer. After that I was like Fk this! The max I was making was probably less than $100/pair and the fact I have to make multiple trips on different days just to pick them up just didn’t make sense. Yes money can be made, but the number of quantity I can flip was super limited. That was when I knew if I really wanted to make money without doing much work I needed to look longer term. I needed to look at the current landscape and make my best educated guess at what the market will want in 1/2-2 years out. It hasn’t always been easy and i wasn’t always right, but so far I think I did alright given that this is our 3rd year doing this and we are still profitable. As curators, patience is REALLY KEY. The patience allows you to be a buyer that is not pressed for time and this gives you the upper hand in negotiations with sellers. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to give a discount if you are always cash ready. Most importantly being a curator allows us to be strong in buyers and sellers because we understand both aspects and motives. In my opinion, reselling new releases is getting more difficult for most of us as backdoors and connections means we don’t have much access to the supply. If you’re thinking about jumping into this niche, I would highly recommend being more of a curator rather than re-seller.
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