StockX, a marketplace for sneakers, has announced that they’ve closed a $6M round from a group of high-profile investors like Mark Wahlberg, Scooter Braun, and Wale. They join existing investors like Eminem, SV Angel and Detroit Venture Partners.
The sneaker reseller space couldn’t be hotter right now. GOAT, one of the largest app-based sneaker marketplaces has raised more than $30M in just the last six months, and boasts over 1.5M users across the platform. Stadium Goods is another reseller and just raised $4.6M for its blend of online and brick and mortar consignment shops.
But StockX has a unique twist that differentiates it from all of its competitors. The startup calls itself a “stock market of things”, meaning that it uses a “bid/ask” market to connect buyers and sellers – just like an actual stock market does.
For example, a buyer would place a bid for $650 for a pair of shoes, and a seller may be asking $680 for the same pair that they currently own. And when the bid/ask spread eventually meets, a transaction happens.
The advantage to this model is mainly transparency – you can see exactly how much more you’d need to spend to instantly meet the asking price and buy a pair of shoes, or as a seller you get a real-time view at how much people are willing to pay for what you are selling.
Plus a bid/ask model lets you instantly buy or sell at the current bid/ask price, assuming you don’t want to wait for someone to match your offer.
StockX also utilizes this real-time pricing data to create a virtual “portfolio” for your sneakers. Essentially you can create a list of all the shoes you own, then track the aggregate value of your collection as prices on each shoe fluctuate up and down.
Like most sneaker resellers, StockX also has an authentication component where the seller ships their shoes to the startup for verification, after which they are sent to the buyer.
StockX will use this new funding to expand their sneaker business, but also to expand into new verticals for other limited-edition products, explained Josh Luber, co-founder and CEO of StockX. Two verticals Luber mentioned were watches and handbags, but it’s easy to see StockX eventually playing host to any item that is in high demand on the secondary market and would need verification before being delivered to the seller.
Besides expanding into new verticals, StockX says they are also soon planning on allowing users from foreign countries to start selling on the platform.
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