// retail disruption

Source: Nick Engvall

Sneaker retail collapsed when secondary market data—resale prices, demand signals, release mechanics—became more predictive than traditional wholesale forecasting. The scarcity-based markup model that had sustained the category broke. Brands and retailers who built systems around this data advantage, like SNKRS' algorithm-driven drops, captured the value. Everyone else held inventory of shoes that secondary markets had already repriced downward. The formula wasn't new, but applying it to a category built on artificial scarcity exposed how fragile traditional retail margins were once demand became legible in real time.