The sneaker resale platform, Stadium Goods, recently announced in an email to their sellers that were closing their New York Soho store in January 2025.
Founded back in 2015 by John McPheters and Jed Stiller, Stadium Goods pioneered the rise of the sneaker & streetwear resale market. The resale platform received financial backing from LVMH in 2018 and then was acquired by Farfetch in 2019 for $250 million. Farfetch, who narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 2023 were bailed out at the last minute by the South Korean online retailer Coupang. With its own in-house sneaker authenticating process, Stadium Goods opened their New York store back in 2015. With retail (or should we say resale) shelves of some of the most sought after shrink wrapped sneakers, the store acted as a community hub for sneaker enthusiasts and sellers to drop of their sneakers. A mecca for New York’s ever growing sneaker fans, the Stadium Goods New York Soho store will sadly be closing its shutters in January 2025 as confirmed by the resale platform in a recent email.
In a direct email to sellers Stadium Goods SVP Michael Daniel said “As we focus on growing our digital channels, we’ve made the decision to close the retail store at 47 Howard Street in SoHo in January 2025, we expect minimal impact on your business from this change next year. We will be looking into new options for the future of the Stadium Goods retail experience, so stay tuned exciting updates are coming your way in the new year.”
Moving forward it is expected the company will look to refocus on its e-commerce business which currently generates the majority of the resale platform’s revenue. Stadium Goods also closed its Chicago bricks and mortar store back in 2023 combined with staff layoffs in a bid to reduce operating costs. After the huge bubble of the sneaker resale market we saw in the late 2010’s it was only a matter of time before the “hype” started to slow down. Changing sneaker trends and a huge tightening on wallets (and purses) have been detrimental to the sneaker resale market. That’s not to say there’s not a demand for resale sneakers. Far from it, the sneaker resale market is estimated to be worth around $10 billion and expected to grow to $30 billion by 2030. The problem the sneaker resale platforms are having was caused by growth on growth (the resale bubble) followed by a global pandemic, increased operating costs, a cost of living crisis & the fact the average sneaker consumer is probably not spending the same amount of pounds, dollars or euros as they were on sneakers 5 years ago. Also don’t forget to subscribe to Sneaker Jobs & follow @sneaker_jobs to keep up to date with all the latest industry news.
