For enterprising hustlers like Lou Mojica, shopping is a full-time job.
Rather than schlep to an office, the Lower East Side resident wakes up on weekday mornings and treks to high-end streetwear shops, then stands in line to snag the latest release, or “drop.” Last Monday, the 32-year-old rushed over to Kith on Lafayette Street, and waited for three hours to load up on duds from the store’s newly released, limited-supply design collaboration with Nobu, the Japanese restaurant group. To his delight, he picked up a $160 hoodie and a $65 T-shirt.
Then, it was time for the turnaround. Usually, Mojica posts newly purchased wares on his @louthedon Instagram account, which currently has a modest, but enthusiastic, 2,867 followers. But on Monday, he already had a buyer on the hook who was willing to pay a premium for the Nobu-themed loot
“I made almost $200,” says Mojica, a streetwear lover himself, who used to save up his childhood allowance to buy hot sneakers and still occasionally keeps his hands on an item or two. “How can I complain?”
Cash-strapped fashion fans are turning to the underground streetwear market to make ends meet. Headed by savvy brands such as Supreme and Kith, the streetwear look blends elements of hip-hop, sportswear and skateboarding and attracts a uniquely rabid following, with fans known as “hypebeasts.” These stylish stans track highly-anticipated drops and will pay massive markups for limited-supply items. Locals with access to NYC flagships are turning the proximity to their advantage, stocking up and then immediately selling for higher prices to hungry shoppers around the world.
Mojica’s daily schedule includes entering online raffles, which provide eligibility to buy forthcoming sneakers, and camping out at popular boutiques. He’s held a number of retail jobs but currently, he supports himself through reselling, covering his monthly bills, which include $900 in rent, $395 for his cellphone and $500 in child support. He says he also has windfalls: In 2018, after camping out in Miami for two days straight, he sold $3,500 worth of wallets, belts, T-shirts and bags from the Supreme x Louis Vuitton collab for a whopping $12,000.
“I do fairly well for myself,” he says. “I’m able to get by . . . I got my kids’ expenses and my rent — just like anyone else.”
It’s a point of pride that doesn’t seem to stick well with the brands that sell these styles.
Supreme’s website explicitly prohibits bulk buys, limiting customers to one product style per person, and one overall transaction per day. Both Supreme and Kith’s terms also condemn resale. (A representative for Kith declined to comment for this story; neither Supreme nor Bape returned requests for comment.)
But that doesn’t stop top resellers, who say that the work of staying informed about streetwear is as demanding as any fast-paced desk job.
“It gets in the way of everything,” says 36-year-old Washington Heights reseller Andre Arias, who counts 47,000 followers on his @solestreetsneakerco Instagram account. “A lot of information comes on Instagram on what’s the next drop. I’m constantly scouring to make sure I find stuff.”
His standing commitments include waiting outside of Supreme on Thursdays and showing up at the Nike store every Saturday to grab pairs of the latest Jordan sneakers. While Arias is hesitant to share how much money he can net in a single month, he says he easily covers all his monthly expenses: $1,300 in rent, a roughly $500 family cellphone plan, and $250 in takeout meals for his wife and five kids. After that, there’s still room for perks, such as the eight-night trip he took to the Bahamas in August.
“I really went all out,” Arias says of his tropical getaway. “I couldn’t do that without reselling.”
Resellers say that success in this space isn’t about luck; rather, it requires constant education and financial savvy.
“You need to know your products,” says 30-year-old Luke Fracher, the co-founder and co-owner of Round Two — a national chain of boutiques that sell mostly streetwear, both contemporary and vintage. “It’s really a matter of being smart about where you put your money.”
Often, Arias says, that means snapping up apparel with celebrity cachet. For instance, the September-released “Cloud White” sneaker from Kanye West’s Yeezy Adidas line, which retailed for $140, now nets as much as $314, according to StockX, an online marketplace for the resale of streetwear, watches and handbags. Even better, Travis Scott’s May-released Jordan 1 high top, which originally sold for $175 per pair, can now earn a seller up to $3,000 on the StockX site.
Why the huge jump?
“It’s a supply and demand thing,” says Fracher. “It’s something a lot of people want and there’s not a lot of them [being made].”
But that’s an uneasy balance. Between Instagram and StockX, the community of resellers is growing, which means prices often fluctuate.
That’s why Arias is holding on to his part-time job at a window-treatment company, where he works 25 hours per week. Similarly, the 26-year-old South Bronx reseller and artist Ivan Jines, who goes professionally by the name Zane, has begun selling more of his canvas paintings (from $350) to help offset the cost of buying art supplies. He also uses resale proceeds to pay off his $250 monthly cellphone bill and to support his mother.
“I try to help my mom as much as possible with the bills,” says Jines. “If she can’t do it, then I’ll try to provide that for her, because life happens. She took really good care of me, so I want to give back.”
But no matter the purity of their intentions, resellers wrestle with negative perceptions: namely, that they’re just clothing scalpers.
“There is sort of a nasty, scumbaggy side to it,” says Arias. When it comes to waiting in lines, he says, resellers can arrive early and populate the lines with their friends to grab as much as possible (getting around the one product per buyer rule), leaving little to none for people shopping for themselves.
But he doesn’t let it bother him too much. “It’s a quick, [legal] way to make a buck,” he says. “And sometimes that buck is pretty good.”
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