Stadium Goods opens Soho flagship

The resale market for sneakers has a new friend in Soho. On October 16, Stadium Goods, an online consignment shop which features hard-to-find, limited, and special edition styles of sneakers, will be opening a 3,000-square-foot store on Howard Street. Some of the brands that the store are carrying include Air Jordans, Nike Air Max 95s, and Adidas.

Certain sneakers are so rare that they have four figure price tags.These are price tags virtually unheard of for sneakers that weren't intended to be luxury goods items.

The brand was founded by Jed Stiller, a former employee of Team Epiphany, an entertainment and hospitality company, and John McPheters who used to work at Flight Club, a sneaker retail boutique with locations in New York and Los Angeles. Stiller and McPheters are partners at a venture capital firm, which is how they got the funding to start this business. Yu-Ming Wu, founder of sneakernews.com and Sneaker Con, has been brought on as Chief Marketing Officer.

The trio creates the perfect storm for helping drive Stadium Goods to success. With their various areas of expertise, Stadium Goods is poised for success.

Stadium Goods opens store on Howard Street in Soho

Their new store at Howard Street contains two entrances. At the 47 Howard Street entrance, shoppers can purchase an assortment of never worn, consigned sneakers from Nike, Adidas, and Air Jordan. The most rare and expensive styles are housed in a trophy case.

Around 3,000 styles will be available for sale when the store launches, with the Air Jordan 1 in black and the Infrared Jordan 6 expected to be the most highly coveted styles.

On the 307 Canal Street side of the store consignors have sneakers authenticated and priced. Consignors receive 80 percent of the profit when sneakers sell. In addition to their brick-and-mortar store, Stadium Goods is also launching a mobile e-commerce app. According to McPheters, mobile sales are expected to account for 35 percent of sales.

Mobile and e-commerce are very major points of focus for the business. "I think we will do very well in-store, but a healthy business today does the majority of its transactions online,” McPheters said to WWD.

In addition to sneakers, the brand is also hoping to expand their apparel offerings. While the sneaker culture market was once very small, it has grown into a mass market enterprise. Stadium Goods has found a way to capitalize on this, positioning their business to be successful, although the proof of their success shall be seen when they open their doors on Friday, October 16.

photo:afew-good-things.com