What’s good, family! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear thread. Thank you so much for rocking with me today.
Obviously, the big news of the day is Nike adding counterfeiting and false advertising to their lawsuit against StockX. The company apparently purchased sneakers from StockX and found 4 fake models in their purchases. We don’t know how many purchases they made or how long it took them to identify the fakes. All we know is they say they found fakes.
Going to dive in on this in Friday’s KYW and we’re also doing a quick video on the Special Delivery YT channel with my thoughts. But I want to let y’all sound off here, too. What are our thoughts on this?
Personally, I don’t know if this is a battle StockX really wants to take on. What do you think? Let me know something in the comments!
1) Nike also definitely partially to blame by juicing demand while also creating artificial scarcity — only to throw up their hands and say “there are replicas spreading into the market.” Anything to stop StockX from selling shitty NFTs though, I guess?
2) Going to get crucified for this one (and rightfully so) BUT… as somebody who buys things at resale exclusively to wear, I came to a peace about ending up with secret reps some time ago with “if they’re good enough to get through the authenticators, I’m probably not going to catch it myself, so ignorance is bliss.”
Dog. I think about your second point ALL THE TIME. Like, my collection isn't anything too crazy at this point and I get most of my stuff from retailers — not a huge secondary market guy. But the few I've actually gotten from StockX and GOAT and all that? I feel like it's actually likely that there's some fakes weeded in there somewhere.
I feel like that's just the reality of being a sneakerhead these days. This is what we've got to kind of deal with.
All of it is messy. Nike is saying StockX is selling fakes. StockX is saying that Nike employees/execs sell through StockX. Neither of those points deal with the original point: NFTs. Nike is doing what they can to protect their new NFT investment, and they don’t want any market confusion from StockX. I get it, but all the rest of this is again, messy.
That's a great point. This is Nike intentionally muddying the waters here to make StockX seem like a sham of an operation and further validate their claims.
But...I don't think it makes a lot of sense to? Now, I'm no lawyer so I can't for sure say there's no connection here. But the closest thing I could think in terms of relevance is that maybe the sneakers connected to the Vault NFT could be fakes, which would cause harm to Nike's name/product? I'm not sure. Feels like a reach to me. But regardless, as you said Rick, this is all messy.
Nike’s QC is so bad lately their own releases could be flagged for being reps.
Chris (Nightwing2303) did a whole video on this, plus he’s pointed out each time Jordan releases a pair where the left and right shoes were wildly asymmetrical.
This isn't the point, but I don't see anyone to root for here. This feels like a walking, litigating "Let them fight" meme come to life. There are many aspects of how each does their business I'd like to see change, so if this whole mess somehow benefits consumers, cool. I'm not getting my hopes up though. Rooting for both to get hurt coming out of this feels petty and vindictive, but at this point, meh, that doesn't bother me much.
I think this may lead to people asking “Are you a Nike certified authenticator?”
But overall, it is more than just StockX. This is about ownership and full autonomy. If the judge allows the fake shoes as evidence, this could be major and beyond just Nike vs StockX.
A couple thoughts:
1) Nike also definitely partially to blame by juicing demand while also creating artificial scarcity — only to throw up their hands and say “there are replicas spreading into the market.” Anything to stop StockX from selling shitty NFTs though, I guess?
2) Going to get crucified for this one (and rightfully so) BUT… as somebody who buys things at resale exclusively to wear, I came to a peace about ending up with secret reps some time ago with “if they’re good enough to get through the authenticators, I’m probably not going to catch it myself, so ignorance is bliss.”
Dog. I think about your second point ALL THE TIME. Like, my collection isn't anything too crazy at this point and I get most of my stuff from retailers — not a huge secondary market guy. But the few I've actually gotten from StockX and GOAT and all that? I feel like it's actually likely that there's some fakes weeded in there somewhere.
I feel like that's just the reality of being a sneakerhead these days. This is what we've got to kind of deal with.
All of it is messy. Nike is saying StockX is selling fakes. StockX is saying that Nike employees/execs sell through StockX. Neither of those points deal with the original point: NFTs. Nike is doing what they can to protect their new NFT investment, and they don’t want any market confusion from StockX. I get it, but all the rest of this is again, messy.
That's a great point. This is Nike intentionally muddying the waters here to make StockX seem like a sham of an operation and further validate their claims.
But...I don't think it makes a lot of sense to? Now, I'm no lawyer so I can't for sure say there's no connection here. But the closest thing I could think in terms of relevance is that maybe the sneakers connected to the Vault NFT could be fakes, which would cause harm to Nike's name/product? I'm not sure. Feels like a reach to me. But regardless, as you said Rick, this is all messy.
Down with the resale market
Nike’s QC is so bad lately their own releases could be flagged for being reps.
Chris (Nightwing2303) did a whole video on this, plus he’s pointed out each time Jordan releases a pair where the left and right shoes were wildly asymmetrical.
This isn't the point, but I don't see anyone to root for here. This feels like a walking, litigating "Let them fight" meme come to life. There are many aspects of how each does their business I'd like to see change, so if this whole mess somehow benefits consumers, cool. I'm not getting my hopes up though. Rooting for both to get hurt coming out of this feels petty and vindictive, but at this point, meh, that doesn't bother me much.
I think you're exactly right in this. I'm rooting for an outcome that benefits US first. I don't care what happens to either side, really.
I think this may lead to people asking “Are you a Nike certified authenticator?”
But overall, it is more than just StockX. This is about ownership and full autonomy. If the judge allows the fake shoes as evidence, this could be major and beyond just Nike vs StockX.
Hadn't even thought about this, Lance. That would be a fascinating outcome. SO MANY of these secondary marketspaces might be in trouble.
100% agreed.