Jeremy Brown doesn't just like sneakers - it goes further than that. He's a sneakerhead, with a clear ethical stance, and he's not alone. But will scalpers ruin the good clean fun?
Shoes have always carried a blend of function and fashion, but it's only recently people have started seeing sneakers as a potential investment - unworn, that is, in the box.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Some analysts have said the global sneaker resale market will grow from about $6 billion a year in 2016 to $30 billion by 2030, which puts us right in the middle of a boom in what finance analysts Cowen Equity Research called an "alternative asset class".
Shoes as investment assets might sound silly but the law of supply and demand isn't always governed by rationality.
And when people are paying exorbitant amounts for NFTs - Non-Fungible Tokens, the right to "own" a work of art that exists only online - spending money on actual leather, nubuck, rubber and paint, that you can wear, maybe isn't so silly.
Jeremy Brown is a sneakerhead who actually wears his shoes. The southern Sydney-based sales rep and photographer estimates his collection extends past 100 pairs.
He can't name a favourite pair but the Nike Air Command (made famous by Billy Hoyle in White Men Can't Jump) is up there, Air Jordan model 3s are in high rotation, customised Nike Dunk low-tops, "ugly" Adidas Yeezys, and there's a special place for his Reebok Shaqnosis boots. But unlike Billy Hoyle, for Brown it's not about the money.
If these names mean nothing to you, chances are you'll never be a sneakerhead. You may never be able to identify basketball players by their footwear. Much of the sneaker craze can be traced to basketball, hip-hop and street culture, and the boom in the early 90s when these spread from the US to Australia.
More than anything it was driven by Michael Jordan, the basketball sensation who changed the game and the marketing of shoes. And it is the Jordans - particularly the original model 1 - which are consistently in the most demand.
"I guess this is my vice," Brown said. "Everyone's got to have something. So this is mine. I've always been interested in fashion and fashion design. I've always been intrigued by self-expression.
"Some of my friends say 'what the **** are you doing collecting shoes?' I do me. I don't dress conservative. If I'm in plain clothes it's generally blacks.
Otherwise I'm in I guess you could call them breakfast shirts - a nice flowing short sleeve collared shirt with patterns and vibrant colours. I just match the sneakers to that.
"My collection's varied in size. I've gone in phases, in peaks and troughs. I've had massive amounts, then I've pared it down to five, 10, 15 pairs, then back up again. But I've never paid over for a pair of shoes."
No doubt the numbers can get silly. People have been known to spend more than $1000 on a pair of "kicks" that, because of their "value", are unlikely to be worn often. And the prices go far higher than that once a rare pair hits the resale market.
In Australia sneaker resale operates mostly through social media pages, but there are several dedicated firms operating from the US - one, StockX, was recently valued at more than $4 billion.
Jay Mijares and his friends started a Facebook page to talk about and swap sneakers, but found it became so popular - nearing 50,000 members - they decided to take it further, establishing the Kickz Stand series of travelling shoe events, which include shoe sales, dance competitions and other pop culture collectable trading.
They have just staged one in Sydney, Melbourne is next, and Wollongong and Auckland are on the horizon. Mijares, a bank IT manager, remembers growing up in Sydney's west when people would get mugged for their shoes - perhaps the beginning of sneaker fetishism in the late 1980s.
"A lot of the culture came with music and dancing as well - if you're dancing, you've got to look fresh," he said.
"Some of them hold value, especially if they're originals from the 1980s like Jordans - or big collaborations, if the artist has passed away.
"A lot of people like the O.G. [original] sneakersheads look down at the newer players in the game. But the young kids line up for them ... as long as they're not going out hurting people, they're finding a way to make money, I'm OK, 100 per cent."
For resale value, a few key attributes will elevate a shoe to elite status: a classic historical point in shoe development (Air Jordan models 1, 3), a celebrity design collaboration (Travis Scott, Dior, SpongeBob Square Pants, Jean-Michel Basquiat, even ice cream company Ben and Jerry's), the death of the designer (Kobe Bryant, Basquait, Nike's Virgil Abloh) or an end to production.
The rarity of the "colourway" (colour scheme) also pushes a shoe into the upper echelons - but if a shoe can blend a few of these it can really make the bank. See Nike's Kobe Bryant series 6 "Protro", Grinch apple colour, a year after Bryant died. They'll set you back up to $1000 on resale sites and have become a status symbol even for professional basketballers.
Brown agrees the emotional appeal of shoes from one's youth, and the pull of nostalgia, add an emotional element.
"It's going to drive demand once the products no longer produced or readily available," he said. "You're always going to have people who want a piece of something they remember - a pair of shoes, a T-shirt, a trading card, a moment in time - and want to feel connected to that because that particular reference is special to them."
There's only one shoe for Shellharbour collector Reece Limond, 27: the Nike Air Max TN. He operates the AU Sneaker Plugs Facebook page, trading only in TNs, and he tracks down shoes for people who have special requests. He has a job (in a sports store) so he's not selling TNs for the money. It's a passion project a decade old.
"They take me back, in time," he said. "People walk past who know shoes and they appreciate the style, the condition. I alternate the shoes I wear at work so when people see that, they know there's a passion behind it, 100 per cent."
"I also really like the way the TN community gets together and names the models. There's 10,000 people on a Facebook page and we all get together and name the shoes."
Too often, normal people have no chance of actually buying a sought-after model when it "drops", as resellers either line up with several friends and buy dozens of pairs at an in-store release, or use "bots" to scoop up all the pairs online - then turn them around at inflated prices.
"I think it's destroying it," Brown said. "People are opportunistic and calling something a job when it has no legitimacy whatsoever. It's a cancer on the culture.
"Australia's made it illegal for ticket scalping. This is the exact same thing, just with different products.
"At the end of the day, it's a luxury item. You don't need it to survive. If you don't have a particular pair of shoes you just get on with life, right?"
Ben Langford
We rely on your news tips, so please don't be shy to let us know what's going on.
