ORLANDO, Fla. – Would you buy a pair of sneakers for $83,000?
One customer was willing to pay up for the Jordan 1 Doernbecher. The shoe is rare, with only 17 created by Nike and auctioned off.
“Every year, Nike does a collaboration with the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon and they raise money for terminally ill children. Every year, they let a child design their own sneaker. That year was a very commemorative year when they took 10 years of this collaboration and put them into one shoe,” said Impossible Kicks CEO John Mocadlo.
Impossible Kicks is a shoe resale store, one of which is at the Mall at Millenia in Orlando.
“My brother was always the sneaker reseller, selling sneakers out the back of my parents car and I thought it was silly,” said Mocadlo.
That silly idea now a multi-million dollar company, with 18 locations and hundreds of employees across the U.S. Orlando serves as the company’s larges market.
“Because it’s a big tourism market ... so we have people from every walk of life, every country and they come here and we all speak the same language,” said Mocadlo.
The language of shoes. Many of the shoes are variations of Nike Jordans, in just about every color and design. They carry Louis Vuitton Nike Air Force 1′s on resale for $6,500, but there are shoes in the store ranging from $100 to tens of thousands of dollars.
“On average, we keep about 1,400 pairs in the store at all times, ranging from Diors, Louis Vuittons, all the way down to Dunks and Pandas. You name it, we have it all,” said Senior Manager Aslma Mohamed.
Shoes in the resale store go for double or triple the retail value up to tens of thousands of dollars more because the worth is based on accessibility.
“It’s the scarcity of the shoe, and it’s how many that are made and demand of the shoe,” said Mocadlo. “We get them, unfortunately, first before everybody, so people can’t get their hands on them. Then we sell them back to the public.”
Some rare shoes, like the Doernbechers, were bought from sneakerheads looking to cash in on their shoe collection.
Mocadlo said shoe resale has become a big business, and even you may be able to get in the game.
“Anything that was bought in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s -- f they’re in great shape, if they’ve never been worn, you might have a treasure in your closet.”
Click here for the The StockX Buyer’s Guide to Resale. Click here to find out the value of your sneakers.