The War Against Sneaker Bots Peaked at the End of 2018

Or: how some poor dope paid $10,000 for a shoe
Robot on computer
Illustration by Megan Tatem

Around the time that dedicated collectors started pitching tents outside sneakers stores, winding so far down the block that police sometimes felt it necessary to shut the whole thing down, sneakers stopped being something we just put on our feet. In the last few decades, and especially the last five years, sneakers have become something else entirely: sought-after commodities that bring immediate returns to a buyer. They’re lottery tickets—and, as in actual lotteries, people have discovered ways to work the system to their favor. “Bots”—computer programs that can work their way to e-commerce checkouts faster than any human—are the most popular hack.

They’re also a great source of frustration for retailers, who prefer to sell sneakers to customers who won’t immediately flip them to the highest bidder—your local shoe store, after all, doesn’t get a dime of that increased resale price. Recently, though, retailers have been taking stronger measures to combat the phenomenon. The situation came to a head this month when the drop of several hyped shoes, like the Fear of God x Nike, the “Not for Resale” Jordan, and the Nike SB x Concepts “Purple Lobster,” coincided with the growing anger at the non-humans snapping them up. That’s how someone ended up paying $10,000 for sneaker that almost certainly won’t fetch that price on the aftermarket.

When online skate shop Berrics Canteen set up its release for the Purple Lobster last week, manager Anthony Reyes wanted to make sure the shoe would end with someone who actually wanted it. So he set a trap that only a bot would be stupid enough to fall for: a $10,000 product page for the shoe that was only meant to direct people to a lottery. No human would drop $10,000 on a shoe, Reyes reasoned, but a bot charged with only buying its target as quickly as possible wouldn’t be deterred. (We know these programs aren’t that bright—programmers can stop bots with CAPTCHAs, making them read curvy letters or picking out pictures with stop signs in them.) “I figured that in the off chance someone's card did go through, I'd give them a scare,” Reyes said. “In the product page's description it clearly said, ‘This is a placeholder. Enter the raffle below. (If your bot buys this, all QS sales are final.)’”

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And then, like clockwork, on the day of the drop, a purchase went through for the 10-grand shoe. Five minutes later, Reyes had an email.

“Just wondering if the price is correct?” the email read, according to Reyes. “I’m hoping it wasn’t a $10,000 purchase.”

Berrics Canteen ended up refunding the customer—after letting them dangle a little and having some fun at their expense on Instagram. In the end, Reyes acknowledged, $10,000 is life-changing money. “We knew that the time it would take to get the refund back would be a lesson in itself,” he said.

Reyes is far from alone in his crusade against bots. The same weekend he sold his $10,000 shoes, Istanbul sneaker shop 1290 Square Meters instituted a charming rule for its “Not for Resale” Jordan. Customers had to physically enter the store, and were required to wear the right shoe out. They could only come back to pick up the left sneaker the next day after creasing the first sneaker.

Stateside, Kith allegedly created a fake URL, leading bots looking for a pair of Off-White x Nike Prestos to buy “wheat” Air Jordan 1s. One customer’s bot copped 21 pairs, or $1,700 worth, of the shoes. A screenshot of the customer’s conversation with a Kith rep shows him threatening to lawyer up. Kith, unlike Berrics, did not offer a refund. (Kith did not respond to a request for comment.)

The great bot war might be coming to an end: sneaker companies and retailers are getting smarter about the way they sell their most hyped sneakers. Many boutiques post raffles for the biggest releases and the behemoth corporations are joining the war against bots, too. Nike uses its SNKRS app for many of the biggest drops, creating a short window of time where customers could enter a lottery for a shoe. For Yeezy drops, Adidas creates a virtual queue that’s harder for bots to game.

Still, sneaker flipping remains rampant. The sneaker reselling app Goat announced that it sold more Yeezys than Adidas earlier this year—a seeming mathematical impossibility, until you consider that these shoes are likely changing hands a number of times before they find a final owner. Charging someone 10 grand is a single small action made in hopes of getting away from that. “We genuinely just want people who are going to wear and skate the shoes to have a fair chance at buying them,” Reyes said.


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