How StockX is putting the ticks on sneakers – with Mark Wahlberg and Eminem’s help

What is StockX.com? Detroit-based StockX was founded by 40-year-old sneakerhead Josh Luber with Dan Gilbert, the billionaire founder of US company Quicken Loans, backed by Mark Wahlberg and Eminem.

It’s an online stock market for the kind of goods that are often awkward to come by – if you are after something specific – but have high liquidity: limited edition items such as handbags, watches, streetwear but, above all, sneakers. StockX claims that more than eight million people are already using its service every day, amounting to US$2 million a day in sales.

How does StockX work? 

The same as a traditional stock market, StockX uses real-time pricing data to provide a true value of its goods, allowing users of the site to buy or sell immediately at the lowest listed price or place a bid that individual sellers can accept, or place an ask that a buyer might accept later. Once a bid and an ask coincide, the deal is done automatically, with StockX taking a 9.5 per cent commission. Of course, that hard market data – price volatility, 52-week highs and lows – might just as well drive prices down as up.

Sneakers and data: a strange mix? 

Data is something Luber, who used to be a strategic consultant for IBM, is comfortable with: one of his previous start-ups was Campless, which would become the default online price guide for sneakers, then based on the analysis of data harvested from eBay; now, tens of millions of transactions on StockX generate his own data. As for sneakers? He owns more than 350 pairs.

Why trade sneakers this way?