Supreme, Bape, Visvim, Palace.

To most people, those are meaningless words, but to a growing number of ETHS students, these represent the products in an increasingly profitable business: reselling.

“Reselling is buying exclusive clothes or shoes from certain hyped brands, and selling them at inflated costs,” says senior Luis Sosa. “Often times, the resale price will be around two and a half times the retail cost.”

The resale scene has become so big that ETHS is hosting a Sneaker-con on Feb. 20, where sneaker enthusiasts can come to buy and sell shoes and other streetwear products being resold by other sneaker enthusiasts.

That formula is where all the profit comes from. If someone buys 10 Supreme shirts retail for $40 each, they just spent $400 dollars. However, they can then turn around and sell those shirts on a site like Grailed.com (among hundreds of others) for about $100 each. That means they gained a net profit of $600 dollars for just 10 shirts. The part that is the most enticing is that every single one of those shirts is a guaranteed sales.

“If it has Supreme’s signature box logo or Bape’s ape head on it, it’s going to sell every single time,” explains Sosa.

However, with these shoes and clothes being so hyped and limited, not everyone is going to get one. After all, if everyone could get the clothes they wouldn’t be worth anywhere near as much. That’s what keeps the prices so high.

Still, for those who are fast enough, reselling can prove to be incredibly lucrative. The community aspect and its ability to spread across the nation, set sneaker and streetwear reselling apart from most other hobbies.