Alright, let’s break this down as best as I can from the conversations I have had the past 24 hours.
Bots
Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat, this was not an issue with bots. This doesn’t make anyone feel better who missed out but I am reading chatter from bots and slot providers who are pissed saying the drop is horrible. This is a stock issue.
Stock Levels
I was told this was pushing towards 1 million pairs worldwide but man, it did not feel like that at all. It felt more like 100k pairs today, things were clearly scaled back over the past week. Finish Line went from 6K pairs down to 1600 pairs. I’m positive the same thing happened at other stores but I dont have visibility to confirm. It is very much possible what we saw drop today was 30% of what was expected.
What Nike is Saying
Their formal message to stores (per the emails I read) was that the manufacturing problem is from late October and early November. The pair I have has a production date of early September, they were making these for a long as time and they are saying it’s only a fraction of their production available.
What Stores are Saying
They are straight up freaking out lol I fielded multiple texts on Thursday and Friday about what they should do and how bad do I think it is and I told everyone to chill…no one listened to me. I know stores who got 500+ pairs that straight up didnt say anything and just are waiting to figure out what to do. It’s madness and I think this feeling carried into all the other releases today. I have not seen this yet but I can see Nike having said they would take back all pairs and stores not wanting any risk so they are doing that.
WTF Happens Next?
Honestly, I don’t know. DTLR and SP still have not dropped, I’m sure many mores are holding back as well. Does Nike just send these to outlets? Do they destroy them? I’m not sure. I hope it goes to outlets because I think this is blown out of proportion. I have reached out to every store I know and asked them to send me a photo of the worst pair they have and then I’m going to decide if I buy them or not.
Resell?
My recommendation right now is to stay away from resell. The price is inflated. I would only be okay paying resell if I paid like $240 USD. There is still too many variable in play to buy a pair pushing $300 USD in market price. StockX has told their authentication team to deny any pink pairs which is good but will also lead to a lot of cancels sales perhaps.
Overall….that was one of the weirdest drops I’ve ever been through. We will be tracking this diligently over the coming days and weeks. so stay tuned. I wish the drop was better, this was a let down for sure.
