How To Prepare For A Sneaker Release

There are a number of things you can do to limit the odds of taking an L on a hyped up sneaker or product release. Successfully checking out a product isn’t as easy as just using the monitors to select your size.

A few key basic things before we dive into the rest of this guide:

• Make sure your credit card of choice is not maxed out and has room for a new charge
• Change your computer time to show seconds if it already doesn’t. This way you can better prepare for an incoming drop and refresh 1 second before release to try and get an edge on others
• Set yourself an alarm 1-2 minutes before release even if you are awake. This is a back up reminder in case you get distracted by something else in your life.
• Login to your paypal account, even if you don’t plan on using it it can be a good idea to be logged in just in case a store makes it mandatory or changes there payment methods shortly before release.
• Be cautious of when you prepare for a release, site traffic spikes closer to a release. For ex. you don’t want to make login for a site 5 minutes before release as the site might crash and take too long.

Using this checklist will ensure that you are in complete control come release day, and it will definitely increase your chances at securing that product you are looking to cop.

The announcements channel is a great place to find information about upcoming releases. Most of the time, we will always post information about upcoming releases in the Slack. Here we usually let you know about stock, release times, and retailers that are releasing the product. On top of that, we will always post a release/raffle guide on the SoleSavy site. It’s important you get yourself familiar with each release so you don’t miss out, or even worse sleep through the release. We will post plenty of reminders through out the week.

When it comes to release day, the monitor is your best friend. In combination with setting up your pre-cart and signing into your account, the monitors will act as the best assistant in achieving success when the product drops. When you see that the product hits the monitor, click your size and you will be automatically booted to the check-out page.

One of the most important things that you should always make sure of before a release, is making sure you’re signed into your account with whatever retailer is about to drop the product you’re after. For example with Undefeated, any time you enter the check out process you will be asked to sign into your account to get to the check out page, unless you were already signed in. This can added several seconds to your process, thus resulting in you missing out on the product. SSENSE is also another retailer that requires you to sign into your account before checking out. So for safe measure, always make sure you’re signed in ahead of the release time. It also comes in handy if your pre-cart fails because you can quickly select your addresses etc.

There’s a variety of reasons where having various bookmarks for a website made in advance of a release is a good idea. But most importantly, anything that can save you seconds is worth doing. Examples of some bookmarks worth making:

• The website URL with no /password in the link for Shopify based storess that do password protect before a release
• /cart URL in case a site crashes after you cart
• /checkout URL in case a site crashes once you get to cart

Each URL can be different but most Shopify sites do follow the same cadence of SITENAME.com/checkout etc.

When preparing for a release that is not shopify based, it is good to do a test run through of their check out process to save the URL’s to your bookmarks. Supreme and SSENSE are two sites where having bookmarks can be helpful if the site is crashing.

Prior to each timed release you want to ensure the Chrome Autofill extension is working properly with the correct credit card set up. When doing your pre-cart you should also see your chrome autofill extension automatically fill in the payment screen. If it doesn’t do this you need to find out why its not working. Make sure to read our guide for tips on how to get set up!

Each retailer has a different check out process, and with that comes different payment options. There are a few things you should know about how to pay ahead of each release, so you can use it to your advantage. For most retailers, credit card is going to be your best option. It’s the quickest and the easiest.

However, if you’re on mobile some retailers like Haven, Undefeated, etc. have the option of Apple Pay or Google Pay, which is an incredibly fast method of payment as well.

SSENSE however uses cart holds if you pay with PayPal. So rather than try and process the payment with your card, hit PayPal checkout and be able to have some breathing room knowing your cart is on hold while you go through the check-out process.

Releases rarely go according to plan. This is why you should be prepared to try and purchase in multiple browsers in situations that include queues or heavy traffic loads.

For example, Holypop and OBD (Italy) tend to crash a lot so I will try to visit the site from Safari, Firefox and Chrome in the hopes that one will load before the other.

Another situation where multiple browsers can help is Shopify queues. Once you enter the queue for your main browser of choice it is a good idea to go to other browsers and also enter the queue in those. You never know when one might let you in before the other!

In this situation, specific to Shopify based high heat launches, you want to open a new tab in the same browser. Then add a new size to cart that is showing in-stock.

Once that is done go to the previous tab with the sold out size and remove everything in the URL path starting from /stock_problems and onwards.

Hit enter and it will reload the page with the new sizes you added to cart, hopefully now in stock.