As promised, my recap of the Mocha drop is below. I needed an extra day to really digest this properly as it was not your typical release day.
Foot Sites (Foot Locker, Foot Action, Champs. East Bay)
As some of you heard me say over Zoom, the most disappointing thing for me for this drop was the fact FootLocker.com was given 10,000 pairs to drop online. Everyone including them knew the site was be a disaster and of course it was. I will say, they at least tried. They pushed out a new bot protection system that utilizes https://datadome.co. It was still a failure because the site was overloaded making it impossible to cart. If 10k pairs had went to JimmyJazz that would have been 100x better for everyone as they have real bot protection.
Bots on Foot Sites
The new bot protection on Foot Locker did work because all the bots out there were not prepared for it. No bots really worked and all of these people selling slots n shit like that had to refund everyone their money. This was a massive L for a lot of them on Saturday. It gives me a little joy to know bots didn’t work well. It makes me feel better seeing bot users complain and take Ls so the photo at the bottom will hopefully bring you a little more joy.
Foot Locker will add queue it soon
You may be familiar with queue it, its that little dude who walks across the screen slowly and you contemplate whether you should murder him because he moves so slow. Foot Locker plans to use this soon and when/if that does happen we will prepare you with the best ways to get through this queue as quickly as possible.
Demand/Stock
Second most disappointing thing for me was the stock. It is frustrating to know real photos/looks at this shoe leaked a year ago — IMO on purpose by Nike — for them to not have made a ton. A lot of IG accounts made all these rumours and BS about 1 million pairs which is non sense. Very few Jordan Brand drops are in this territory of stock level ((ie 11s) and everything else is less. I would peg these in the 150k-200k range but I don’t know for sure. This was a no brainer holiday shoe to me that should have been made in 500k+ territory but clearly that didn’t happen. Did Nike do such low stock on purpose? Or was this a miscalculation on demand? That I don’t know.
Shoe Palace
2000+ pairs were loaded but they ran into some sort of issue that delayed the release and made it very difficult to be prepared for. Unfortunately this went sideways but its good to know that SP can be a solid option with bot protection if they don’t run into potential issues.
JimmyJazz
I saw some confusion around this releases links and countdown page. It’s really important you keep an eye on #announcements during release morning to ensure we are all on the same page. You never want to be on a jimmy jazz countdown page before a release, thats the wrong place to be.
Monitors
I had a feeling this was coming but didn’t address it clearly enough the day before or on release day. So my apologies for not being blunt about this and preparing people for it. Shopify and stores themselves were anticipating a crazy day and they essentially stopped all monitor updates to help alleviate the demand on their servers. The best options from a shopify perspective were stores with early links to avoid this issue (JimmyJazz/ShoePalace/KITH etc).
Resale Prices
Prices are up $50+ depending on size. This feels like one of those releases that is so monumentally hyped for a “GR” that the price is higher than expected. I do still think a price drop is coming but my idea of seeing a $260 USD price seems unrealistic at this point but….
Canada, Asia and Europe have not release yet.
This drop has basically not released in major regions and countries around the world. Shipments are delayed and Nike wanted to drop it first in the US and with their partners here like Foot Locker. So there will be more chances (mostly raffles) to get a pair. This is another reason as to why you should wait before paying resell.
GS Pairs are Late
Please do not pay resale for these. So many stores/locations have not had pairs ship yet and inventory is behind. We will of course keep you appraised of anything that comes up but just know most pairs have not hit the market yet.
DTLR
They have still not dropped their pairs. We will keep an eye on this but at this point it would be best if they just held a raffle.
OVERALL
There is a large disconnect between consumer and retailer right now and it’s not getting better. A day where bots didnt work should not be a day where manual users have a hard time as well. I really hope bigger companies like FL consider shopify…the fact people are paying resell for a Yeezy 380 on Stockx that didn’t sell out at retail is insane to me. There is a problem and I hope SoleSavy can be at the forefront of changing this for the better.
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I’m going to spend some time this week thinking about how we can improve as a Company for releases like this. If you have any feedback please share it. I want to make sure we are all as a community on the same page and nothing is being overlooked.
