Many people have been asking the same question: Is StockX Legit? on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and in your group chat? We’re here to help fill in the missing pieces. Let’s find the final answer.
Whether or not you’re a fan of retail sales, there’s no denying the significant role it plays in the world of running shoes. In fact, this $6 billion USD industry is projected to grow by an impressive 25% by 2025.
It’s also no surprise that secondary sneaker markets like StockX are becoming increasingly popular, even as numerous online platforms continue to expand. According to The NPD Group, this marketplace accounts for a remarkable 29% of all sneakers purchased online.
But what’s driving its current popularity? Why do 60% of Gen Z men turn to StockX for their favorite sneakers and streetwear? And most importantly, is StockX legit? Let’s dive in and guide you through the answers in this blog post.
Key Takeaway
- StockX is renowned as the first and largest online secondary marketplace for buying and selling authentic products, especially sneakers.
- The platform employs a rigorous two-step verification process to ensure that every product is 100% genuine.
- With this system in place, you can trust that StockX is a legitimate and reliable platform for buying and selling your items.
So, What is StockX, Actually?
StockX, as mentioned earlier, is a secondary e-commerce platform designed for buying and selling sneakers. Founded in 2015 in Detroit, Michigan, by Chris Kaufman, Greg Schwartz, Josh Luber, and Dan Gilbert, it was initially branded as The Stock Market of Things.
Six years later, the resale marketplace has grown significantly, employing nearly 1,000 people across 197 countries and territories worldwide. Beyond sneakers, StockX has expanded its offerings to include premium designer bags, watches, and electronic components.
In a report from last year, it was revealed that 71% of sneaker collectors preferred StockX over other buying and selling platforms. This highlights its popularity and trustworthiness, especially among younger audiences. Additionally, StockX ranks among the top ten most popular marketplaces for upper-income Gen Z males, attracting millions of monthly visitors. Such statistics further support the credibility and legitimacy of StockX as a trusted platform.
How does StockX Actually Work?
StockX is famously known as the world’s first stock exchange for tangible items, particularly sneakers. Whether you’re looking to add something special to your collection be it streetwear, shoes, or other collectibles StockX makes it simple. All you need to do is head to the platform, place a bid for an item at your desired price, or purchase it instantly at the lowest listed price.
Once your payment is processed, the seller is required to ship the product directly to StockX. Here, the item undergoes a thorough authentication process by StockX’s team of experts. After verification, your purchase is securely packaged and shipped to your doorstep, complete with a distinctive green StockX-branded tag to guarantee its authenticity and quality.
Selling on StockX is just as easy. Sellers can list items for sale at their chosen price or accept the highest bid instantly. Once an item is purchased, the seller must ship it to StockX within two business days. The StockX team then verifies the product’s authenticity. If it meets their strict standards, the item is sent to the buyer. If not, it’s returned to the seller. This process ensures transparency and reliability for both buyers and sellers on the platform.
What is the StockX Authentication Procedure?
You might be curious about how StockX’s verification process actually works. StockX operates six authentication centers worldwide, where every item undergoes a strict, multi-step verification process to ensure that what you’re purchasing is 100% authentic.
To start, StockX only allows specific categories of products on its marketplace. Simply put, every item bought or sold on StockX must be brand new, unworn, and undamaged. Once an item is sent to StockX, its materials are meticulously inspected using a checklist of over 100 data points. This process is also applied to the packaging to ensure every detail is authentic and intact.
While counterfeit manufacturers may be skilled at imitating sneaker designs, StockX leverages advanced deep learning algorithms to support their authentication process. These algorithms help detect even the smallest discrepancies, ensuring that each product meets their high standards. Additionally, all included accessories and extras must be present before the item can be approved for delivery.
According to StockX, their rigorous process, combined with customer trust, results in an impressive 99.95% accuracy rate. If a counterfeit item is identified, StockX logs it into a centralized database that is updated daily. This system keeps their authentication team informed and consistently ahead of counterfeit trends, further enhancing their ability to maintain the platform’s integrity.
How Long Would It Take For StockX To Deliver?
StockX strives to process all orders within 7 to 12 days, excluding weekends and public holidays, to ensure you receive your items as quickly as possible. However, there may occasionally be slight delays due to factors like the global pandemic or other unforeseen circumstances.
Several other factors can contribute to delays as well. One key element is the seller’s ability to promptly ship the product to one of StockX’s verification hubs. Shipping times can vary, affecting the overall order timeline.
Additionally, authenticators may take extra time to thoroughly inspect certain products if they need additional assurance. This may involve further testing and checks to guarantee the item’s authenticity.
With this in mind, there’s no need to worry about the legitimacy of StockX. As you’ve seen, their process is carefully designed to ensure you receive only genuine products. So now, you have your answer StockX is indeed legitimate.
Could You Cancel A StockX Order?
Once your order on StockX has been accepted, it cannot be canceled. This policy is in place to prevent buyers and sellers from backing out of deals, ensuring the platform remains active, genuine, and reliable.
However, if you find yourself in a unique situation where you’re unable to complete your purchase or sale, there’s no need to panic. You can contact StockX directly and explain your situation. While it’s rare, StockX may be able to cancel the payment or assist you in other ways, depending on the circumstances.
So, Is StockX Legit?
Let’s begin with the basics. One of the main reasons StockX is considered a secure marketplace is its robust authentication process, which is widely regarded as one of its greatest achievements. StockX employs over 300 qualified and experienced authenticators who work alongside nearly 200 supporting team members, including knowledge administrators and quality control specialists.
It’s important to note that their evaluation process doesn’t solely focus on identifying counterfeit items; it also covers a wide range of potential issues, such as incorrect sizing or missing accessories. StockX’s validators ensure that products meet the highest standards by checking for any production defects, confirming that the packaging is intact, verifying that all components are included, and ensuring the item is the correct size. This thorough process guarantees that the items you receive from StockX are authentic.
This attention to detail results in an exceptionally high level of quality assurance. And if you happen to receive an item that doesn’t meet StockX’s strict quality standards, don’t worrytheir customer service team is dedicated to resolving any issues and ensuring you receive the correct product. With StockX standing behind every order, you can rest assured that the platform is both secure and trustworthy.
As you take into account the greater context of shoe fraud’s historical past, this is a huge upgrade actually. StockX, as you now know, was founded in 2016 with the goal of providing transparency and credit to the tumultuous and ambiguous shoe second-hand market.
If you are a sneakerhead, you might know that purchasing shoes was a dangerous venture back then. In particular, frauds were popular, counterfeits were prevalent, and purchasers had very little security against bogus purchases. Empirical analysis even showed that the fake shoe market would be worth $450 million in 2020. The sale of counterfeit shoes, as times goes by, has already become prevalent and pervasive.
Outside of StockX, the second-hand sneaker market can be risky, especially for newcomers who may fall victim to counterfeit sneakers. Each year, an estimated $500 million worth of fakes are sold in the market. However, buying and selling on StockX stands apart from this dangerous environment as it offers a distinctive, secure, and legitimate experience. StockX revolutionized the market by adding an extra layer of authentication on top of the typical transactional process.
By acting as an intermediary between sellers and buyers, StockX ensures that each product sold on its global platform is verified for authenticity. This shift has created a new world where counterfeit shoes are no longer commonplace. StockX has made purchasing sneakers safer and more secure than ever before by making authentication a central part of the customer experience.
StockX began as a sneaker marketplace over six years ago, and during that time, it has honed its authentication process. In that period, more than 35 million items have been verified, allowing StockX to continuously learn and improve its verification methods with each transaction.
StockX’s expertise has expanded well beyond sneakers to include a wide range of products. Since 2017, StockX has been verifying clothing, accessories, and various collectibles, and just two years later, they added playing cards to their offerings.
To ensure the authenticity of these diverse products, StockX employs a highly skilled team of validators who use a comprehensive, three-pronged approach. This innovative method combines technical expertise, hands-on human verification, and advanced AI technology. Their team is supported by a vast database of patented intelligence, accumulated from years of real-world experience.
This extensive dataset, which includes data from over one billion active users, enables StockX’s validators to thoroughly assess the authenticity of every item sold on their platform. By applying this cutting-edge approach, StockX has largely eliminated the once-common risk of purchasing counterfeit products, ensuring that the science of verification is continually refined and optimized for an exceptional customer experience.
StockX Ranking
In fact, you don’t even have to give yourself the benefit of the point in terms of believing StockX and its authentication procedure. Millions of folks all over the globe have placed their trust in their platform since its inception and got to vote with their pocketbooks.
Nowadays, StockX has become one of the most important global marketplaces for cultural context. You can understand it like this. Since StockX is famous all over the world, people from different regions can sell and buy items on this marketplace. Each month, more than 30 million buyers visit StockX, and folks from all over the globe make purchases on the site.
Andreessen Horowitz, a top venture investment firm, listed StockX as the top 5 best customer marketplace this year. What’s more, StockX is even ranked as the top marketplace for clothing and accessories, shoes, as well as other current culture goods.
According to questionnaires, Gen Z buyers consider StockX to be their preferred secondary e-commerce platform among various online platforms out there. What’s more, they even consider StockX as one of their favorite sites on the whole. StockX is, in reality, much more popular among these young folks than several of the globe’s most well-known brand names. More than half (in particular, 60%) of men Gen Z sneaker collectors utilize StockX to purchase or sell sneakers.
11 Facts About StockX, Its Shoes, Authentication, Shipping, and Returns
As lots of you might not know, Foot Locker made an investment of $100 million in selling marketplace GOAT in 2019. Accordingly, it is the biggest financial deal to date. Even so, StockX is regarded as the industry leader. And you know, below are a few of the purposes behind as well as little-known facts about StockX, its shoes, authentication, shipping, and returns.
As you might know, the shoe resale marketplace is rapidly expanding. In particular, it had an addressable market of $6 billion in 2019. In addition, it is expected to develop to $30 billion by 2030. In 2021, the leading silhouettes on StockX were always the Air Jordan 4, Yeezy 350, Air Force 1, Nike Dunk, and Air Jordan 1.
Generally speaking, StockX was widely known as the very first shoe resale marketplace to be valued at a billion dollars. Particularly, it accomplished this in just under 3 years and currently sells more than a billion US dollars of merchandise every year. Therefore, the prominence of street fashion and StockX’s formation of a dependable resale platform at which items are verified minimizes the danger of fake items or bogus payments. Accordingly, StockX is now worth $3.8 billion.
StockX has received investments from a number of high shareholders, such as the CEO as well as the Founder of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, and GV. As lots of you might know, they used to be famous as Google Ventures.
With more than 125,000 item listings from more than 500 brands on its marketplace, StockX has emerged as one of the globe’s biggest resale platforms for shoes and sneakers, making it a perfect place for sneakerheads.
The title StockX refers to a stock market of items, a platform at which customers can purchase and buy products such as relatively uncommon shoes and luxury garments. Like a securities exchange, products on StockX are bought and sold as goods and services, with prices of items decided by both supply and demand.
In 2019, shoes accounted for roughly 75% of all sold goods on StockX. On the flip side, StockX’s leftover purchases are split between designer bags, street style, and watches as well. Deena Bahri, widely known as the chief marketing officer of StockX, said that there was a significant focus on investment options, such as style, paintings, video game consoles, as well as designer items. And you know, all of these items could be used while gaining value over the years.
He added that they also fully comprehend that when their customer expands, their asset alters over time, and so many advances to higher-priced goods when they start moving on to the next profession or ten years in their lifetimes. Having said that, they would not go so far as to say they were attempting to transform into a one-stop store. Their North Star is to transact in a consumerist society, which is continually shifting.
Their loyalty strategy, if you have ever noticed, is centered on trying to stay relevant to their existing customers at all times. In the end, the final objective is to keep pixelating the distinction between retail and resale.
StockX’s customer base is really fresh and young as well, with 70% of customers under the age of 35 years old. In addition, the marketplace is even exceptionally common among Generation Z, with roughly 60% of men and Gen Zs disclosing that they utilize it. Even so, StockX has been seeing development in the female as well as 45+ demographic trends in the latest days.
The verification procedure is considered among StockX’s pillars of achievement. After completing a transaction on the marketplace, the supplier must send the products to one of StockX’s verification hubs before the items are delivered to the purchaser. Then verification hubs focus on ensuring that the product is not fake in order to protect purchasers from being made use of. The most crucial thing here is that all the items are examined by qualified testers at verification hubs, not by machine or so.
Derrick Register, the VP of operations, said that even though they could not reveal all of their secret sauce, StockX’s verifiers are taught to pass through, on median, 50 distinctive checkpoints to decide the validity. From that, they can confidently confirm that a running shoe meets their range of images condition benchmark.
Among several other factors, the multi-step verification procedure involves strategies such as carton building testing to make absolutely sure the texture is accurate or the toilet tissue is the correct color, item verifications for a seam or adhesive bonding discrepancies. What’s more, even the confirmation of the text color and size labels and invoices is also carefully checked.
StockX chairman Josh Luber wishes that one day, the fixed pricing discovered in major retailers would be replaced with variable pricing driven by demand and supply. And if you notice, this is similar to how merchandise rates are decided on StockX. Let’s take Travis Scott x Air Jordan 1s sneakers, for instance, which went on sale for $175 but managed to sell for $800 on StockX.
While a lot of people use StockX to discover prestigious limited-release products such as antique Jordans, a few of the most popular categories on StockX are Reebok, designer shoes, as well as slides.
In 2019, StockX decided to expand its offline business by opening the very first retail shop in New York City, which you might not see in other online similar marketplaces. Luber said that as a web-based company, it is wonderful to be nearer to their clients and interact directly with them. And that they were really thrilled to have New York as their initial place.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is StockX suitable for Supreme?
Absolutely. When you purchase any Supreme item from StockX, you can be confident that you’re getting an authentic product, whether it’s a logo t-shirt, jacket, or any other item. Due to the brand’s popularity and the prevalence of counterfeits, StockX thoroughly verifies each Supreme product that comes through its verification hub. This process is carried out by trained professionals, ensuring that you can buy with complete assurance knowing that the item is genuine.
Is it true that StockX sells counterfeit sneakers?
StockX follows a rigorous process to ensure that the products you receive are 100% authentic. Specifically, StockX employs a two-step authentication and verification procedure designed to eliminate the risk of forgeries, replicas, and counterfeits. With this thorough process in place, you can always be confident that the sneakers you purchase from StockX are completely genuine.
Is Louis Vuitton’s StockX genuine?
Louis Vuitton is widely recognized as one of the most counterfeited brands in the world. As a result, StockX meticulously authenticates every Louis Vuitton item they receive to ensure that you receive only legitimate and genuine products.