Source: photo: Flight Club
When it comes to sneaker consignment shops, Flight Club is world-renowned as one of the first spots to really blow up as a premier destination where sneakerheads could cop rare and highly-coveted kicks. But that history was no matter when looters were able to break into the Fairfax location and get to pillaging.
Flight Club has three physical stores, one in New York City near Union Square, the other in Los Angeles on Fairfax Ave. and the third in Miami on NE 1st Ave. It’s the Fairfax store that’s got looted on Saturday evening (May 30), and sneaker Twitter is reacting.
If you’re unfamiliar with consignment, you’re basically tasking Flight Club with being the middle man on a sneaker sale. So if you manage to say pick a pair of rare Air Jordan 1’s for retail (say $200), depending on the model, Flight Club will verify the shoe’s authenticity and sell it (let’s say $400). FC makes its money by taking a commission, usually around 20%. You get paid, they get paid.
So when looters are gaffling said kicks from the store, it isn’t brands Nike or adidas that’s taking an L, it’s the sellers and the store. Also worth noting, while they may have started as a mom & pop operation, Flight Club merged with GOAT in 2018, with the latter become the parent company along with a cool $60M investment from Ventures. Then in 2019, Foot Locker invested $200M in GOAT.
While sure there are those epic resellers who may move hundreds of kicks (and part of the reason SNKRS keeps blessing you with L’s), there are lot of cats who just wanted to make some extra change moving sneakers that are now short. However, a lot of the commentary is schadenfreude thanks to those hefty prices.
And in case you have kicks there and didn’t read the fine print. Cold world.
Considering all the cash they bring in, Flight Club may want to at least settle with buyers who are out their sneakers out of goodwill. Just saying.
Peep some of the reactions to this development below. It’s going to be a long weekend for the Flight Club camp. Ya hate to see it.