Goat, a mobile sneaker marketplace, announced on Monday that the company secured $5 million towards the global sneaker resale business.
Its co-founders, Eddy Lu and Daishin Sugano, created the app to make the sneaker resale business easier for sneaker heads on the go. While the app allows people to buy and sell sneakers electronically, the company ensures authenticity and verification by requiring all sellers to ship sneakers to the Goat warehouse once sold. There, the company authenticates and verifies every pair of sneakers.
The company continues to grow and averages order values more than $300. Lu estimates more than 10 percent of high-end sneakers that are being sold are not the real thing. “With the number of replicas flooding the sneaker market, our authentication service is becoming increasingly necessary,” Lu said in a statement.
Goat plans on using the funds toward growing the company both in the U.S. and abroad. Since launching the iOS and Android apps in July 2015, the company has over 500,000 members.