StockX is taking its sneaker and streetwear e-commerce marketplace into real live stores.
At the third annual StockX day at its headquarters in Detroit Thursday, the company said it will open its first permanent retail location in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, and outlined several other changes designed to broaden the reach of the platform.
StockX day, which the brand calls “the equivalent of what a banker experiences when visiting the New York Stock Exchange,” is attended by StockX investors and partners along with 250 of the platform’s “power users.”
During the festivities, the resale platform unveiled its plans to “mature into a collection of niche marketplaces,” starting with the opening of a permanent retail space in one of the nation’s top shopping districts.
The brand’s first store, which will be located at 237 Lafayette Street in Soho (not far from American Eagle’s own resale venture with Urban Necessities), is a direct result of its experimentation with sneaker drop-off pop-ups in New York, Los Angeles and London. Like those temporary locations, the new store will allow prospective buyers and sellers of rare sneakers and other luxury products, to drop off their wares to have them verified and resold.
“StockX’s first brick-and-mortar location will accept all deadstock sneakers and streetwear for on-site authentication and payment processing, meaning sellers can pull up, drop off and get paid faster—eliminating the need for customers to box up sales, ship them out and wait to process their payment,” StockX said in a statement.
Not only that, the company said, but the new location will serve as an “experiential brand space” to give consumers a way to engage with StockX in an offline capacity. The company intends to use the store to help implement the next phase of its business plan, namely IPOs, or “initial product offerings” in the parlance of StockX.
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In its first IPO, the brand first released 800 pairs of slide sandals from celebrity jeweler Ben Baller. It plans to add products from another partnership with the streetwear brand, Chinatown Market, to its platform later this month.
“While StockX’s primary business is operating as a resale marketplace, the company will continue to work with brands to release new products directly onto the market as ‘initial product offerings’ with more to be announced later this year,” StockX said.
And that won’t be the only way StockX enlarges the product offering and scope of its platform in 2019—it also announced the addition of collectibles to its already wide selection, the first category on the platform that isn’t a wearable. Additionally, it will be opening a fifth authentication center in the Netherlands to better serve its European audience.
“With millions of European customers, the addition of this location in mainland Europe marks the company’s commitment to work to better serve them,” StockX said.
The company also outlined plans to hire more than 100 new employees to work in the new center.