On Monday, sneaker resale platform GOAT announced sweeping changes to its secondhand-centric business model, opening its app up to streetwear, contemporary and luxury apparel selling at retail prices thanks to new partnerships with hyped-up retailers and boutiques.
This will be the first time GOAT has truly committed to a retail concept as a part of its business, though it has flirted with the concept by offering certain sneakers at-or-under retail prices in the past.
With the addition of apparel from hybebeast-bait brands including Acne Studios, Gucci, Off-White, Maison Margiela, Saint Laurent and Stussy, GOAT’s newly expanded offering extends far beyond the sneakerhead-favorite marketplace it once was.
Fifty new brands will populate GOAT’s marketplace, with more slated to come on board by year’s end.
“We’re only in the infant stages of apparel on GOAT,” Daishin Sugano, co-founder and chief product officer of GOAT Group, said in a statement. “We’re starting with the primary market, but we have plans for resale expansion. We believe in this immense opportunity and are optimally positioned to work with the best brands to tell their stories from the past, present and future.”
The four-year-old company plans to work directly with these brands to create a supply line of apparel at retail prices, GOAT said, which will be sold exclusively through its Android and iOS apps for the time being. GOAT.com and the company’s WeChat mini program will offer apparel at a later date.
Eddy Lu, CEO of the GOAT Group, said the company he co-founded in 2015, which maintains 20 million customers across 164 countries, “has always served a community of individuals aspiring to be the greatest.”
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“When we first launched GOAT, we focused only on sneakers to ensure we provided the best experience for our customers,” Lu explained, adding that product depth, discovery and authentication were “paramount to that.” “Without these pillars, we would not be able to offer the experience we believe is necessary for someone to find a style that embraces their uniqueness and self-expression.”
GOAT’s decision to expand its offerings follows the trend of sneaker marketplaces working to legitimize themselves as reputable businesses outside of the traditional secondhand platform prototype. For example, GOAT recently partnered up with Bergdorf Goodman for a rare sneaker exhibit in the lead-up to fashion week and was the beneficiary of a $100 million investment from Foot Locker in February, bringing its total raise to just under $200 million.
Just last month, the GOAT app got a VR update that gives prospective sneakerheads the chance to try on some extremely exclusive kicks.
And in May, competing sneaker-centric resale platform StockX announced that it would be opening its first brick-and-mortar location in New York City, joining a growing sneaker resale footprint buoyed by American Eagle’s Urban Necessities tie-up and Stadium Goods, the innovator acquired last year by luxury platform Farfetch.