The Botmakers Who Rule the Obsessive World of Streetware(wired.com)
wired.com
The Botmakers Who Rule the Obsessive World of Streetware
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/using-bots-to-buy-supreme-limited-edition-streetwear/
59 comments
Supreme wasn't a sneaker brand though was it? Was this their first big collab with Nike which brought the full brunt of the sneakerhead culture into Supreme's streetwear one? Even though there is a lot of crossover between the two it may not be as 1-to-1 as it seems, and brought in a lot of new buyers to their niche.
There have been numerous Supreme x Nike collaborations, starting (I believe) with this Nike SB Dunk in 2002: https://www.flightclub.com/nike-dunk-low-pro-sb-black-black-... which at the time were arguably the most sought after sneakers in the world, and still command over a thousand dollars a pair.
And while Supreme never produced any shoes themselves, for many years neither did A Bathing Ape (and the BAPEsta's and their collabs with Adidas were hardly a core part of their business). Nevertheless BAPE is also a brand that utilized the same hype+scarcity model and has always been associated with sneakerhead culture.
The fact remains that anyone who self-identifies as a sneakerhead has known about and most likely worn Supreme for a decade or two. This is not a new development. The new buyers (and the fact that you tend to see more and more Supreme out in the world and on social media) aren't a result of the subculture finding a new obsession. Rather, what was once a niche has gone way mainstream, and tons of people who were never associated with sneaker culture have become interested in the trend.
To wit, by the time the Supreme Foamposites mentioned in the article were released in 2014, many dedicated sneakerheads would have argued that Supreme was completely played out, usurped by herbs, normals and—shudder—teenagers. (Then in 2015 they all went out and bought the camo Jordan 5 collab anyway.)
And while Supreme never produced any shoes themselves, for many years neither did A Bathing Ape (and the BAPEsta's and their collabs with Adidas were hardly a core part of their business). Nevertheless BAPE is also a brand that utilized the same hype+scarcity model and has always been associated with sneakerhead culture.
The fact remains that anyone who self-identifies as a sneakerhead has known about and most likely worn Supreme for a decade or two. This is not a new development. The new buyers (and the fact that you tend to see more and more Supreme out in the world and on social media) aren't a result of the subculture finding a new obsession. Rather, what was once a niche has gone way mainstream, and tons of people who were never associated with sneaker culture have become interested in the trend.
To wit, by the time the Supreme Foamposites mentioned in the article were released in 2014, many dedicated sneakerheads would have argued that Supreme was completely played out, usurped by herbs, normals and—shudder—teenagers. (Then in 2015 they all went out and bought the camo Jordan 5 collab anyway.)
> There have been numerous Supreme x Nike collaborations, starting (I believe) with this Nike SB Dunk in 2002
I've been a skater most of my life. I was completely perplexed when a bunch of the guys I skate with regularly suddenly became sneakerheads almost overnight.
This explains a LOT.
I've been a skater most of my life. I was completely perplexed when a bunch of the guys I skate with regularly suddenly became sneakerheads almost overnight.
This explains a LOT.
This is actually a really interesting footnote in the history of Nike's evolution and expansion into different markets. They (as well as Adidas and the other big brands) had been trying like hell to entice skaters to wear Nikes with little success. Much of what they released was really techy looking (like: http://skately.com/library/shoes/nike-sb-zoom-tre or: http://skately.com/library/shoes/nike-sb-url ) and you would have been mocked for wearing them.
But there was a history of some of skateboarding's most iconic figures wearing Nikes, particularly Jordan 1s but also Blazers and Dunks, in the 80s and early 90s. And it turned out that if you took a Dunk Low, overstuffed the tongue, and added some Nike cushioning tech (bonus points for stitching a Chocolate logo on the heel: https://www.kicksonfire.com/nike-sb-skateboarding-releases/n... ), it fit in just fine with the Osirises of the world that were popular at that time, or classics like the eS Koston, and performed at least as well, if not better (while, critically, not appearing to be built for performance at all).
To your point, Nike quickly leveraged that "vintage cool" aspect that only they could offer, plus collaborations with artists like Geoff McFetridge who had credibility among skaters (and maybe more importantly, among photographers and videographers who shot them), to finally convince skaters that they could wear Nikes without turning into a jock or a dork.
But there was a history of some of skateboarding's most iconic figures wearing Nikes, particularly Jordan 1s but also Blazers and Dunks, in the 80s and early 90s. And it turned out that if you took a Dunk Low, overstuffed the tongue, and added some Nike cushioning tech (bonus points for stitching a Chocolate logo on the heel: https://www.kicksonfire.com/nike-sb-skateboarding-releases/n... ), it fit in just fine with the Osirises of the world that were popular at that time, or classics like the eS Koston, and performed at least as well, if not better (while, critically, not appearing to be built for performance at all).
To your point, Nike quickly leveraged that "vintage cool" aspect that only they could offer, plus collaborations with artists like Geoff McFetridge who had credibility among skaters (and maybe more importantly, among photographers and videographers who shot them), to finally convince skaters that they could wear Nikes without turning into a jock or a dork.
>> And it turned out that if you took a Dunk Low, overstuffed the tongue, and added some Nike cushioning tech
This is so funny. I remember loving those shoes, but every manufacturer thought super cushy tongues were the way to go in that era. Every time we got a new pair, my buddies and I would take a few hours and razorblade them open, pull out all nearly all the stuffing and then sew them back up.
Apparently they finally caught on and stopped making those horrendously huge tongues.
This is so funny. I remember loving those shoes, but every manufacturer thought super cushy tongues were the way to go in that era. Every time we got a new pair, my buddies and I would take a few hours and razorblade them open, pull out all nearly all the stuffing and then sew them back up.
Apparently they finally caught on and stopped making those horrendously huge tongues.
I always wondered about whether that was meant to have any practical function. (Protective cushioning at the expense of board feel? Shoes stay on better while untied?)
Now the pendulum has swung all the back in the other direction. All these years later, Koston is signed to Nike, and his pro-model basically just looks like a running shoe: http://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pd/sb-koston-max-mens-skatebo...
Now the pendulum has swung all the back in the other direction. All these years later, Koston is signed to Nike, and his pro-model basically just looks like a running shoe: http://store.nike.com/us/en_us/pd/sb-koston-max-mens-skatebo...
Ah makes sense. You seem to know what your talking about. Thanks for your reply.
These guys need to take it to the next level - defeat the bots by burning them and drop web presence entirely. This is a brand that would benefit from stealing the popup idea - random times and places only insiders know about, so dropping web sales despite being anathema on HN might actually build the exclusivity of their brand.
That or take it back out of band in a way bots can't easily overcome like 2fa tied to a device the customer can't or won't give up. I.E. Sell a supreme watch that generates FIDO codes from an enclaved 2fa seed. I suppose you'll need to manually trigger inputs as well just to prevent someone parking a webcam on their watch. At some point you'll add enough delay the quoted 19 seconds for 38 orders will become impossible. You don't need to add too much complexity; just enough to make it impractical for the bots to compete with customers.
You could also add randomness by making people accept one use codes for grab bags of items. They'd have to preregister for whatever items they might want but then it's accept or reject the offer in a timed window. Up the risk factor enough and perhaps a human will want to make a decision rather than leave it to a bot.
And one more idea: co-opt and co-brand: sell a line of botmaker branded gear sold by the winner of a botting contest. Take input from botters on how to raise the bar.
That or take it back out of band in a way bots can't easily overcome like 2fa tied to a device the customer can't or won't give up. I.E. Sell a supreme watch that generates FIDO codes from an enclaved 2fa seed. I suppose you'll need to manually trigger inputs as well just to prevent someone parking a webcam on their watch. At some point you'll add enough delay the quoted 19 seconds for 38 orders will become impossible. You don't need to add too much complexity; just enough to make it impractical for the bots to compete with customers.
You could also add randomness by making people accept one use codes for grab bags of items. They'd have to preregister for whatever items they might want but then it's accept or reject the offer in a timed window. Up the risk factor enough and perhaps a human will want to make a decision rather than leave it to a bot.
And one more idea: co-opt and co-brand: sell a line of botmaker branded gear sold by the winner of a botting contest. Take input from botters on how to raise the bar.
>This is a brand that would benefit from stealing the popup idea
The brand is already hyper-exclusive and doing extremely well, and I didn't get the impression from the article that there is any concern about the bots.
Perhaps these people are fine doing what they're doing, and don't need to grow, grow, grow the brand. Perhaps it's Silicon Valley that should be learning some lessons here...
The brand is already hyper-exclusive and doing extremely well, and I didn't get the impression from the article that there is any concern about the bots.
Perhaps these people are fine doing what they're doing, and don't need to grow, grow, grow the brand. Perhaps it's Silicon Valley that should be learning some lessons here...
They do have apps that reduce this stuff and tie it to a phone number: Nike has SNKRS, adidas has confirmed. All the physical stores do raffles in person and many of the websites do raffles online.
Basically, all of your other ideas have been implemented by someone at sometime.
Basically, all of your other ideas have been implemented by someone at sometime.
Streetwear, not ware; interesting typo there.
The whole thing is extremely William Gibson: limited edition almost-secret branded products plus high-tech. Even the use of Futura is something Gibson would put in as a detail.
The whole thing is extremely William Gibson: limited edition almost-secret branded products plus high-tech. Even the use of Futura is something Gibson would put in as a detail.
You're totally right. I had no idea this headline had anything to do with clothing. All I could picture was back alley merchants and the shady deckers coming and going beneath a gray sky.
Reading about this stuff makes me wish I could trade my engineering ability in for business acumen.
Maybe I could create a bot that actually buys from knockoffs from a site that I run.
Maybe I could create a bot that actually buys from knockoffs from a site that I run.
Yeah sucks when you can build stuff but don't know what to build. "Delegate the rest" they say... to the entrepreneurs that hire developers to build the dream as a contractor/percentage.
I think there is also the "following passion and money is an after thought"
I think there is also the "following passion and money is an after thought"
My problem is these bot creators & the people in this culture are so ... dumb, yet somehow still able to make so much money + be secretive. Some of them barely know how a VPS works & they're able to buy a sneaker pair or two & sell it for several hundred. Yeah it sucks & it's a pain but so frustrating. And then there's the work it takes to get into sneakers. If you aren't passionate about them, it's a lot harder to resell things in my book.
I've never understood why this is so complicated. Just do a week-long auction, hide bids on the last day (blind auction) to prevent bid sniping, and charge around the 80th percentile of bids to prevent winner's curse and ensure resale value. No bots, no problems, pretty much completely transparent.
The offline equivalent with e.g. Black Friday is similar, except you pay with time by waiting in line instead of with money.
The offline equivalent with e.g. Black Friday is similar, except you pay with time by waiting in line instead of with money.
Hypebeasts trying desperately to get the hot new whatever and coming up empty handed, thereby increasing anticipation for the next drop, is a feature not a bug.
These types of bots run rampant in the live event ticketing ecosystem. Ticketmaster and others constantly fight bots with turing tests and other defenses to prevent electronic scalping.
Bot Law can't come soon enough. It's a shame that law doesn't cover sneakerbots. It's completely ruined the essence of buying & collecting sneakers, when everything is 'limited edition'.
ticketmaster is now really good at preventing and detecting bots. I think the guys in the article are clever by taking their customer's payment info and using that in the bot. that's another difficulty a bot runs into while auto purchasing. can't fake payment info / purchase limits.
I'm surprised that Ticketmaster hasn't already captured the delta between what individuals will pay a scalper and what the scalper pays.
louis ck has been vocal about this issue.
if ticketmaster/artists sold tickets at the "market " value, then a significant percentage of fans would be locked out the market.
...and what's the problem with that? I'm a big fan of Porsches, but I can tell you that Porsche doesn't lower the price of their cars below market value so that all of their fans can afford one. Is there any other industry that deliberately sells their products way below market value where the purpose is something other than undercutting competition?
Event tickets are just a small fraction of the money to be made. They want ordinary people to be able to go to events because that helps their brand.
If Porsche made most of their money from branded apparel, they'd probably have a different pricing strategy.
If Porsche made most of their money from branded apparel, they'd probably have a different pricing strategy.
Ferrari make lots/most of their money from branded <stuff>, and it certainly hasn't affected their pricing strategy.
Quite the opposite, if anything; the exclusivity of the halo product increases the (perceived) value of the merch.
Quite the opposite, if anything; the exclusivity of the halo product increases the (perceived) value of the merch.
They don't make anywhere near most of their money from branded products. The last year I can find easily is 2014. They made less than $500 million in revenue from merchandise and sponsorship, and $2.2 billion in car and part sales.
Margin is very high on their cars, so there is no way they're making anywhere close to most of their money through branded merchandise.
Contrast that with the Music industry. They did about $15 billion in music sales, and only about $8 billion in concert revenue in 2015.
Musicians do make a significant portion of their money from concert revenue, but musicians aren't the primary drivers of ticket prices.
Margin is very high on their cars, so there is no way they're making anywhere close to most of their money through branded merchandise.
Contrast that with the Music industry. They did about $15 billion in music sales, and only about $8 billion in concert revenue in 2015.
Musicians do make a significant portion of their money from concert revenue, but musicians aren't the primary drivers of ticket prices.
It's about saving face for the entertainer.
Slowly but surely...
> If you have no idea why someone would pay $100 just to get a crack at spending another $200 on a pair of sneakers, that’s OK: Supreme isn’t meant for you anyway.
Anyone know how stop yourself from mis-valuating companies and products just because you yourself doesn't find value in it?
Anyone know how stop yourself from mis-valuating companies and products just because you yourself doesn't find value in it?
A bit Buddhist, but: teach yourself there is no such thing as value.
At least in market economies, it's literally what someone will pay for a thing, which depends on a whole confluence of taste, feeling, circumstance, and Maslow's pyramid.
In this case, unavailability is part of the pricing. Not only is it expensive, but it's difficult to buy at all!
(The related question of "how do I find people who want to spend lots of money on shoes" is much harder)
At least in market economies, it's literally what someone will pay for a thing, which depends on a whole confluence of taste, feeling, circumstance, and Maslow's pyramid.
In this case, unavailability is part of the pricing. Not only is it expensive, but it's difficult to buy at all!
(The related question of "how do I find people who want to spend lots of money on shoes" is much harder)
No need to stop under-valuing companies. You shouldn't be investing in things you don't understand, anyways.
I'm kind of pissed off to this see this article. I was working on something for DEFCON & my CFP got denied because it wasn't "technical" enough, yet here it's all everyone is talking about.
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Streetwear
Yeah, can someone TL;DR this? I can't read the content unless I disable my Ad-Blocker.
Thanks,
Thanks,
A couple of guys write a bot to buy clothes from a "hip" NYC clothing company because people are apparently willing to pay $800 for a $150 black hoodie with a poorly sown on "patch" that says "supreme".
I read in safari and though normal reading triggers the blocker, "reader mode" doesn't.
I was interviewed for a similar article.
tldr; smart young people who happen to discover a very Luddite community and applied tech to buy up product and re-sell.
Can't be shut down cause brands will lose face if they "care."
Most scripts are either headless chrome instances using phantom is or selenium.
The one I built years ago was just a chrome extension with some options.
Some are iOS apps with a web view and objected JavaScript.
tldr; smart young people who happen to discover a very Luddite community and applied tech to buy up product and re-sell.
Can't be shut down cause brands will lose face if they "care."
Most scripts are either headless chrome instances using phantom is or selenium.
The one I built years ago was just a chrome extension with some options.
Some are iOS apps with a web view and objected JavaScript.
> Most scripts are either headless chrome instances using phantom is or selenium.
I would think that using regular HTTP requests is better/more popular then running a headless browser for this kind of work. cUrl, Python Requests, etc.
I would think that using regular HTTP requests is better/more popular then running a headless browser for this kind of work. cUrl, Python Requests, etc.
That is more desirable, but with more js rendering on the front end and anti-botting measures by retailers, it's not reliable anymore.
JS rendering on the front end surely doesn't impact calls to the back-end that much (HTTP POST, REST API, GraphQL etc.)?
These don't need a headless browser.
These don't need a headless browser.
When a store is selling 20 pairs of a shoe, they will literally look at how the person who bough the pair did their web execution. Using a something like python requests is faster sure, but most of the time looking more "real" is more important. I've written a few of these and do both depending on the company (size etc.), their website, their security etc. Some of these companies have gone as far as setting up a web game people play and the highest scores get a pair of the shoe (slamjamsocialism).
Can you go into more detail about this game? First I've heard of it, and it clearly isn't a popular choice as opposed to say, a splash screen or other methods of deterring bots.
Yeah. At first is was pong. People figure out how to send fake scores really easily, myself included. It was just an packed js file and you could deobfuscate it, pull in the score generating js and send fake http response to their server. This time, sjs did some type of side scrolled with a dinosaur jumping over buildings. Link here: http://www.slamjamsocialism.com/arcad-ism/
Not in every case, you're right, but it's something to keep in the toolkit. Sometimes it's easier to just check the DOM after its fully rendered than it is to explore all of the calls made by each individual site you're scraping.
What you're saying makes sense if you're looking at a handful of sites, but it doesn't scale very well compared to a universal solution for monitoring several retailers at once. It's definitely the more wasteful solution, if you are concerned about bandwidth and resource consumption, though.
What you're saying makes sense if you're looking at a handful of sites, but it doesn't scale very well compared to a universal solution for monitoring several retailers at once. It's definitely the more wasteful solution, if you are concerned about bandwidth and resource consumption, though.
I know I don't go much into depth what kind of changes were applied, but you can read some of them here: https://www.juusohaavisto.com/northern-nike-nabob.html
mmmmm little impractical. before I explored that option I explored arbitrage efforts like finding web server location and hosting my bots close by.
again, minimal sophistication is required to dominate. most of the developers are not doing deep exploration. you just need to be faster than someone moving a mouse or using an auto-fill script.
again, minimal sophistication is required to dominate. most of the developers are not doing deep exploration. you just need to be faster than someone moving a mouse or using an auto-fill script.
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Then, in the spring of 2014, the company announced a collaboration with Nike on a basketball sneaker called the Foamposite. Supreme had collaborated with sneaker companies for years, but Foamposites were especially prized by sneakerheads. All of a sudden, Supreme had a whole new audience—one already accustomed to limited releases and camping out to get them.
is a glaring error. Supreme has never not been a favored brand of sneakerheads, and that relationship surely didn't start with Odd Future or some recent Nike collaboration. It goes all the way back to the 90s/early 00s when everybody on Niketalk was pairing box logo tees with their vintage Air Maxes and, contrary to the assertions in the article, all these brands (Supreme, Stussy, Freshjive, etc) were transitioning away from being purely skate/surf focused and starting down the streetwear path they've been on ever since.