Three years ago, it was essentially impossible to buy Nike Air Jordan 1 Highs on the company’s SNKRS app. The high-tops would sell out in seconds—sometimes fractions of a second—and later pop up on resale sites at a hiked price. Nike drops were a cultish event in which thousands of sneakerheads would wait at their laptops, fingers poised to click “buy” on their favorite shoe models faster than other “hypebeasts,” and usually end up disappointed. Jordan 1 Highs sold for a staggering 61% premium on the resale platform StockX in 2020. In 2021, the craze was still going strong, with resold Jordans available at a 50% premium.
But in the first half of 2023, the Nike high has faded, and those Jordans now resell at an average 2% discount. And Nike stock, which hit a $177.51 record high in November 2021, has tanked 37% from its peak. What’s more, the company is sitting on $8.5 billion in unsold inventory, according to its fourth quarter earnings report for 2023—that’s $1.6 billion higher than what it said were “healthy inventory levels” in its fourth quarter report in 2021.
