Why Parents Should Immediately Stop Their Kids From Reselling Shoes

As more and more teenagers look to make cash, reselling shoes has become extremely popular. As someone who has personally partaken in this activity, I have a strong opinion on whether or not I would allow my teenager to resell shoes. With the current atmosphere of shoe selling, there is no way I would ever allow my teenager to resell shoes.

Viewer Discretion: I am not a financial advisor and any advice taken below is for educational purposes only. Some of the links below are affiliate, meaning I may profit of off them with them with no extra expense to the customer.

While I have already written an article about the pros and cons of reselling shoes here, I believe the idea of letting your teenager resell shoes is down-right preposterous. The risk and reward of shoe-selling is low while the manual work can be time-consuming. Reselling shoes currently is the same as spending two hours per day to buy lottery tickets with a prize of twenty-dollars.

Is Reselling Shoes Just Like Every Other Trend?

My biggest worry with reselling shoes is that it really is just a trend. Just a few years ago, gullible teenagers thought they were going to all become millionaires by reselling Supreme. Most of them got a few pieces but saw the hype go down and the price with it. The teenagers were left with less money then what they started with and hours they will never get back.

Now trust me, great cases for the value of reselling shoes could be made. You could say that the What The Dunks used to cost four-hundred dollars and now cost ten-thousand dollars. You could say that Ben and Jerry SBs retailed for one-hundred dollar and immediately resold for around fifteen-hundred dollars.

However, these examples don’t mean anything for many reasons. In fact, these shoes provide better indicators as to why you should not allow your teenager to try to make money in these fashions. All of these reasons come from the three ways in which you can make money in the shoe world.

Quick Selling

The first way in which people make money by reselling shoes is quick-selling. Quick selling is when you try to get a shoe for retail that will sell out and be worth more on an after-market. For most teenagers, this reselling tactic is the easiest and most common way of making money.

Although the other forms of reselling have much more chance of profit, the simplicity of quick-selling has to be noted. You simply buy the shoe on the release date and immediately resell it. Which sounds perfect because as long as you’re buying shoes that are going to be guaranteed to worth more on the aftermarket, it should be impossible to lose money.

However, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Reselling shoes has become so popular that it has become a total lottery. The only shoes that you really have a chance at are ones that are twenty to thirty dollars higher.

The problem with these shoes is that after Stock-X takes its fee and sales tax you will be losing money. When it comes to the shoes worth thousands of dollars, you are basically just playing the lottery. While it can make sense to go for valuable shoes, overall quick selling is just a waste of time and energy. So many better ways for teenagers to make money exist without so much nonsense.

Shoe Investing

The second way that people make money is by far the most profitable but also the hardest way to make money. The tactic is basically investing. Many people have noticed that many shoes appreciate at rates higher than the stock-market. For example, the What The Dunks and Off-White Chicago Jordan 1’s have gone from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.

However, most teenagers don’t have the maturity or the competency in order to successfully make the investments work. With the high reward of investing in shoes, there’s also high risk. Since the whole idea of reselling shoes is based on fashion, once a fashion trend ends and a shoe is no longer popular it often tanks in price. For example, the example below used to go for over one-thousand dollars and have now tanked in value.

The other problem is that most people who make their money by investing in shoes were able to collect shoes from years ago that recently became a fashion trend again. The best example of this is the What The Dunks, which went from four-hundred dollars to ten-thousand dollars because dunks became trendy again.

The problem is there is no way to tell what will appreciate or depreciate in value. Do you want your kid to fill closet space with shoes that are likely to lose value instead of gain value? Your child could be spending lots of money and time just to lose money and time. Unless your child can demonstrate that they are an investing genius, there is no way you should allow them to resell shoes.

Thrift-Store Reselling

Finally, the old-fashioned way of reselling- thrift store reselling. With the rise of fame of sneaker reselling growing more daily, this tactic is becoming harder and harder to pull off. The tactic is going into outlet or thrift shops and picking up shoes that are listed cheaper in the store than on resell apps such as Stock-X.

While this is by far the most recommendable reselling strategy for teenagers, it is not by any means sustainable. Too many resellers are in big cities for you to consistently come across steals. But, in small cities there aren’t enough thrift stores for you to consistently come across easy resell money.

If you and your teenagers happen to see a shoe underpriced at a store, it could be okay to buy the shoe and guarantee the sell. However, only do this if you see a bid on Stock-X since, chances are, by doing this you can guarantee a sell.

So, overall, as a parent with two children, there is no way I would allow my children to waste time on something as pointless and worthless as reselling shoes with limited money and hours of time lost.   I have learned an important lesson for you: don’t EVER try reselling shoes or allow your teenager to try.

Although this may be an awful idea, I do think that it is a great idea to let teenagers begin investing early. A few apps that I would suggest would be great for teenagers beginning to invest would be Webull and Acorns.