I guess the halo effect of releasing unobtainable shoes is worth more than all that? If so, why does it matter (to Nike) if bots buy all of them?
Just make more shoes, damnit…
You have absolutely hit the nail on the head; here.
I think - Ye aside - Yeezy is a great example of how there can be a balance between this like insane run of only 1000 shoes (which only sell for like $250-350 USD retail anyway…so - yeah - where’s the profit again?) - to mass market ‘Wal-Mary’ level availability.
The only people who benefit from limited releases are scalpers. Period. There’s no way the shoe company makes that much profit off a limited release because the limited releases are wildly somehow still usually at ‘regular’ prices.
A solid pair of YEEZY 350’s is not that hard to come by for any even half-committed sneakerhead, I’ve got 3 pairs and my girlfriend has two. We hardly tried. I won the lottery twice myself, and only ever entered 6 times.
It’s really a shame what happened with Ye, because despite all the drama; the Yeezy fashion project was actually an interesting one that had some real potential to find an actual, honest-to-God balance between artificial scarcity and actually selling the goddamn product.