From a vast variety of methods to earn money, reselling or “sniping” has garnered interest from young adults. Sniping involves buying and reselling clothes, shoes, and other items. The work consists of bidding for certain items, usually limited edition, and then selling them for a profit.
Gelb has been buying and selling shoes and clothes from companies such as Supreme since 7th grade. Gelb explains that he became interested in sniping after watching a video about kids who were reselling Supreme clothing, and he says, “I got into [reselling] thinking it would be super easy… I started taking my parents’ credit card and then try and check out a bunch of these items and try and flip them for a profit.”
Gelb has since shifted to mainly reselling shoes saying, “It’s kind of the same basic idea. You find a shoe that’s super limited and you know people will like, and you try and get it… but it comes down to luck at the end of the day; everything you do is just to increase your chances.” In a constant struggle to balance costs with profit, Gelb and others in the shoe reselling business must find the most coveted shoes, the most common shoe sizes, and consider which shoes will gain value over time. The real difficulties arise when bidders have to decide which shoes will be worth it to try and buy, but Gelb mentions, “I’ve been in the game long enough that I have a pretty solid idea of what’s going to go up and what’s going to go down.”
Of course, bidding presents its own challenges, by pitting people against each other in a battle for the highest price. However, there are ways to become successful in the reselling business, and one such way of increasing the odds of winning a bid are bots. Bots are coding programs that send information to check out multiple products at a time, at a much faster rate than humans can.
However, bidding and selling is not always a stable market: it fluctuates like stocks. “The market determines their value,” Gelb points out. Therefore, like in all businesses, losses are to be expected. Gelb comments that “There are plenty of times where I’ll walk out with not a single shoe and then there are also times where I’ll walk out with fifty pairs of a shoe… but I’ve had some losers too, I’m not going to [sugarcoat] over it.” Gelb has nevertheless persevered through the challenges and losses he has faced and has been able to make enormous profits. Gelb attributes his motivation to create and maintain a business to his dad saying, “I just always wanted to have my own business, and my dad… put that mindset of, ‘find that untapped market.’ It’s a very high-risk, high-reward business,” but that just adds to the thrill of business.
