Whether it’s ruthless bots, hungry resellers, or back-dooring, it seems like there’s always something stopping you from copping a sneaker you really want. SoleSavy, an online sneaker community, has aimed to combat that with its member-only platform and women-based groups, taking its resources a step further with its newest app.
The app, called COLLECT, is a hub for members to buy, sell, and trade their personal sneaker collections and build connections with other sneakerheads along the way. While it’s difficult to pinpoint and target a single issue in the sneaker industry, the app is an effort to “shift the sneaker landscape” and allow users to “interact and transact peer-to-peer within a trusted community,” according to a press release.
Sneakers made easy —
SoleSavy wants to ditch the seller-first mentality of most marketplaces — including Goat, eBay, and StockX — and bring a face back to otherwise anonymous transactions. Although the app is driven by SoleSavy, the platform said it would take itself out of the transaction equation and encourage its users to have more control over buying and selling. There won’t be any extra processing fees during a purchase either, and the company hopes to cap excessive resale prices in the process.
To bring an even more personal element to the transaction, COLLECT will also have a unique identity verification process to prevent scams and help users make more authentic connections. It sounds a bit like a dating app, but the KYC (“Know Your Customer”) technology is used by banks and financial institutions for safety, and it’ll help create a more fair environment. StockX added two-factor authentication in 2020 after a data breach exposed 7 million records from its users, so the extra SoleSavy security is pretty necessary for this type of landscape.
To protect its members from resellers, the community will be closely monitored. There’s still a chance of high resell prices, but SoleSavy will require a receipt if a seller wants to sell a hyped sneaker they bought above retail price. “As always, transparency and community are at the center of this project,” SoleSavy co-founder and CEO Dejan Pralica said in a release.
Join the club —
COLLECT has been in private beta testing mode since March, but after a test run and feedback from a select group of SoleSavy members, the app is now up and running in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store for all of its members. If you’re not a member, access to SoleSavy’s community is about $33 per month, and with the new COLLECT app included in the price, you could be collecting more than just sneaker knowledge.
