Walking A Mile in Sean Tan's Shoes
By Tan Wei Mou
TAN WEI MOU explores the story of a sneakerhead who has managed to grow his business and collection of shoes through the power of bots.
A photo of Sean Tan Yi Xun in front of 85 exclusive shoes, amounting to a total of around $13,000. (Photo courtesy of Sean Tan Yi Xun)
Inside Sean Tan Yi Xun’s, 18, room, there are boxes upon boxes, piled up from ground to ceiling. Inside these boxes are incredibly expensive sneakers which Sean managed to secure for his buyers through the power of programmed bots.
According to Cowen Equity Research, the sneaker resale market is growing at an exponential pace and could reach US$30 billion by 2030. Sean has expanded his business beyond anything he could have imagined, and his journey began when he was only in secondary school.
“My family will host my relatives over every Saturday, whereby they would come over to my house, and my cousins, including Sean, would see my growing collection of sneakers,” Sean’s cousin, Lynem Teo, said, “I guess from there it piqued Sean’s interest in sneakers and I guess he never looked back.”
Lynem brought Sean to Dover Street Market where the then 16-year-old bought his first sneaker, “Clot” by actor Edison Chen, at retail price.
“I sold it for over $500 profit. So that was the first-ever item I resold. And with that $500, I started buying and reselling used shoes,” said Sean.
Since then, Sean has been buying sneakers in bulk and reselling them at a marked-up price, which is often known as flipping sneakers. For sneakers that are released physically, Sean would get his family and friends to queue up to buy these shoes.
“We will just pay our friends and family like maybe a meal or $10-$20 to help us with these services,” Sean added.
However, this savvy financial informatics polytechnic student to leverage technology to help him. Sean relies on “cook groups” - chat groups usually conducted via the Discord platform -which enable resellers like him to increase their chances of getting coveted sneakers.
He also rents or buys bots, which are “software applications that scour shopping sites and expedite the checkout process” according to an article by Business Insider.
Boxes of shoes can be spotted in every nook and cranny of Sean’s room.
(Photo courtesy of Sean Tan Yi Xun)
Luck often plays a part as competition is keen.
“Sometimes I've gotten over 50 pairs in a month. And sometimes in a month, I can get no pairs at all,” Sean said.
As Sean depends on technology time new releases, he says his schoolwork isn’t affected as long as he gets his work done.
Sean caters to a wide customer base, setting up shop on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Carousell, Goat, StockX and Novelship. He mainly lists his shoes on Novoship as it is a Southeast Asia based company.
“I'll just list out all my shoes there, and when somebody is interested and buys a shoe, the company will just charge me a fee of 4-5%. Then I'll just ship off the shoe to them, and then I'll get my pay within a week,” Sean said about his experience on Novelship.
Sean has made over $10,000 in a span of only a few months.
Though many may criticise resellers like Sean for driving the prices up and depriving the ordinary customer of getting a pair of sneakers, Sean’s customer begs to differ.
“Buying from a reseller like Sean is easier for me as I could meet him at my convenience,” said Bryan Goh, “compared to buying from a store where I have to meet with their opening hours and days.”
“I’m happy that Sean really dived into the market and took the time to learn more about it, which gave him more knowledge on how to flip sneakers. The time spent obviously paid off well,” said Lynem.