By Emma Koehn
It’s been a rough year for consumer spending, but shoppers are still trawling eBay listings on the hunt for sneakers worth hundreds of dollars.
The e-commerce platform is preparing for demand for high-end footwear to heat up over the next few weeks, fuelled by product launches such as the Air Jordan 1 “Royal Reimagined” sneaker, which comes out this weekend and is expected to spark heightened competition in the reseller market as customers look to snap up a limited supply of stock.
Nike revenue could reach $US50 billion this year. Credit: Getty
Muted economic confidence across the globe hasn’t put a lid on the cash some will spend on sought-after footwear, which has become a valuable part of the international collectibles market.
The listing price of the Jordan 4 Bred sneaker jumped from $360 in 2019 to $530 on eBay last year, while a pair of Nike SB What The Dunk Supreme shoes sold for more than $16,000 in South Australia last year.
Ebay Australia’s head of sneaker and collectibles, Alaister Low, said the rise of social media has helped power demand for exclusive footwear in Australia and overseas. And while shoppers might be reining in their spending in a range of discretionary categories, when it comes to the purchases most important to them, they’re not holding back.
“What they do is they really select their passions – they are more guarded in what they spend on, but they still spend on things they really care about,” Low said of Australian consumers.
“Things they don’t care about maybe you see a drop in spending there – but [not] things they are really passionate about.”
The two months leading up to Christmas are make or break for Australia’s retail sector, but this year brands are faced with a consumer psyche they may not have ever seen before.
On the one hand, customers are starting their festive shopping bruised by the past year of surging grocery prices and growing mortgage payments – and the spectre of another rate rise before the year is out hovers over many Christmas budgets.
On the other, they’re clearly splashing cash in certain areas, whether that’s high-end sneakers or on celebrations and social connection with family and friends.
This week’s Halloween celebrations showed this trend: the event fuelled spending on lollies, costumes and homewares, with the retail sector expecting a pre-Christmas cash injection close to $490 million.
There are also signs that consumers have gotten stuck into end-of-year retail therapy early this year. Shares in online cosmetics retailer Adore Beauty surged by close to 10 per cent between Monday and Thursday, as investors cheered a quarterly update that showed the group’s revenue for the first quarter of 2024 was up 4.7 per cent on last year, despite cost-of-living pressures.
‘What they do is they really select their passions – they are more guarded in what they spend on, but they still spend on things they really care about.’
Alaister Low, ebay Australia head of sneaker and collectibles
Financial results from Australian fashion retailer Cotton On Group filed with the corporate regulator this week also show that consumers have been continuing to spend in store throughout this year. Sales at Cotton On, which operates a range of brands including Cotton On, Typo and Supre, were up 4 per cent for the 12 months to June 30, hitting $2.2 billion for the year.
The business has also been expanding overseas, and opened more than 100 stores offshore last year.
There are also signs that shoppers are planning out their spending at sales events carefully, and potentially getting a jump on festive spending. Data from e-commerce logistics platform Shippit suggests more consumers logged on to the annual “Click Frenzy” sales event, which runs in the last week of October, compared with last year.
Shippit parcels data showed a 10 per cent increase in orders for 2023’s event, with the value of orders up 4.7 per cent to about $112 per order this year.
Those results come as retail analysts continue to predict that shoppers will be spreading their festive spending across more weeks this year in order manage their budgets.
The Australian Retailers Association is hoping that consumers will look to cash in at this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, which will start on November 24. The industry group is tipping sales will hit $6.4 billion over the four days from Friday to Monday, up 3 per cent on last year.
The industry is hoping that increased Black Friday spending will help soften the blow for retailers if overall spending for the November and December period turns out to be flat this year, as Roy Morgan and the Australian Retailers Association are predicting.
“Similar to Halloween, Black Friday started off as an American shopping tradition, but has become a global phenomenon, with millions of Aussies set to take part again this year,” Australian Retailers Association boss Paul Zahra said this week.
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