Imagine it’s a Saturday morning and you are trying to buy the new Jordans for retail, and even though you used your phone and computer to get the shoes you still lost. This is how buying sneakers works for most people, because of resellers using sneaker bots to get twenty pairs for themselves. Over the years collecting sneakers has become more of a business rather than a hobby. Nike and Jordan are the most popular brands in the sneaker market and have had an influence on most of our generation's style. Reselling sneakers started out as people waiting outside a store for five hours to buy the newest sneakers for retail, and then flip them for more. Having caused many problems like fights and robberies, Nike and mostly all sneaker brands switched to releasing the newest shoes online. I have been buying and reselling sneakers since I was twelve and have rarely been able to buy a pair of shoes on release date for retail. 

 Thousands of people all sit in front of their computer or phone at 9:50am waiting for the shoes to release at 10:00am. The market for sneakers has gone up over the years because of how hard it is to buy a pair for retail. While releasing new shoes online has solved problems and made the process less dangerous, there are still major problems with buying online. Once people realized they can make a living off of selling shoes they made online bots that automatically buy the shoes for you when they release. Imperva defines the bots as “a sophisticated software component designed to help individuals quickly purchase limited availability stock”. While someone is trying to refresh their page, put in their card information, or just can’t get to the computer the bot does it instantly by plugging in everything you need and putting you first in line to get the shoes. These bots started out as a little advantage because they were much harder to get years ago, but now you can just purchase them online and install them on your computer. 

While sneaker bots are a big advantage when buying shoes, companies aren’t ignoring this problem. Nike has been trying to get rid of sneaker bots for a few years now due to the complaints of most customers. “Nike have began mass-resetting phone number verification of accounts, which meant that any account bought by a botter was now unable to enter SNKRS raffles. Another big move by Nike was the filtering of all Nike.com entries, and only allowing SNKRS app entries to win”(Smith). These changes Nike has made has helped a tremendous amount. 

The people who take advantage of the sneaker bots are the reason shoes have shot up in resell price over the years. Many sneaker resellers have been able to buy an immense amount of sneakers at once. Many resellers upload pictures of their living room floor covered in deadstock Jordans to Instagram. These people are the reason it is so hard to be able to get a pair of shoes for retail. Sneaker bots are the biggest problem in the shoe industry, so shoe companies should do whatever they can do to take down the bots.