StockX Founder Josh Luber on Fake Sneakers, Resellers & Is Nike Dead?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Gotsaw Podcast.

(00:03):
And today we have a legend in the sneaker street
where a collectible world, the stock market of things as
you would call it. But before we get into the interview,
we did some behind the scenes footage that's going to
be in here as well, but I need to do
a formal intro for this guy, a friend of ours
for quite a while now, but somebody who we're excited
and fans of, but we're excited to get more into

(00:24):
the details of how we got here. Of course, we're
talking about Ghost right his current venture, but we'll talk
stock X, we'll talk all sorts of things over the
years that have changed the sneaker world as we all
know it, But first we got to do a formal intro.
Today we have a man that changed the sneaker world
as we know it today with the idea of a
stock market of things that's grown into something crazier than
I think we all ever imagined. From Kanye West storming

(00:46):
into his company's office, to collaborations with eminem and many
more that's led to a valuation now of a reported
over three billion dollars. We're sure that's just the start
of the insane stories that he has. Josh Luber, the
founder of a Welcome to the God Soul podcast, my friend,
Welcome in, Josh.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I get a personal standing ovation. Wow, thank you, thank you,
thank you for having me. Thank you for the very
nice words.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
I appreciate it, of course.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, so we want to first we start every podcast
off and we'll get a shot separately. But what's on feet?
Tell us about what we got?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, you call me at a walking around New York weekend,
right right, So, and also has been spending a lot
more time on the road.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
I was at the National in.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Chicago for the last couple of days, which is just
a ton of walking, which is which is my way
of saying that of why we're wearing New Balance. You
know the Action Bronze in nine nineties. I feel like
of the couple of colorways, this this white version hits
pretty well. You get pretty beat up in wearing it
for only like two weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Now, But listen, I think shehes looked better worn, So
I'm not upset with that. Action Bronson New York guy
too as well, So so good pick joy. What do
you have on feet today? Casual? Not the best for
walking around New York City.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
But I got, you know, the off Way fives on
the Muslim call away just a casual pain.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
I'll tell you what in the like in the top
like ten percent of my traveling shoes.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Those are because the material is so easy to clean.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
They don't like, yeah, yeah, that's top five, like top
ten percent like traveling shoes for me.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
And I might be a little biased by saytus, but
I think the black Metallic five is one of the
top five Jordans of all times.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
So this is just like the.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
More elevated kind of version and the modern version of it.
So yeah, I had a thoos on Jonathan, what are you?

Speaker 1 (02:19):
What do we got? I don't have a walking around
shoe on the air. I got a pair of Platinum
Easy two is one of my favorites, a gift from
Joey where the soul for everyone always asked me, I
wear the Nike Easis along. People say, oh, you're crazy.
The soul did start to peel off of this, so
it was restored. Shout out to my guy Kway who
fixed these up.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
But fixed up pair of my Easy ones.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
All right, we did refer you to that. Yeah you
got to cut us a check. We've given you some.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Good he's done good work. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
We have to crawl way back, right, we have to
go where did it start? We know the story, you know,
we're fans of you, we're friends of yours for a
while now. But our audience got souls, a lot of
sneaker heads, and pretty much all of them have stock
X on their phone. Right. However, and we'll talk about
this over the course, some people have dehumanized stock X.
They don't know what it is. They think it's just

(03:04):
some corporate company. They don't know the story. And you know,
we don't feel that way because we know you, and
we know the stock X team now and all those things.
But we got to crawl back. We know the Dan Gilbert, sorry,
we know the campus story. But give for the people
at home, for that fifteen year old sneakerhead who just
has stock X on his phone and uses it to
resell but knows nothing about the ethos and the starting
of it. Like, give us your story of Okay having

(03:24):
camp lists to Dan Gilbert to exiting the company. We'd
love to hear a synopsis of how did we get here?
How did stock X start and how did you start
that journey?

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, first of all, that's a long story. There's a
lot to We'll do the highlights.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Give us the ninety second I'll tell you.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Let's do the story that I've probably never told, at
least never told her on a podcast. I think we've
written it a couple of places. But we're at twenty
one Mercer. And in February of twenty twelve, I worked
for IBM and I was a business consultant, strateg cons
on an IBM and I lived it at twenty third

(04:03):
and sixth here in New York City, And as everybody
that was paying attention to sneakers that week, we were
all trying to figure out when the Galaxy phones were
gonna drop. And I'm on a conference call for IBM
and we're watching We're watching Twitter, and I have tweet
deck open and everything to try to We're all waiting

(04:24):
for the for the tweet because it was an online
lease and then it had been canceled. And then they
said they were going to give out tickets to twenty
one Mercer. And we see the the Tweakle live that says.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
You know, Raffle now open.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
You know at twenty one Mercer, I'm on a call,
and I just said, got to go by.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Hang up, like get in a cab, and didn't. And I,
you know, I was waiting to go right but I.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Was at twenty third and six and still still took me,
you know, seven eight minutes to get down here.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
And by the time I get down.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
The car couldn't turn on Mercer and so I get
off of the on her Grand and I.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Mean it's just thousands of people in the street.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
The line, and and I finally like snaked my way
into line. The line was going down towards Canal, and
you know, I knew as soon as I got the cab,
I was like, there's no way I'm getting a pair.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Like it was.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Everyone everyone who was smart was standing right around the
corner waiting for the tweet the whole time. And you know,
but and I was there by myself. I didn't have
any like friends that I was doing that with. It
was it was just like just trying to And so
I finally found my way down the end of the line.
I where I was standing at the time is like
kind of where BBC is right now.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Right okay, right down the block.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, not too far down but far enough away that
it was pretty clear.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
And it wasn't moving, like it.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Was just you're not getting it was just stuffin Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
And we staid there for a couple hours, not moving,
and and there was just everyone milling about and there's
like there's kids running around and you know, and and
just watching that whole scene.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
And I'm there by myself and I'm sort of just
talking to people around me, and you know, and at
some point it was like, this is wild.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
This is probably the most important release in the history
of Nike at this point, right, And we all knew that,
and we all knew how important it was and how
and I was like, this is how Like this just
didn't make any sense just from a business standpoint, Like
it's just pure chaos. There was so much energy in
this space. There was like and but there was no organization.

(06:27):
There was no structure.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
There's no way, you know. And and I sat.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
There, I was like, there's got to be a business
and sneakers And I was working a day job at IBM, Like.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
I was always looking for side projects.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
I was always like and I was running a side
project at the time around music.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Were you a lifelong sneaker had at this point.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Or yeah, yeah, I've quick sneakers like everybody.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
I have the same story as everyone, right, Okay, I
grew up playing basket Michael Geordan. Yeah, I'm forty seven, right,
so you know when I was, you know, right in
in the era, right, I mean, I was like, you know,
playing basketball like all through like middle school and high
school when Jordan was in his prime. And you know,
I never had Jordans my mom and never buys. Like

(07:05):
we have the same story as everybody.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Got the money and you were able to buy first pair.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Of Jordans I ever got was after I got my
first job.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
I graduated college in ninety nine, and then I bought
the two thousand Conquer elevens. Yeah, was the first first
pair of Jordans that I ever owned. I bought with
my own money.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
And but I sat there that day and was like,
you know what, there's got to be like.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
A business here somehow, and and that sent me down
a long path that was twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
We didn't launch stock X until February of twenty six.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
I Dan Gilbert until the year before, but that started
me down the path with wentually creating campus, which was
the Sneaker Blog, which was, you know, a price guide
for sneakers, and I was just like trying to do
something in sneakers because it was so clear that there
was so much energy and demand and that something was
going to happen that it was like, you know, we're
just we're at a very early time in social media

(07:53):
and technology. Like in twenty twelve, the iPhone had only
been out for like four or five years, right, Facebook
had just bought Instagram the last quarter. Oh, so like
everybody was just starting to figure out how to use
Instagram and sneaker it's all they ever want to do
is just see what sneakers they have and show off
their other sneakers.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
So like it was just very clear.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
I mean, you remember the Galaxy release was the first
time Nike you really using Twitter to drop I bought
the Kobe seven Galaxy on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, because there wasn't that weekend that those came out.
That was those It was the Galaxy, Katie Four's, the Kobe's,
the Big Bang Lebron Nines.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
And then if you count all that, the hyper like
those fourteen different galaxies.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Right yeah, Yeah, there's a bunch of different ones. So
that weekend, because that's February of twenty fourteen twelve or
twenty twelve. Okay, yeah, right in that time era that,
like you said, changed the sneaker world total for sure. Okay,
so you've had so just to crawl back a little bit,
you had Campless. You start after this Galaxy phone moment.
You start Campless, which was for people who don't know
that fifteen year old kid, what was campless?

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Campless is it was a price guide for sneakers, and.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
We then turned it into a blog.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
It's kind of like Freakonomics for sneakers, where we were
writing sort of analytic.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Pieces is right around sneakers.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
No.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Also, this is like the like golden era of analytics.
So Moneyball had just come out five thirty eight, which
was Nate Silver's analytics website bought by ESPN, was a
big deal. Kirk Goldsberry had just sort of introduced like
shot chart analytics at Sloan, So like all like data
analytics being woven into business and culture and sport was

(09:23):
all happening right at that same time as well. So
we were just the first people doing real analytics around sneakers.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
It wasn't nobody was selling so Campbus, nobody was selling there.
You were just getting analytics from at that time what
would probably be eBay, right, you were going on eBay.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, yeah, we were scraping eBay for for sales and just.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
To see what a shoe was worth. That was it
at that point, Okay, And then.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Just to just even with the most basic analytics, we
could start to identify when fake shoes were being sold
because you could just tell from pricing and outliers in
the data, and then also to compare it to the
only other place to really buy sneakers with flight Club
at the time. But if you knew you knew that
flight Club was extremely overpriced or what you could get

(10:05):
it for on eBay, or if you knew people.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Right, But there's a big dissneck.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's not like you could just walk into a store.
You didn't have you know, buying shoes on eBay was difficult.
So you know, a lot of it was we were
just early to figure that out. But I had this
idea of because we had this data, because we had
this sort of like this foothold into sneakers analytics, that
we could build what would eventually become stock x. But

(10:30):
at the time, we were thinking of as like a
stock market for sneakers, and I talked to everybody in
the sneaker industry, Nike, eBay, foot Locker, Complex, flight Club
to try to work with somebody to.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Try to leave IBM, to try to to go and
do that business.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
And there there was a lot of conversations, but no
one was really interested in doing what I want. A
lot of people you know, offered me a job or
they wanted to buy the data or whatever, but uh,
Complex actually made an acquisition offer. We won't throw anyone
under the bus, but it was it had five less

(11:04):
zeros than the offer.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
I eventually sold it to Dan Gilbert.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
For I know that.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Yeah, yeah, well it was like what am I doing?

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Like I'm gonna go sit and at a time, you know,
the Complex ad network was like the center of the
sneaker blogosphere. It was gonna go be one of like
fifty different like sneaker blogs like so I really had
no idea what was going to happen, and it was
probably gonna end up shutting down campus. And then right
before Easter of twenty fifteen, so like April of twenty fifteen,

(11:33):
I get a random call from a couple of guys say,
we work at Dan.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Gilbert really interested what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
And I ended up going out to Cleveland, or going
out to Detroit and Cleveland, going to a game, meeting
those guys, going to Detroit, spending a lot of time
with them. And it turns out that Dan Gilbert put
together a team. There were four guys led by Greg Schwartz,
who's now the CEO of StockX, and they were working
on what is essentially the same idea that I was

(11:58):
working on, which is, can we build a marketplace for
sneakers that is based on stock market mechanics? And this
is like a long and crazy story and extraordinarily serendipitous,
but the short version is it was one other persons
the whole.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
World trying to do the exact same thing at the
exact same time.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Gilbert, Yeah, it happens.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
To be one of the most successful business people in
the world. So it was just, you know, very fortuitous
for me. And then I ended up selling Campus to
Dan and then moving to Detroit, and then we took
Campus as the data layer and turned it into stock x.
Says you know it today. I was the fifth employee.
I came in as a CEO and Greg was the CEO,

(12:36):
and the two of us were essentially co founders running
that business. Dan sat right next to us. Our desks
were like posted right outside of his office, and he
would come out and he was very heavily involved, but
obviously running the Calves and Quicken and the whole city
of Detroit.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
So people don't know Dan Gilbert owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Right, owner of Cleveland Cavaliers.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
But you know Rocket Mortgage, which was at the time
Quick and Loans Mortgage. That's sort of the flagship business.
And then there's about a hundred other businesses related to
Dan or Cleveland.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Or is just one of those. For the most part,
Dan Gilbert comes in, he says, hey, I want to
do this with you. I was already thinking about doing this.
You grow stock X. Obviously it's where it is now.
But there's a lot of stories in the middle. One
story we want to talk about, we have the fans
at home want to hear about, is Kanye West storming
into the stock X office. Like, tell us the story
of when Kanye West stormed into the stock X office.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
He did a lot of storming.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
I will say it wasn't like he just like randomly
showed up and stormed in.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
So a lot of people, Kanye's created a.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Lot of memorable moments over the years and a lot
that aren't so great. So we all remember when he
was on SNL wearing the Maga hat, and that was
Saturday night, and then the next day he's on TMZ
wearing the Maga hat, and both of those were pretty
at the time, you know, extraordinary. And then that Sunday

(14:01):
and then on Tuesday he was in Detroit with us,
and this was planned. You know, he had reached out
to Dan. This was the time he was talking about
moving easy from LA to Chicago and he wanted to
sort of bring business back to the Midwest. And so
this was the whole business the whole meeting was set
up under the premise of he wanted to talk to

(14:22):
Dan about sort of rebuilding a major Midwestern city. Now,
what Dan has done Detroit is the stuff of legends.
It is at the extraordinary and you know, it's just unbelievable.
Chicago's in a much different starting position than Detroit. It's
not like you know.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Nevertheless, we were happy to host.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Him, and obviously at stock X we were always how
can we get closer to eeezy?

Speaker 3 (14:44):
How can we get closer to Connie?

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Just for marketing and credibility and you know, can you
imagine if we had done ay easy release on.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Stock x oh and at that point, right, like just
to quickly pause a story, at that point, like we
talked about we talk about a shoe like this, right,
like a wave Runner yeasy, the yeasy for people who
don't I don't know obviously, like I'm wearing a Nike Easy.
But then when Kanye goes from Nike to Adidas, right,
because the Nike stuff was all limited, and you know,
an analogy Joey and I came up with was like

(15:10):
the Nike Easies were for people who loved sneakers, right,
and they really wanted it, But the Adidas Easy was
for people who liked sneakers. And there's a lot more
people who like sneakers than people who love sneakers, right,
So that the tide of the sneaker market from you know,
call it twenty fifteen ish twenty sixteen, all the way
to the time we're talking about now in this part
of the story and more, has really raised a whole

(15:31):
entire tide that I'm sure you were seeing the data
behind and just like at that time, Kanye is the
peak of the sneaker culture. So of course keep going.
But I just want to give the viewers at home
who don't have all that history. I want to let
them know, like where we're at in this part of
the story.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, what's interesting is that we are so fortunate that
we launched StockX. We launch in February of twenty sixteen.
I think about like the macro environment of where Easy
was Right Easy release the year before with the first
three fifties Adidas Easy Right and was like and then

(16:05):
Virgil and the Ten come out in twenty seventeen, So
we released right in the middle of the two most
important like new franchises ever outside of Jordan, Right. So
like there's a lot of just in any success story
in any business.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
You just have a lot of very just amazing timing
to go to do that.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
And that's what that's what Kanye and Adidas Easy did
at the time. Right, they created a mass you that
can compete with Jordan, where we had all these people
coming into the sneaker industry anyway at that time to
be able to feed that hype and the growth and
that created this sort of virtual circle. Virgil then took
it to the next level and continue growing. So it
is absolutely a function of that Easy at that time

(16:45):
and Adidas like, we don't have the sneaker industry the
way it's at if you don't have this second franchise
that starts at that same time to push you.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
One thousand percent. So so Kanye comes in the office,
he wants to talk to to Dan about essentially bringing
Easy from LA to Chicago, and it just kind of
spirals out.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
It doesn't well, so they I mean, this is why
he wanted to have the meeting.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Is totally separate from what actually happened in the meeting.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
But Kanye was with us in Detroit for eight hours
and I have eight hours of stories of you know,
I mean, I have sixteen hours of stories, right.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
But the day was.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
I don't even know where to start to be in hotail,
but I'll say that we spent the first hour in
Dan's office where all of his people he brought about
ten or so people.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
We had about ten people.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
And then after that we gave me tour of stock Ax,
We gave a tour of Detroit. There's a famous video
on the Internet where we stormed into the Detroit Design School.
He says, I want to meet the best designers in Detroit.
And so one of the guys in Detroit calls up
the design school and says, hey, Kanye would like to
come by.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
So we show up at this school.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
He walks into a classroom that's ongoing, stands on the
table and gives it like a fifteen minute like sermon
about Alanma and Steve Jobs and and like these kids.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Are all like blown away.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Can you imagine if you're a nineteen year old kid
in your college class and Knnie walks in and stands
on the table and talks like you can google that,
and fine, there's like a two minute clip of that
somewhere on the internet that that's out there.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
And the whole day was like that. The whole day
was that.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
And the best part about the whole thing was all
of us, Dan and me and all the people that
were with us. Every minute we were like this, like
oh my god, and his team was like, ah, it's
like another Tuesday.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
It was like there was nothing that was even you know,
that didn't phase them at all. But I'll leave you
with with what I think is maybe the most interesting
story of the day is that about twenty minutes into
the meeting with Dan, where there's twenty twenty five of
us sitting in Dan's office, and Connie takes out two dictionaries,
two pocket sized dictionaries, and two highlighters and he hands

(18:54):
a highlighter and dictionary to Dan and he says, Dan,
We're gonna play the dictionary game.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Do you know what that is? And Dan was he
was like, no, I do not, what would?

Speaker 2 (19:04):
And so Kanye explains it that we're going to open
up to a random page, We're gonna choose a random word, uh,
and then we are going to highlight all of the
words on that page that we think are positive words,
and then we were going to compare them.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
And this game went on for an hour. This game
went on for for almost a full hour.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
And Dan, you know, I mean what like he what
a mention? Like he he played let him play the
whole time. But this was Kanye's way of, I don't know,
engaging in in intellectualism to have this discussion about the
power of language. And there's some broader there's some broader
context to it, but ultimately it was it was just

(19:46):
a complete like like just wild Force and the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
And by the way, you can google that.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
There's an episode of Keeping Up to the Kardashians where
he also plays the dictionary game for a couple of days.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Did Kanye ever have an interest in buying or partnering
with stock X in any way?

Speaker 3 (20:00):
No, I mean, look, that's what we want.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
We wanted to turn that relationship that day, that meeting
into a relationship or hopefully we could do a release
one day, or we could you know, have something. And
you know, you couldn't even have a cogent conversation about
that with him. We tried a couple of times, and
you know, there was at one point where he was
in the office and sort of in like, oh, we

(20:22):
were standing on the basketball court and all this sud
and he goes because I actually be a part of this,
and we're like, yes, you should be part of this.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Let's talk about that, and then there's like off to
the next thing.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
And so yeah, it was, Yeah, I had eight hours
to try to get something done and we got nothing done.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
That's insane.

Speaker 4 (20:35):
Like speaking of celebrities, obviously you have a track pass
with stock AX working on collaborations and just the amount
of people that you've worked with throughout the years with
stock X, is there someone that stands out other than
obviously Kanye coming to the office that you've worked with
that was, you know, your pride and joy, the coolest
kind of celebrity to work with at the current time
in stock Acts.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a good question because
you know, as you know, a lot of the people
who are our celebrities in the Sneakers space are a
lot more accessible than than maybe some other you know,
just the fact that you know, we're sitting at Staple
and that Jeff's allowed us to do this. But in
terms of like you know, like real, real, you know,

(21:17):
celebrities at the highest level of culture.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
You know, the fact that that Eminem.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Was as involved as early and you know Paul and I,
Paul Rosenberg's manager. He and I have become really good
friends and and you know they're involved in Ghost Right.
Obviously Eminem is the famous fan in the in the
NBA Ghost Right set. But that was a relationship that
was very organic around Detroit. Those guys we were talking

(21:45):
them before we had a logo. We were talking to
them before there was any business. I mean this was
like we were basically still campus and still trying to
and because we were working with Dan and so close
to everything Detroit related, it was something that was important
to them and having started that were important in Detroit.
It turned out that the sneaker was a good way
for us to work together. And obviously Eminem has a
long history of creating really amazing sneakers with Nike and Jordan.

(22:10):
But I think that relationship, because it was very organic
around it, has then led to a longer term relationship
with those guys and everything else.

Speaker 4 (22:16):
Yeah, and just for the viewers, for everyone that doesn't
know what we're talking about, we're talking about the car
Heart Eminem Jordan four. You guys partnered with Eminem if
don't stop me when I'm wrong, but you guys parted
with him to release ten pairs for all for his charity.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I by the way, I appreciate that that is the
misconception because he released ten pairs with eBay because so
stock X didn't release STOCKGS didn't launch until a couple
months later, right, and so the timing of that was
such that we ended up being able to pick up

(22:50):
the tail end of that and then we did a
release or we did a marketing thing around the car Heart.
They gave me a pair which was very nice, and
then we did some other stuff, you know, just because
announcing Eminem as a partner all so we we floated
off of that pr that was really an eBay release
at the time.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Now fast forward when they when they made twenty three
pairs of the Jordan for the Blue the Encore, that
one we also.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Released with him.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
But that one was where we actually did release with
him in a way because there were only twenty three
pairs that it was not for sale.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
We were at burn Rubber and Detroit.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Where we made a video of em and I made
a video where we actually ended up giving it ten
pairs away different pairs that he and Oden from his life.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
So it was a really fun thing.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
The video that day was extraordinary of like him and
I just standing this close away talking about sneakers and
creating it. But you know, it's been a it's been
a long organic history around that because of the sneaky relationship,
because of Detroit and all that.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
But wow, you said you got the car Herd fors
did you get the Encores too?

Speaker 2 (23:59):
No, I didn't because they're only twenty three pairs and
there weren't enough pairs in my size, so I did
not get a pair of those.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, there's so much stuff we could cover, Like we
we could talk all day about all these stories, but
from an overall synopsis, like what are some of your
proudest moments or achievements from your time at stock Acts.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
You guys have just like big questions. There's Josh, let's listen.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
It's not just us who want to know, it's the
people who want to know. You got questions for the community.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
I'm just glad you have asked me what's the most
expensive pair of sneakers I own?

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Because you know that's that's Those are the boring questions.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Those are the low level of life.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, I mean, you got to give yourself credit.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
You created you know, the stock market of what you know,
every single viewer pretty pretty.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Much is going to have that app on their phone,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (24:48):
And then in ten years from now, I guarantee every
single kid is going to have one or two Ghosts
rights in their room.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
So I mean, you know that that's what.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
We're working on right now for sure. You know, Look,
we were we were very.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Fortunate from a time and you know, we talked about
some of these sort of sliding doors around, you know,
around timing for when we create the business and the
other things that happened at a macro level. But Dan's
whole life has been around the rebuilding of the city
of Detroit. And so then we go in to build

(25:21):
this company in Detroit, you know, and I spent six
years and all I did was convince people to move
to Detroit as we were building that company.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
And you know all pre Covid. Obviously things changed after COVID.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
But pre Covid, like that team of people that we
built in Detroit, like that's actually probably the thing that
that I'm most proud of and that they were almost
proud of.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Like that was just.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
You know, I think you started by saying, like a
business is just people, right, It's just who you work with.
And now today at gohest Troit, there's fourteen people on
the team, but almost all of them work with me
at either stock X, Orphana ex Collectibles. To wort to
build that relationship with those people that you can continue
working with and continue creating companies with, et cetera. I mean,
that's the real, you know, win and all this. I

(26:06):
don't know how many people that became millionaires.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Out of stock X. It's a lot.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
That's pretty fun to think about as well, particularly for
some of these people who would never have been in
that situation but happen to be early employees at those companies.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Like that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
And then really though, like the long term brand of
stock X, you know, businesses Wianne and Wax, and the
value of the company and the importance of the company
and the product they sell will change.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
But I think you guys will agree, and you guys
have already said it.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
It's like the value of the brand on the street
is stronger than ever and I forget that sometimes. And
you know, this past week I was, I was at
the National Trading Card Show and just when someone will
stop and then introduce me and sale, this is Josh,
you created stock X. And to see the look change
in someone's eye because you know, again like everyone does

(26:54):
have that app, it's just you know, we just you know,
I guess I think we got lucky in a lot
of ways at the right timing. But like the brand
is branded, and so now moving forward. I love the
fact that that Greg was my co founder is now
the CEO there, and those guys will get to continue
building that company and create you.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
Know, pretty something.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Now, this is the starting point of where you get
to go, right, there's no end to business.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
It just keeps going.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, I love that, and you say it's luck, But
I'm a big believer in luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
You know, I think we're all lucky to have woken
up this morning, and a lot of people get a
lot of opportunities, but they're not prepared for them.

Speaker 5 (27:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
So I hope that you'll you and your team will
give yourself a pat on the shoulder for that. But
we have to talk about it, and we'll allude to
some of the things we are and we dream and
want to be the voice of the sneaker community and
sneaker culture, right, So, like we would be hard pressed
to not ask the hard pressing questions, so we need
to ask and we'll talk about some of the specifics.
But what I want to know from a higher level
is we talk about stock X being all glorious, and

(27:50):
of course it is, like we are huge fans. We've
done stuff with stock X. Shout out to Greg shout
out to Dell, you know, the whole team over there
right in the time.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Right, Dell's a sorry, fired him six times and he's
still there.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
Sown as the man.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Dell.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
When you watch this, you're the we love you, we
love you. But either way he does, Yeah, for sure.
So in all these times growing stock ks and oh
Kanye's coming in the office, we're doing this with im
and m. Of course there's controversies and we can talk
about them, and there's different things going on. But did
you ever think stock X was going to fail amongst
all these controversies that were going on.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I every day for the
first you know year, right, you know, every company.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
When you start to learn, particularly as you start to
meet other people.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
That work at larger companies, it's like every company is
a mess behind the scenes. Some companies just happen to
make more money or have more brand, but behind the
scenes it's all mess. Everyone is trying to hold it together.
And if you're really growing, if you're really pushing it,
then there's always going to be things that it's risky.
It's like how how far can you go before you

(28:58):
run out of money? Or you know, what if we
do we don't raise money, what if the business doesn't
pick up and then things turn for the better and
you get a little bit of breathing space. But you know,
when we launched stock x, you know, we launched in
February of sixteen, and it really wasn't until the holidays
of seventeen, so like eighteen months right until we're like, okay,

(29:21):
this works and this is like that's when the business
really took off. But after that point, like, well then
you have COVID, which is a different issue, okay, right,
and for other reasons of why we think you know,
as you know stock x, we physically authenticate.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Every product that goes through. So we have the authentication
centers verification centers.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Around the world, and in COVID, all but one had
to be shut down, right, the one that was in
New Jersey was allowed to continue operating and all the
others had to be shut down. But had that been
shut down by the government of New Jersey at the
time based on COVID regulations, then the business would have
gone to zero for that for how or of a

(30:00):
long it would have stayed shut because the business itself,
the technology didn't have the ability to ship from a
seller to a buyer. That's not how stock x works.
So you know, again, very lucky that happened to be.
We had a facility in New Jersey. If we had
just one facility in Detroit and Detroit right or the
second one was in Arizona, and like, if those have
been shut down, the business would have gone to zero.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
And then how long could you have survived?

Speaker 4 (30:22):
I don't know, Wow, yeah, you know that'd you know,
just you're speaking about all like the hard times and
obviously everything that you went through. You know, you talked
about your team and how you know still even with
ghostwrit you have a team of fourteen people and stock gots.
You grew from the ground up and you really built
that team. And Jonathan and I the same thing with
the God Sould. We started when we were fourteen and sixteen.
We know the family bond is.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
Still a picker fourteen and sixteen.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
I'll take it as a come I'll take it too.

Speaker 4 (30:46):
But you know, we started this and we know how
hard it is to build that team right, and it
only makes the decision to leave that family that much harder.
I want to know your thought process and was there
anything or anything that kind of moved you to the
point of stepping down in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah, well, you know, so I left and I stepped
down to see you in middle nineteen and I left
stock X twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Stock X was a rocket ship, right. It was a
zero to billion in three years.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Right.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
We started in February sixteen.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
In summer of nineteen, we did our Unicorn rally, raised
money to billion dollar valuation.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
And we've never.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Been a million years thought that that's where we'd be
at that time. But you get to that point and
the business is growing so fast and there's so much
going on that you very quickly start thinking about, Okay,
how do we how do we get our handle hands
around this, build the systems and the people and the
processes in order to make sure that we can continue growing.
And it was very clear at that time pre covid

(31:48):
that we were going to be at least considered thinking
about an IPO and going public.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
And so it's very clear that like I am not
the person.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
To run a multi billion dour public company, like I
am a I'm a startup guy.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
I'm like a day zero guy.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
And we happen to have an investor who was in
the company from the very beginning.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Who is sort of this like perfect candidate to be
able to do that.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
So Greg and I actually went to Dan and suggested,
we said, you know, we think that we should ask
Scott to become the CEO, and for it was my
decision and to volunteer and step down. And that was
a much easier decision than actually leaving the company. That
was an easy one because it was like made most
sense of the business. But then I spent the next

(32:31):
year working on all innovation and other stuff while Scott
came in to handle sort of the nuts and bolts
and sort of the like kind of the un sexy
stuff of the business. But after a year of doing that,
I realized that, you know, just because I started the
company doesn't mean I can't leave. And then like the
world of possibility opened up and I was like, oh,
I was like, well, I'll always be the Stockings founder.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
I don't need it.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
I don't want to sit here in budget meetings and
figure out how to make the company two percent more
efficient and cut costs like no way, Like I wanted
to like build things and create things. And it happened
to be that I was starting to get back into
trading cards. That we were starting to network in the
trading card industry and saw the opportunity and trading cards
at the time, and that was a big part of saying, oh,
you know what, like I think there's this opportunity in
trading cards.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
It's more interesting at this stage.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
And and like I said, it took me a year
to figure out that I could leave, and then, you know,
it's a much different situation.

Speaker 4 (33:22):
And you know, not a lot of people have that
kind of mentality too. Like you mentioned the fact of
you really just wanted to go start something right, and
the same thing with stock X and you know campus
at the very beginning too, you just wanted to start something.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
And my question to that is.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Is there anything obviously you said that you don't think
or you never imagined stock X to be where I
was by the time you left. Was there anything you
would have done differently now looking back at the beginning
dy of the stock X or.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, I mean that also is a pretty huge question.
There's a big difference between sort of mistakes made that
you wish you could have changed versus you know, the
sort of sliding door decisions that got you to where
you're at, and you know what, like, I'm sort of
happy where I'm at, and maybe if you made a

(34:10):
different decision, it would have gone, you know, different way. However,
I will say that, like giving a really good example,
that was just a straight up mistake.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
So we added we watched this in handbags to stock
X before we added streetwear.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
And you know, stock X was always about the model,
was always about the larger idea of a stock market
of things and bid ass like stinkers happened to be
the first product. But the real business at stock X
it's the pricing model, right, It's the bidass is how
we connect buyers and sellers. And so once we had
a little bit of traction, stock X was say, hey,
how do we grow the business? And we thought that
watching the handbags, because they were bigger categories, that it

(34:48):
was a better choice than going the streetwear, which was
the same customer. And like it wasn't even close, right,
I mean, like the day we added Supreme, we did
eleven hundred trades.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
We thought we were gonna do.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Like twenty thirty fifty, right, I think we're still probably
not doing eleven hundred trades in watches and handbags you know,
I've long since left, so don't quote me on any numbers,
but you know that was a good example of like
that was just you know, that was just a bad decision, right,
we should have added streetwear.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
So personally, and you know, of course there's things you
would do differently, all of us to be here, we
have to be fans of Nike and Nike's Jordan's and
you said you grew up watching Michael Jordan and all
these things, and you actually, in the research we did,
applied time and time again to be an intern at Nike, right,
and it didn't work out. But we're all fans of
these brands. And in my opinion, and I think in

(35:38):
most sneaky resellers opinions, I think that stock X did
an ultimate amount of great things for Nike, right, because
it actually gave a platform for people to be able
to commoditize and see the value. And I think it
rose the tide for Nike, Jordan, all the brands in
a large way. But it's clear that Nike disagreed, right,
and there's been different lawsuits and all these things that

(35:59):
came out of like being a fan of Nike, being
someone who applied to work at Nike, being someone who,
in all of our shared opinions, I'm sure raised the
tide for Nike. How do you feel when all of
those things were happening in Nike was suing stock Acts.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Well, look, you know all those lasses started after I left,
and obviously you know I'm not there, and so I
can't you know, speak to any of the things that
are going on now or what that happened. However, I'll
say that as somebody that grew up as such a

(36:33):
big Nike fan, you know, I applied a job Nike fifteen.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
Years in a row.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
I tried. I applied for job and Nike as an
intern when I graduate college, as in grad school. After
grad school, I gave a talk at Nike in January
of sixteen, so a month before stock X launch.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Because I had done a TED talk about.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Sneakers in October fifteen, so they asked me to come
talk at Nike. It's it's a Jordan Nike leadership off
site at the Presidio in San Francisco. There's I don't know,
two or three hundred people in the room, all the
top leaders in Nike. And the first slide in my
presentation is a chart and it has year and it

(37:14):
says did Josh apply to Nike and get rejected? And
it was like nineteen ninety five to two thousand, and
just said yes.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, that was the whole trip.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Then you get in any industry and then you work
with those companies that you idolize or you know, we're
such a big fan of and then you realize that
it's just people. Every business is a mess behind the scenes,
you know, and particularly large corporations. Large corporations are not
singular entities, right, like this person over here does not

(37:47):
have the same person in this opinion as this person
over here.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
We tried so many different ways to.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Work with them, and there were always a couple people
that were our supporters and fans internally, and that was great,
and some of those people, you know, I'm still friends with.
And it was more frustrating than anything that there wasn't
someone in a senior enough position that really understood that
this should be a symbiotic relationship. By the way, the

(38:16):
title of that presentation in January of twenty six, before
they knew stock X, before we'd even watch stock X,
the title of the presentation was essentially Nike should work
with the resale market. And it was it was a
campus presentation, right, they didn't know me at stocks the time.
There's a lot of data and there's a lot of anecdotes.
And as I was giving this presentation, you can see

(38:37):
the audience, you can see what they're saying and doing.
One out of every three people were turning to their colleagues.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
And be like, look, I told you, you know, you know, like, of.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Course it would be you working with these guys, right,
because the resale market, like that's where the biggest fans are,
That's where all the hype and the marketing and like,
so it's a weird thing. And you know, Nike is
very pr and legal driven company.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
And I think a lot of this, by the way,
goes back decades.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
It goes back to nineteen nineteen ninety one Sports Illustrated
cover your sneakiers in your Life, right, you know, Jordan
Five's and a gun on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
So I think a lot of it has this sort
of historical sort of willful blindness and pr policy towards
the resale market. But all takes is one person. All
takes is one executive in a senior enough position at

(39:23):
any company to change those policies and create really innovative,
interesting things. And it's going to happen, and maybe it'll
be Elliott Hill. Elliott Hill, by the way, is the
person who invited me to speak at that conference that
day and handed me a pair of just Don Beach
twos on stage after my presentation.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
He said, these are coming out next week.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
We got to you a pair of these, right, Like,
you know, he's a Nike guy, throw and through, so
maybe it's him, maybe it's the next guy or whatever.
But like it will change because it has to, because
like that relationship is just too it it's too real
to avoid it and have pr and legal dictator.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
In other wise. And it's funny because there's a lot
of layers to this. Of course, we could literally talk
about it all day. But the thing that they tried,
Nike tried to pinpoint was authentication. That was one thing.
There were plenty of things, but that was one thing.
And you see, you know in the sneaker reselling culture,
people always say, oh StockX this, Oh I got a
fake ssh you or I got that one thing like

(40:24):
you said, and I love that you said. It is
that every company, inclusive of God Soul, behind the scenes,
inclusive stock X, inclusive of goes right, inclusive of Staple
is a mess behind the scenes, right, And same thing
with Nike, same thing with stock X. Right. So another thing,
like you said, businesses are people. People are humans who
are going to make mistakes. So it literally is impossible
even now with AI technology, even the AI is going

(40:46):
to get it wrong. Right, So what were those challenges
when people Nike saying, oh, stock ex sells fake sneakers,
the community saying stock ex sells fake sneakers, and that
obviously ostracizes stock X to the sneaker community. As someone
who has been a lifelong sneaker head, how did that
feel when the sneaker community Nike, all these people are
like turning their back on stock X with fake sneakers

(41:06):
as one of the reasons why.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Well, I'll say, is I partly disagree with the premise
in that sort that people turn their back on stock
X because of this pr The haters are always loud
on the Internet. There's always people that are gonna, you know,
yell and scream, and nobody yells and screams when they're like,
I got a.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Real pair, right.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
I've long since lost any of the metrics or the data.
But when I left stock x in September of twenty
we were doing something like thirty five thousand sneakers a day, right,
So the number of people that are getting real sneakers, right,
even if ten people are screaming every single day on Twitter, right,

(41:50):
thirty four nine ninety, it's just it's not even remotely
symmetric in terms of the noise on the Internet and
social media versus the reality of those business at scale.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
And so that's fine.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
So really you just have to come to accept that
part of running a business and success at any level.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
And you know it's been said a million different ways, right,
but you know.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
What, you know, like they only they only yell and
scream at you, right if you're winning, right, and from
the stands, Yeah, yeah, And so that's fine, that's fine,
that's just part of it. But it was most painful
in the beginning when we had we didn't have the
scale and the the success and everything else.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
I remember the first time.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
That we thought, you know, that like a fake sneaker
had come through, and we didn't know if it was real,
and we didn't know how to like we called thirty
people right to try to figure it out because we
thought it was like the most important thing in the
entire world to try to get it right. And I'm like,
we must have spent three days trying to figure that

(42:58):
out because we thought that it was the most important thing,
and it is important. But at the end of the day, right, Like,
that's just it's just part of the process and trying.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
To build the business and figure it out.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
So, yeah, it's a really like interesting business to be
in because by its very nature you were going to
have some of those things that happen.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
Right, And I think that's the hugest thing too, because
a lot of times, like you hear that with anything
that obviously the small handful of the negative is the loudest, right,
Like you said, the people that are happy with the platform,
happy if the business whatever it is, aren't going to
really say anything.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
And so those collectors, those resellers.

Speaker 4 (43:34):
Those you know, sneaker and throughists that are so called
the haters of stock X and you know, just everything
along that lines. What's your message to those collectors that
say stock.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
X ruined the sneaker culture.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Well, the it's not about it, is it is just
simply not about fake sneakers or process.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
The thing that's that is difficult is.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
I think I think there's a rational economic argument that
the evolution of the sneaker industry over the last decade.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
And it's not just stock X.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
It's stock X, it's goat, it's flight club, it's stadium goods,
it's urban necessities, it's you know, it's riff.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
It's all like the sort.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Of the big resellers, consignment shops, you know, over the
last you know, from let's say, from twenty fifteen to
twenty nineteen, right like that, that group of people, we
all made it so easy and so accessible for anyone
to buy any sneaker that they ever wanted, that it
diminishes the value of a drop today. And that's the

(44:38):
thing that I think is it's unavoidable. But it's a
it's kind of a shame because like it was always
about like the hype of the drop. We started talking
about the Galaxy foam and how exciting that is. I
don't think you could ever have that level of excitement
that you had for that because of this, Because any
shoe that's coming out, no matter how much hype there is,
you could buy that, or you could buy every issue

(45:00):
that's ever come out ever on stock X or Goat
or flight Cuver or something like that. So, oh, the
Undefeated Force came out this fat great, you can go
buy the actual Undefeated Force at seven different places right now, right.
So it changes the hype cycle and it changes the
culture of releases, and that, more than anything, is like
the biggest like negative aspect of the success of these companies.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
So going to the success of these companies and the
companies you mentioned right, like the thing that they're all
built off the back of you mentioned stock X, Goat,
you know, riff all these companies is reselling and resellers.
And when you had camp lists, like you said, there
was no selling, and that's something I wanted to know
because it was really just an interest in sneakers and
data and all these things. And then of course the
selling part comes in, and it really starts as someone

(45:43):
who's you know, we started GOTSA on twenty thirteen, and
I was selling before that point. It was something where
you were kind of just using as a tool. It
wasn't like a reseller, like a catalyst, but now it is.
And what stock x inevitably shifted in the market. Is
it's made it from and one of the criticisms that
Joey was saying is it made it from lovers of
the sneaker world to resellers. Right, how do you there's

(46:03):
people who have these sneaker bots, and there's power resellers
and you know all these things. How do you personally
feel about sneaker resellers?

Speaker 3 (46:11):
Uh? It is it's like asking me how I feel
about air. Right, It's just like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Like that's just the natural that there's a natural part
of any ecosystem.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
There is no there is no.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Industry that that has arbitrage that exists in the pricing
and distribution scheme that doesn't have another part of the
industry that that creates a business opportunity period, Right, ticketing,
jewelry houses, like you name it. It just happens to be

(46:44):
that we're in a space that is consumer consumer, and
you know, it's very social and there's a there's a
lot of you know, there's a lot of hype around it,
and so you get a lot it's very easy for
some kid to to put a tweet up that says, oh,
you know, all the resellers bought the undefeated of fours

(47:04):
and I couldn't get any And it looks sad or whatever,
but like, there is no industry that this happens. And
by the way, the only way to change the dynamic
that you're referring to that that is the sort of
like the negative aspect of resellers, is to change retail pricing.
It is the only way you cannot legislate around resell markets.

(47:26):
You cannot change it is supplying demand. It is economics
at its most basic. It is econ one oh one.
You either increase supply or you increase price. Like that's
the only way to change that to not have that arbitrage.
By the way, that's why it goes straight. Everything is
sold using a blind ditch auction. This was literally ghost right,
is a culmination of trying to fix that problem.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Right.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
The secondary markets.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
Will and should still exist, but they exist, they should
exist in a more structured and transparent way that everybody
should be able to participate in them, as opposed to
just being people that have bots, or people that know
the manager at the store, or people that you know
cut the line or whatever it is. And we did
a couple of those at stock X. We did six
blind attractions. That was the premise of creating fanatics collectibles

(48:13):
to trading car business. But everything that we sell a
ghost right is sold as a blind attraction. So it's
literally you cannot bot it. You cannot like cut the
line and get it. You can only pay a fair
market value. And if I could like change one thing
about the way that the Sneaker retail and Nike works,
it's how they priced products. And by the way, we
didn't make up blind attractions, right, We just like stock x.

(48:35):
We just copy how this works from parts of economics
and finance. And well, by the way, the first time
we ever did a blind attraction for a pair, we
made slides with Ben Baller in January twenty nine.

Speaker 5 (48:46):
Shot Bryce Scott's All podcast, and by the way, he
was like, great, I would love to be a part
of this and let you guys create this product with
Ben Baller did the chain on the slides we sold them.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Harvard Business will reach us out to us after that
release and said this is an ingenious way to price
scarce assets, and they did a case study that's in
Harvard Business Review that's taught at business schools saying that this.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
Is the right way to price scarce assets.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
I send that to everybody at Nike and Adidas and
the whole industry. So, like, you're absolutely right that like
we have this like fervor around the resale ecosystem, but
like it is it is.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Anyone that thinks it can go away is like it's delusional.
It can't. It's just a natural part of the STM.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
So going to that point, right, Like you talk about
Nike and you talk about the supply demand curve, and
these are all great and the auctioning I think there's
a lot of great ideas. But the I guess stab
that Nike took at it is they increased supply. A
lot of people just say, hey, they did it just
to make more money, which you know people feel however,
they feel right. But Nike increased supply, right, and the
demand went down, just natural supply demand curve, like you said,

(49:51):
right now. A result of that is people saying Nike's dead,
the sneak of resell world, the collecting world is dead.
Is Nike dead?

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Well, you tell me, do you want Nike to put
out a pair of shoes that everyone can get or
do you want to put out a pair of shoes
that's super limited that only you can get. That's really
the thing people don't want to be able to get.
They don't want everybody to be able to get it.
People don't want their not to be resellers. They just
want to be the lucky ones to get the rare ones, right,

(50:20):
and that can't happen.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
It's just mad.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
He's not dead. People are just mad.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
Essentially, Well, there's a little bit of both.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
But there's the Nike being dead part is a function
of you know, the situation we've created where you can
now access all those products.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
So it's just a product.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Choice standpoint, Right, do you want the new product that
came out, Well, maybe, but if you're going to spend
two hundred bucks, then maybe you just want to buy
a different shoe that you can buy because there's fifty
thousand different shoes on stock X.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
So that's a part of it.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
And then how Nike decides to release that next product
is a function of what you're getting.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
At, right.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
And then just on the topic of Nike, obviously, you
know talk about Nike's relevancy and you know, just the.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Sneaker market in general.

Speaker 4 (51:03):
But now you see this resurgence not of some brands
like the Asex and the New Balance of the World.
Then you see like the on Clouds, you see these
independent brands really getting big. And my kind of question
to you is where do you see the sneaker market going?
Because you already start to see the baby footsteps of everywhere,
the new A six and the new new Balances, But
where do you see the sneaker market going?

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, I think the new brands is great, right, having
a sort of long tail products that you know, as
people have different tastes and you can buy that, it
is great. The shoes that still drive the most hype
is when Travis puts out a new pair of Nikes, though, right, Like,
you know, that level of hype that happens in the

(51:46):
market is still centered around that core call, that core
Jordan customer, even if Jordan's don't hit the same way
they used to, and even if at some point you
can't buy another Jordan for right, So, you know, the
future of sneakers will be interesting because you know the
core of this is going to be is there another
franchise that can come behind? Easy had its moment? Obviously,

(52:11):
all the stuff that Kanye has done is created a
situation that we're obviously easies don't exist anymore, aren't manufacturing anymore.
They still make Jordan's, but for how long can that last?
And so I like he's in need of a new
franchise right to be able to continue it or like
orre you just where you just end up in this
distributed ecosystem, like like the Zellerfelts and the Skylarks of

(52:33):
the world that then can continue to come in and
create those products.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
That's one of the fan questions. We have a few
rapid fire fan questions. We're going to get into them.
Will end out. So is Travis Scott the next Michael
jordan And will there ever be another Michael Jordan's.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Yeah, no, Travis's is No, he's not, He's He's.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Travis Scott has existed on this like wave over all
the the franchises, and he's done that for too long
to then change and be the like the foundation underneath it.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
You need somebody else that comes up.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
And you know, we're never gonna see another Virgil when
never see another Kanye, We say that, but then the next.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
Person comes up. So yeah, I don't know who it is,
but it's not.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Trapped, but there will be another Michael Jordan there.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
Well, I don't another Jordan, but there will be another
Virgil or Kanye or somebody that creates a franchise of
hype sneakers that matters. Jordan's were so unique that I
don't think that ever happens.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Okay, next fan question, Yeah, is wearing the stock X
tag acceptable?

Speaker 3 (53:37):
I have to say yes.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Okay, I have to say yes. Okay, fair enough. You're
gonna give your answer on this. But one of the
questions was, did stock X ruin the sneaker culture or
make it better?

Speaker 3 (53:49):
No? Stock X made it better?

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Would you rather still be fighting against fake people on
eBay and never be able to get the shoes you want?

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Of course not?

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Okay? Who is on your sneaker reseller Mount Rushmore?

Speaker 2 (54:01):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Individuals for individuals.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
For individuals, man, I don't even know if I can.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
But they could be you could be on that for example,
like you start a stock act. You could say, oh,
the founder of flight Club, So who's your sneak a
reseller Mount Rushmore?

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Oh? Man?

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Uh, you know, I don't even know how to add
it answer that.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
That's a crazy question.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
It's the fan questions for a reason. They want to know,
the people need to know.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Maybe Clark Kent, he was sort of the original. He would,
you know, buy a pair of shoes, wear it once,
and then he'd sell it to somebody or give it
to somebody.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
So maybe maybe that's clark best example.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
You know, the.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
You know the riff guys, like they were out there
in trenches before anyone else.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
Right, it was.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
I say riff l a second, So Clark Kent riff La.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah, that's that's sorry. How about that kid, that guy
his mom fired at Nike.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Oh okay, yeah, West West Coast Sneaker or something like that.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Yeah, yeah, And then Joe yeah, and then and then
we'll put Greg Swartz, CEO.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Of stock X.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
You're not gonna put yourself, no, Greg.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
Can be Greg May on the Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Okay, fair enough, you missed. You missed a couple of
good ones, so we'll see what there's.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Yeah, that's a lot. You should have prepped me for
that one. I should have thought through that one.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
That's all right, Yeah, it's all right.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Okay. And then what are the most iconic moments to
you in sneaker history? If you had to give three, Yeah,
so actually there's there's four Hunt Rushmore.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, so eighty five.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
Jordan one, you know, ninety nine two thousand which is eBay,
and then sort of start of Jordan retros and you know,
and then the first Concord, So you have this sort
of moment around that which is eBay and the start
of of reselling two thousand and eleven, twenty twelve, which

(55:56):
is Concord eleven Christmas, and then Galax the viral. Yeah,
so like that that those that three month window from
Christmas to February anchored by those three shoes, which also
coincided with Instagram, uh, and then twenty fifteen twenty sixteen
which is stock.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
X and yeasy. And so what you have is you
have these four.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Moments where the technology, infrastructure, and product all changed at
this moment that created more convergence around people, sneakers and markets.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
And you can see this plotted very clearly.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
The sort of those created these four big moments of
growth within the hypoconya within.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
The sneaker industry.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
And we haven't seen a fifth moment yet and we'll
see what happens like, but it will be the same thing.
A new technology, a new social media, a new product,
a new infrastructure that happens, and then there'll be products
that happen at the same time which will be amplified
by it.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
So those four are it's pretty clear.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
It's clear you thought that question.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
We are sitting. For some people who don't know, we're
sitting inside of twenty one Mercer Street in New York City.
If you know what that is, you know, and if
you don't know, this is one of the most historic
locations in all of sneakers, right home of Nike Lab,
home of so many of the craziest sneaker releases and
stories and moments. We have Joanna off camera right now,
who is the manager during those times, and she was

(57:20):
telling us of like just the things that people were
doing for the drops in this store. You know, we
talked about the Galaxy foam release, the floor was shaking,
just insane stuff about this location that is no longer
a Nike store now it's actually a Staple store, so
Jeff Staple and there might be some more stuff with
Jeff Staple coming. We can't tell you too much, but
shout out to Jeff. But we're sitting inside of the

(57:40):
Staple store. But inside of that is the ghost Rite Museum. Right,
So your venture now ghost Right, We're going to talk
all about it during the interview. But what does it
feel like to have in museum, a three month long
museum inside of what is arguably the most prominent address
in the sneaker world.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Yeah, well, I look, a lot of this is intentional,
lot of this is also just opportunistic, right. I mean,
Jeff was one step ahead of everyone as soon as
the least came up to be able to grab it
and turn it into two staple, which was which was
a creu. I knew about twelve other people that were
trying to get it as well, so so good for him.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
You know, Ghosts right has existed.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
We started the brand in early mid twenty two. We
started making Ghosts at the end of twenty three. We
started selling Ghosts the end of twenty four, so it's
it's been a while. It takes a long time to
make a physical thing and deal with design and manufacturing
and shipping and all that. So we have years of
samples and cool designs and just you know, we've only

(58:41):
released ten eleven Ghosts, but there's so many that we
want to be able to show so and then it
was like, well, we'd love to be in New York City,
and so it was very opportunity. Jeff and I happened
to see each other at a TV show taping, a
TV show pilot that we were both asked to be
a part of, which is a comical story.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
I'll let him tell that story sometime.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
And so we saw each other, I don't know, six
nine months ago, and he told me that he was
setting this up and that's where he came up with
the idea to bring all the ghosts in real life.
So it was great, and you know, we'll talk of
the Galaxy phone. But like for me, this is very
much a full circle moment.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
Oh yeah, And I can imagine the beginning stages of
ghost right, right. You found it in twenty two, you know,
started making products in twenty three, and you you know,
started actually releasing stuff in twenty twenty four, so you're
obviously still at the very beginning stages of Ghosts, right,
And I want to ask you what's the what's the vision,
and what what's the ten year plan for ghost right
going forward?

Speaker 3 (59:36):
Well, look, you guys are very familiar with Bear Brick.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Your audience is very familiar with Bear Brick. And you know,
all these products are the same. Sneakers, streetwear, trading cards,
collectable toys. They're all products that sit in the intersection
of culture and commerce.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
They're all products that have a true market value.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
They're products that are supplying demand based, that have collectors
and resellability.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
And authent all the same. And so you know, stock
x is the marketplace for all of it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
And then after that I went and created Fanatics Collectibles,
which is the trading card business there. And so you
have these two monolists into these two really big big companies,
and I wanted to be able to create a business
that was based on all the same ideas, but there
was small enough to like really innovate.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
You know, at stock x one day one you need
to deal with Nike and Adidas and all the big
sneakier companies in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
At trading cards that we had Fanatics in the NBA
made in collectible toy space, it's Medicoon, it's funk Oh,
that's it. There aren't any and those are those are
really small companies. So so we get to to take
all the best ideas and concepts from sneakers and trading
cards and apply it to collectible toys. And the best
example of this is when you look at Barbrick and

(01:00:46):
why Barbrick has been so successful for so long. Right
you know, Medicom has been making Bearbreck since the year
two thousand. Barbrick is the only collectible toy that is
a blank canvas that is not IP. Every other character
is IP. It's Astrable, it's cause it's Spider Man, right,
But Barbrick is just a shape. Bar Brick is a
human body with a with a bare head, and so

(01:01:06):
you could put Cause or Spider Man on it, or
you could wrap it in a flag or a random design.
And because of that, Barbrick is able to work with
so many more artists and companies and brands. And so
when I left Finax Collectibles, we tried to buy Barbrick.
We wanted to do all the things we're doing. We said, great,
bear Brick is the only one that does this, So we.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Try to buy Barbrick.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Metacom rely wasn't very interested in h in talking to
me about it, so we had to create our own.
So we created our own blank canvas. And ghost is
the same idea where a ghost is a kid with
a crown, but it's really a blank canvas in the
same way a trading card is a blank canvas. Right,
The physical trading card is the same every single time.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
The value is about who's on it. It's conditioned, it's scarcity,
and that's what we've created.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
We've created a trading card in collectible toy form, and
then because of that we get to work with the
NBA and Major League Baseball and the w n b
A and eminem and But what I mean, it's like
it's it's limitless, limitless of what we can create.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
So it is very much just just the start of it.
But it's like everything you can do with collectible toys,
with the art, with trading cards, with sneakers, like we
have the ability to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Yeah. Well, and I think another interesting angle for Ghost, right,
I think is your and your team's relationships. Right, Like,
we're in a business where relationships are everything, and you know,
like you mentioned the Metacom's, the bar bricks, et cetera.
Sometimes those guys aren't extending their arm to do the
collaborations that you're talking about and that we've went through.
So i'd love to hear like your thought process on

(01:02:31):
the ethos of ghost right, and like why do the
certain collabs that you're doing, Who do you want to
collaborate with? Who don't you want to collaborate with? Like
why make the decisions that you're making and steer the
brand in the direction that it's heading.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Yeah, Look, I think that's a it's a really you know,
important question because it's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Infinite and in the same way that we now see after.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Twenty five years of bare Brick, I honest say, running
out of brands to create. But at some point point,
you like, if there's not intentionality around it, then it's
just this sort of morass and understanding that the catalog
that is important. When we left to create this, the
first people we talked to were the people that we
created trading cards with. So, you know, most people know

(01:03:16):
about stock X. Stock X was a rocket ship, but
after stock X, you know, we created Fanatics Collectibles, the
trading card business. Fact collectibles was bigger, faster, crazier by
every metric. We acquired all the licenses for baseball, basketball,
football cards. We created the new business Finats Collectibles with
Michael Rubin and Fanatics, and in doing that we met

(01:03:37):
all the people that control the licenses for baseball Basketball
and the WNBA, and so those were the first people
we talked to because we said, we want to be
able to take everything we know about trading cards and
create collectible toys, and to do that you need the
licenses with those brands. So the people at the NBA
and the WNBA and Major League Baseball and then the
players associations were the exact same people that we create

(01:04:00):
trading cards with are now the people that we work
with to create ghosts.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
Yeah. Wow, it's a great answer, and we're really excited
to see because of course, the crazy thing is because
of the relationships that you've had, you know, you've already
been able to leverage it pretty quickly. I mean twenty
twenty two to twenty twenty five, three years. It might
seem like a lot to some people, but you and
I know in the business world that's nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
But and to be fair, the first eighteen months was
all like behind the scenes manufacturing and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Really yeah, so that's okay, less than two years of
really bringing this to the world's I to already have
NBA MLB, that's a pretty fast track. So that just
makes someone like Joey and I We're really excited to
see where this is gonna go. We got to end
the show first, we got to give you a little
care package. We got a got sold bag here, Joey,
maybe you run through. We've got a couple of items
in there for Josh take home.

Speaker 3 (01:04:47):
Of course.

Speaker 4 (01:04:47):
So right here, we got a little godsoul care package.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
We got what I'm wearing right now, but in blue.

Speaker 4 (01:04:53):
Little God Soul jersey n Little and Ice Sott practice
jersey double the zero.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
And then what else do we got?

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
You know what else?

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Speaking?

Speaker 4 (01:05:01):
Oh yeah, this is you know, our new kind of
favorite kind of look that distressed godsoul hoodie, very heavyweight,
but you know, just a few little pieces just for
you to take home with the god Sool bag. But
the last thing that's not in the bag, and we
we didn't have the flowers literally usually we have literal flowers,
but we forgot them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
So either way is your flowers. We need to give
you your flowers to yourself, your team, everyone who is
a part of it. I truly feel, you know, with
God Soul and people have all these opinions. We talked
about the controversies, we talked about people's opinions and people
are always going to be loud about oh I don't
like this and don't like that, But I think the vast,
vast majority of people have benefited from stock X and
ourselves included, you know, truly, if it were not for

(01:05:40):
stock X, I can say for a fact that God
Soul would not be where it is today, right because
if we have four hundred individual tables and sellers at
every event, almost every single one of them are looking
at stock X on their phone to see what's something worth?
Is someone's coming up to sell them something? What should
I offer? And it really did create the Kelly Blue
Book like you envisioned it too. That raised the tied
for the sneaker reseale sneaker culture in general. Right, So

(01:06:03):
we want to personally thank you and your team for
everything you've done. Of course, there's been trials and tribulations
along the way, but companies are humans, right and humans
make mistakes, right, so we see that, but we think
the vast majority has been great, So we want to
thank you for everything you've brought. But Gotsaul, as you know,
was started by Joey and I when we were just kids.
We were fourteen and sixteen year old kids when we

(01:06:25):
started this thing living in a trailer, and there's going
to be hopefully thousands and thousands of kids, young adults,
older adults, whatever it is that are out there that
use stock X that are fans of what you've built.
We just want to end the show. If you have
one message for all the people watching at home and
one message for the sixteen year old version of Josh,
what would it be.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Well, first of all, thank you very much for my flowers,
for the kind words, and congrats to both of you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
You guys have been killing it, and guys realize that
it's not overnight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
You guys have been doing this for a long time,
and you continue will be.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
I get asked that question a lot, in some form
of you know what advice would you get? What you
tell your young self?

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
And there's two things and it sounds very cliche, it
sounds very basic, but it's true. So so the first
is talk to everybody about everything. This seems counter twit
to if some people think they have an idea, it's
a secret, like ideas are worthless.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
Execution's the only thing that matters.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
That's how you find investors, partners, employees, customers. So you
have an idea, you want to work on something, talk
to everybody about everything. And then second, even more basic
and almost cliche, given that we're sitting talking with a Nike,
I don't want to say just do it all right,
but like, you just have to just do something just
to move it forward. It doesn't matter what it is.
Like businesses one step in front of the other. You

(01:07:40):
don't create a multi billion dollar company, you know, going
from zero to ability.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
You don't create you know, your business in one year.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
It's it's now been you know, ten, twelve, twelve years, right,
and so whatever it is, you just need to be
moving forward in some way, even if it's most basic
incremental steps.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
I spent eighteen months.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
All I did was clean data in Excel, to create campus,
to create the price guide. I had no idea that
would ever lead to anything, let alone you know what
has been So yeah, I mean talk to everybody and
just do something to start moving forward.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
So that's wow.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
With that being said, Josh, we are really appreciative. Everybody home.
We hope you love this one. Comment your favorite part.
We'll give one hundred bucks to somebody who comments their
favorite part. And yeah, as always, like common subscribe until
the next episode. Josh, we got to get you at
a Godsol event soon. Well, that's the next one I'm
looking on with maybe a huge ghost right in the entrance.
So we'll see you guys on the next one. Thank you.

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