AI has been a hot topic in many industries lately, but it has been used in the form of “bots” by sneakerheads for years.
These bots help customers quickly buy popular shoes that are released in limited quantities and can often be resold for a profit on the secondary market. We do this by allowing buyers to create multiple accounts, increasing their chances of getting not just one pair of their dream shoes, but many.
Shoe brands are aware of the problem with bots and the lack of fairness towards their customers, and have made some progress in this area in the past through CAPTCHAs and penalties for users caught using bots, but the issue remains It still remains.
Usually, a lottery on sneaker apps such as Adidas’ Confirmed and Nike’s NKE,
SNKRS debuts for a limited time on certain days. Users can enter that draw for free using the payment information already linked to their account, and if they win the draw, they will be automatically charged the price of the shoes. Those who do not win will receive a notification or email that they have lost and will not be charged.
This week, as we release some of our Yeezy shoe inventory, Adidas ADS,
Tried something new.
Adidas announced that it would immediately charge all participants in the drawing for the full price of the shoes (in this case, $230), and that it would refund any non-winning shoes within 14 days.
This week’s Yeezy sneaker drop features the Steel Gray 350V2. According to Adidas’ website, the release is a multi-day lottery from February 26th to February 29th, and while the winners of the lottery have been notified, there are still several sizes available. That’s what it means.
“This mechanism was introduced as an additional layer to prevent bots from entering our sweepstakes. Adidas is committed to making releases fair for everyone. We will take every opportunity to “We are ensuring that all in-demand products are available through adidas.com and our adidas app is in the hands of consumers,” Adidas told MarketWatch about the new regulations.
In theory, this new mechanism would mean that bot users who create thousands of accounts to participate in draws would need large amounts of cash or credits to participate in multiple draws, and would require large amounts of money upfront. It requires funding, which can potentially discourage users. Before this week, on Adidas’ Confirmed app, a bot cost a user $0 to participate in the draw 1,000 times, but now it costs him $230,000.
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But some sneaker fans don’t like the idea of paying money before they know if they can afford it.
Keri Russell, a 44-year-old sneaker enthusiast from Boston, told MarketWatch: “You pay upfront for something you’re not sure you’ll end up getting, and then you have to wait weeks to get your money back. It’s humbling that we shouldn’t do that,” he told MarketWatch. . “I don’t even have the sneakers I really want. It just doesn’t track. It’s a raffle. It’s not online he shopping where you know you’re going to get your choice at the end of the exchange.
“It was like the Twilight Zone had come down on me,” she added.
Another sneakerhead who is usually interested in Yeezy drops is San Francisco native Terrill Shelly. Sherry, at least he has four pairs of her Yeezys, but he’s reluctant to pay full price upfront just to enter the drawing.
“Because of this policy, I thought of other uses for the money,” he said. “So we’ve effectively discouraged people from buying this latest drop.”
Perhaps there would be less resistance to Adidas’ move if customers were guaranteed to get their $230 refunded right away. According to drop rules, customers may have to wait up to 14 days for their refund, but it could be sooner.
“Personally, this is nothing more than an interest-free loan,” said Kenneth Foster, a sneaker collector in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I definitely don’t want to put my money in the hands of a big company without guarantees.”
It remains to be seen whether this move by Adidas will curb the use of bots.
“I think this is actually effective at stopping bots, but the cost-benefit analysis favors Adidas,” said David Daniels, an Alabama-based sneaker content creator who goes by SneakerPhetish on social media. “Only in certain cases,” he told MarketWatch. “If the shoes have enough value, bots and resellers will have no problem tying up your money and making huge profits.”
Essentially, even with huge demand and limited supply for the next pair of shoes that could be worth more on the secondary market, Daniels says sneakerheads using bots will not be deterred and will continue to do so to make money. We still believe that we are ready to partner with capital. .
This week’s drop of the 350V2 Steel Gray Yeezy is “slow in demand,” Daniels said. That means we may not know how successful Adidas’ pre-approved lottery fees are in curbing people’s use of multiple bots until more in-demand shoes are released.
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Adidas suspended its relationship with Yeezy creator Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, after the company made a series of “unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous” anti-Semitic comments in 2022. I declined. The German retailer has an estimated $1.2 billion in Yeezy inventory and said he would donate a portion of his profits to charity. Even after the artist and company parted ways, Adidas kept the Yeezy brand name and design.
Ye called recent Yeezy drops “unapproved” and called the sneakers “fake Yeezys.”
