Two sneaker strategies are being tested at once this month, and they point in opposite directions. In the US, the resale data says the hype-drop model that built modern sneaker culture is losing its grip: only about 47% of new releases now generate a profit on the secondary market, down from 58% in 2020. Six Jordan Brand retro launches in July alone failed to trade above retail.
In India, New Balance just opened another store — this one in Indore — stocking 1080s, 9060s, 574s and its new Ellipse runner at full price, available to anyone who walks in. There is no queue, no raffle, and no resale premium to speak of. And it is working.
The drop model ran out of the one thing it needs
The entire logic of a limited sneaker release is that demand outstrips supply badly enough to create a secondary market. Resale premium is, functionally, a scarcity tax. Remove the scarcity and the tax collects nothing.
That is what has happened, and it happened for an unglamorous reason: the brands themselves killed it. Nike and others responded to resale premiums on hot models by simply increasing supply, which pushed secondary prices toward — and then below — retail. At the same time, the number of people trying to flip limited releases grew sharply, so more bidders competed for a thinner margin. Both forces push the same way.
- What broke: volume, not popularity. More retro drops per year means each carries less individual scarcity. Six Jordan retro launches failing to clear retail in a single month isn't six unlucky colourways — it's a brand that has out-supplied its own hype cycle.
- Who it hurts: the reseller, not the brand. Jordan Brand still sells through at retail and still thrives on retros and collaborations. It's the second sale that has evaporated.
- The new enemy is time. As retail and resale insiders put it this year, the life cycle of a sneaker feels shorter than ever — a shoe can be the hottest release of the week and forgotten within a few. Buyers are also less interested in collecting for the long term, which drains the floor under resale values from the demand side too.
| 2020 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| New releases profitable on resale | 58% | 47% |
A flipper in 2020 had better-than-even odds. Today it's a coin flip that loses slightly more often than it wins — before fees, shipping and holding time.
India's sneaker market runs on a different mechanic
India's sneaker market was worth roughly $3.9 billion in FY2024 and is projected to pass $5.9 billion by 2032, growing at 12–15% a year. But its engine is not hype scarcity.
Resale platforms exist here — Crepdog Crew, Hypefly, Hustle Culture, Find Your Kicks India — and they're genuinely useful. Their function, though, is import arbitrage, not hype arbitrage: they bridge the gap between global releases and Indian buyers who have no local access to them. That is a logistics business wearing resale clothing. It depends on distribution gaps, not on manufactured scarcity, which makes it structurally less exposed to a collapse in global resale premiums than a US flipper is — though not immune, since the platforms source from the same global market where those premiums are compressing.
Underneath that, the actual volume growth in Indian sneakers is happening somewhere else entirely: homegrown brands like Comet, Neeman's, Thaely and Gully Labs selling design-led shoes at ₹3,000–₹5,500 on the strength of social media and storytelling. That is a full-price retail market driven by a young population treating footwear as self-expression. Nobody is flipping a Neeman's.
What New Balance is actually betting
Against that backdrop, New Balance's India strategy stops looking conservative and starts looking well-aimed. The Indore store at High Street Apollo is a straightforward retail proposition: everyday silhouettes — 1080, 9060, 574, Ellipse — sold at full price, in stock, whenever you turn up. Its India push is fronted by Janhvi Kapoor, signed as the brand's first India ambassador in late 2025, which is a recognition play rather than a scarcity play.
The brand is on course for $10 billion in global revenue as soon as this year, and it got there without ever depending on drop culture the way Jordan Brand does. That's the point. A strategy built on stores, availability and a familiar face doesn't need a functioning resale market — it only needs people who want to wear the shoes. In a market where most sneaker buying is first-hand and full-price anyway, that is the aligned bet.
Jordan Brand's position in India is not collapsing because of any of this; the resale slump is a US secondary-market story first, and Jordan retros continue to sell. But the reason to hurry is what's weakening. If a drop is unlikely to appreciate, the urgency that drove people to queues and bots drains away, and the shoe has to compete on whether someone actually wants to wear it — which is exactly the contest New Balance has set up for itself.
The read for an Indian buyer
If you have been buying limited releases partly as an asset, the numbers say that logic is now marginal at best: fewer than half of releases profit their flippers globally, and Indian resellers source from that same softening market. If you have been buying sneakers to wear, almost nothing has changed except that you are more likely to find what you want in stock, at retail, without a raffle — because that is the market both New Balance's expansion and India's homegrown brands are building for.
