Sneaker Resale Market Soars

SODA — parent company to sneaker resale platform SNKRDUNK — has raised a $22 million Series B round of funding led by SoftBank Ventures.

Basepartners, Colopl Next and The Guild are some of the newest investors of SNKRDUNK, which launched in 2018. The investment adds to SODA’s $3 million Series A last year.

Some resale platforms have not only survived the pandemic, but seen tremendous gains. 

• In December 2020, SNKRDUNK had a 3,000% year-over-year increase in monthly gross merchandise value. The platform has 2.5 million monthly users, which it says makes it the largest C2C marketplace in Japan.
• StockX closed more than 7.5 million trades last year and was valued at $2.8 billion after a recent $275 million funding round.
• GOAT, which has over 30 million members, raised $100 million in September, garnering a $1.75 billion valuation.

Yuta Uchiyama, chief executive officer at SODA, told TechCrunch that the “demand for sneakers remained high, while more people also started buying things online.”

SNKRDUNK says it will use its newest round of funding to “speed up the pace of its international expansion, add more categories and expand its authentication facilities.”

The global sneaker resale market could reach $30 billion by 2030, Cowen analysts said in July.