For over 15 years, Sneaker Con has hosted the sneaker super bowl that fans and sneaker heads have dreamed of. After its humble beginnings, Sneaker Con is now hosts worldwide events and has built a social media empire of nearly 4 million followers. Between being an industry first and unprecedented marketing tactics, Sneaker Con has amassed the attention of celebrities, fans, haters, and everyone in between over their viral events. But what were Sneaker Con’s marketing strategies that transcended its events to a global scale? This marketing case study dissects the history of Sneaker Con, its successful marketing strategies, and why it truly is the greatest sneaker show on earth.
History of Sneaker Con
Sneaker Con was founded in 2008 by Alan Vinogradov, Barris Vinogradov, and Yuming Wu. The three created the event to build the sneaker community in major hubs like New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.
“Founders Alan Vinogradov, Barris Vinogradovand Yu-Ming Wu launch Sneaker Con with the vision of providing a destination for the sneaker community to engage.”
After building and planning the event's logistics, the three launched Sneaker Con’s debut event in 2009 at the Time Square Arts Center in New York City. With over 3000 attendees, Wu and the Vinogradov brothers knew that their event would be a nationwide hit, and began hosting events in large cities such as Washington DC, Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale, and others.
Sneaker Con continued its success for the next eight years before receiving endless requests to go international. The three agreed and held its first international Sneaker Con in London (May 2017). The demand for overseas events only grew from there as Sneaker Con hosted its first Asia event four months later (August) in Hong Kong, China. Since then, Sneaker Con has held international events in Australia, Singapore, Shanghai, Toronto, and more.
Sneaker Con's Pivotal Partnership with eBay
At the height of the covid pandemic in 2020, Sneaker Con teamed up with eBay to sell and authenticate sneakers on eBay’s global marketplace. With over 138 million active users on the platform and over 18 million seller accounts, this collaboration sparked eBay’s sneaker market with its greatest success originating from as its new authenticity guarantee, providing customers peace of mind when shopping for new sneakers or collecting their all-time grails.
Since May 2021, Sneaker Con has six global locations (New York, Las Vegas, Toronto, London, Berlin, and Sydney) to facilitate its authentication services for eBay. With the global sneaker market at an estimated $80.19 billion dollars, its no surprise that this partnership continues to rapidly expand across multiple countries and continents. Both eBay and Sneaker Con will feed off their successes and leverage their partnership to expand their outreach and services to unchartered territories.
Sneaker Con Denver's Championed Marketing Strategies
As Sneaker Con surpasses its 15 year anniversary, the brand has unequivocally displayed an array of winning strategies that has helped them grow to their current magnitude. But what prominent strategies help define the brand? Let’s take a look:
- Addresses and Understands Target Market: Since its founding, Sneaker Con has been hyperaware of its marketing strategies that they implement towards its audience. For Sneaker Con Denver, and other events, the brand promotes and advertises on its Instagram and Twitter accounts. With over 3.7 million followers across the two networks, Sneaker Con leans into their algorithms by leveraging short form content. Videos advertising the event are between seven to 25 seconds long, and properly address customer’s interests.
- Influencer Marketing: Sneaker Con will invite special guests to not only meet attendees, but also participate in special events during the show, and even buy some sneakers while they’re at the event. Special guests have ranged from Dennis Rodman, Rick Flair, Bronny James, and even former President Donald Trump. But Sneaker Con goes beyond the A-list celebrities. Oftentimes, the greatest guests are people you wouldn’t know about unless you were into sneakers. Icons like jeff staple, Jaysee Lopez, Qias Omar, Richie Le, have not only attended Sneaker Con events, but have been the sole reason why many fans fly out of state to see them. Guests like Jaysee Lopez, Darrin Willingham Jr, and Giancarlo Purch all attended the event on March 30.
- Effectively Incentivizes its Audience: If there weren’t enough incentives, Sneaker Con also holds special events where fans can win prizes. Sneaker Con Denver had the brand’s famous “40 for 40” deals, where 40 fans would each receive a prize. In addition, Sneaker Con also held exclusive sneaker drops later in the event to incentivize fans to stay for the entirety of the show. Instead of charging the $325+ dollar market price for a pair of Air Jordan 4’s, Sneaker Con’s special deal mimicked Nike’s retail price of $215, electrifying the crowd in hopes to snag this special pair.
Sneaker Con Denver: Lessons Learned
Despite the wildly successful event, Sneaker Con had a few opportunities to take their event to the next level.
- Long Wait to Entry: Due to increased security checkpoints, it took over an hour to get into the event itself. With thousands of fans flocking from all over the country, the line quickly grew the later it became. Normally, this would be an easy fix by having multiple screening checkpoints to pass more people through the security lines, but that was not the case. The event staff resolved this issue within the first hour of the event, but this is not only an inconvenience to fans, but also to the vendors who are eagerly waiting for more customers to enter, but can’t due to the congested security lines.
Another important note to consider is that the entry process acts as the first impression for many fans who have never been to a Sneaker Con before. First impressions are not just impactful in the professional world, but in nearly any area of life. Someone may wait 60 or 90 minutes just to get into the event, and it tarnishes their entire experience just because of a rocky start. First impressions are the top of funnel marketing that are supposed gather and retain its target audience for middle and bottom of funnel sales decisions (like buying sneakers, merchandise, or even attending a future event).
My Real-Deal Review of Sneaker Con Denver
After waiting an hour to get through security, the Sneaker Con event staff opened up more security checkpoints so we could get through faster. Once cleared, I was amazed at how many sneakers there were. Prices ranged from $50 dollars all the way to $10,000 and beyond. The hip-hop music was the catalyst behind the electric environment, and fans continued to pile into the convention center space. People were buying, selling, and trading like there was no tomorrow, but the only thing that wasn’t worth buying was the the $10 dollar coffee, absolutely crazy.
But the reason why I go to these events is for the people. Yes, I enjoy sneakers and seeing all my different grails, but it’s the people that truly make the event and the reason why Sneaker has been successful for 15+ years. Current event staff expanded on this point by stating,
“We’re just trying to bridge the gap between the younger and older sneakerheads. When you come to Sneaker Con, you’ll see everyone from young kids, to retired folks trying to hunt their grails. You meet and see all walks of life, and I’m grateful for the work that I do here.”
It doesn’t just stop with the staff, the vendors and sneaker store owners all agree. Sneaker Con utilizes a well-executed marketing strategy, and yet its greatest marketing tool is the cheapest and most effective of them all: word of mouth. Even from my experience, I’ve had over a dozen people ask me about my experience, and it always turns into me being a walking billboard for the brand.
If you’ve never gone to a Sneaker Con event and you have even the slightest interest in shoes, you’re missing out. Do yourself a favor a go to the next event near you.
Conclusion
It’s should be no surprise why Sneaker Con continues to be unrivaled when it comes to sneaker shows. Not only is the brand bringing in hip-hop artists, professional athletes, and even former presidents, but its also holding events around the world and has only boomed since the global pandemic. Furthermore, these events will continue to grow in popularity when the community is put first in both its marketing and event experience.
