Fashion's "sneaker moment" has officially eclipsed the word "trend." While Flyknits and Stan Smiths are still in vogue, it's the higher-end of the spectrum that has really taken off. Margiela, Saint Laurent, Rick Owens, Y-3 and Kris Van Assche have cemented their spots with insanely popular sneakers that have reached a critical mass in the past few years. They're expensive, exclusive and distinct from their affordable counterparts. Chris Kyvetos counts on the popularity that luxury sneakers have fostered with his two Sneakerboy stores—in Sydney and Melbourne—which are basically the sneaker equivalent of an Apple or Warby Parker store. The futuristic-looking storefronts straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey carry no inventory aside from try-on sizes and if a customer wants to ultimately purchase a pair, they do so through Sneakerboy's online store via in-store tablets or their own mobile device. The shoes ship from a logistics center in Hong Kong and orders arrive at the customer's doorstep three days later. It's an interesting proposition that has held up since Sneakerboy opened in 2013, in the process becoming easily one of the best sneaker spots on the planet.
Now, the Sneakerboy team is looking to expand, adding more locations at home in Australia before hopefully coming stateside sooner rather than later. We talked with Kyvetos about starting a store outside the typical model, the dedicated sneaker customer and what's next.
You spent time at Harrolds before Sneakerboy. What did you do there and how did it set you on the path to found Sneakerboy?
I was the creative director at Harrolds, a classic menswear business that was looking to move into a more fashion direction. I took it on as creative director and we redesigned the stores and re-did the business from top-to-bottom. We introduced a bunch of new brands, re-geared the communications and the image of the business toward the more “fashion” market.
That sounds more like apparel and clothing, how big was the sneaker area at Harrolds?
It was nonexistent before I got there. It wasn’t something they’d ever done before. I’d had experience in what we’d call “designer” sneakers previously. I brought Dior Homme to Australia through another business before and Hedi Slimane wasn’t averse to having sneakers in his collections or shows. I was dealing with Lanvin before that too and Lanvin had turned their classic luxury brand into a contemporary brand with the iconic patent toe sneaker. I’d always had my finger on designer sneakers. So that was something I focused on at Harrolds. Givenchy was a good example and Yves Saint Laurent when Stefano Pilati was in charge was popular with the crowd we were targeting in terms of sneakers. Margiela always and Raf Simons too. It was new to Harrold’s, but I’d been playing in that space for a while before that.
What progressed and led to the founding of Sneakerboy?
Quite a combination of things. I witnessed at Harrolds the shifting focus of luxury brands. They changed a lot in that time. I think luxury brands changed the most during Slimane’s tenure at Dior. Post that, there was a significant shift. I’d noticed that brands were broadening their appeal. That was happening really quickly. Whilst that was happening, I felt like there wasn’t really a specific multi-brand business that was formed to cater to that market. I started to think about what that might look like and how it might operate. Out of that, I formed the idea of Sneakerboy. I thought that the new luxury consumer wasn’t a mid-40s woman in Paris, it was a kid in Shanghai, a young kid in the States. Sneakers were to that customer as important as the iconic handbag was to a woman historically. The sneaker, my love for the product aside, was how you could best symbolize this shift.
It seems that the sneaker customer also shops differently than the apparel shopper.
I don’t think people who shop in ready-to-wear view it as collectible. Obviously there are certain things like capsule collections, collaborations and things that Supreme puts out, but that is more like how people shop for sneakers. Generally speaking, I think people view sneakers as collectible. The culture of shopping for sneakers is completely different than shopping for ready-to-wear.
The Sneakerboy shopping experience is vastly different than a typical one too. Did you plan on the structure from the get-go?
The retail landscape at the time was shifting. When you start from scratch, you see there isn’t a precedent. You’re starting from a blank canvas. But it has to be as efficient as a digital business because we need to compete with the digital giants. People still love shopping physically and love touching things. I guess it evolved, really. There were some fundamental ideas made us think that we didn’t think we could just do one or the other. Then it evolved into a hybrid between a physical retail experience and a digital one.
Starting out, when you were approaching brands you wanted to carry, did you run into issues with how to talk about the business model and the shopping experience?
It wasn’t as straight-forward as it could have been. Explaining it was fun at times. [Laughs] When you’re dealing with big traditional luxury brands, they’re very set in their ways. A lot of the people I was dealing with were friends and I’ve had long relationships with them. It wasn’t like I was starting from scratch in that respect. But we got there. One brand said to me “Our policy is we don’t supply first seasons, we don’t supply online businesses anymore and we would never sell just a single category of the collection, especially a subcategory of the collection.” Great, so apart from that we’re all good, yea? [Laughs]
What happened with that brand?
We stocked them first season, just sneakers and online.
Who do you think your customer is?
When the brand launched, it launched into a space that was really diversifying. We have your traditional sneakerheads who shop with us, more for brands like Y-3. Obviously the Quickstrike offerings from Nike and a lot of the Adidas Consortium stuff is more their traditional language. But they’ve opened up and a traditional sneakerhead picks up Balenciaga now. We also get a young fashionable crowd. It’s that new wave of luxury shopper who, to them, the sneaker is an important part of what they wear. We get executives, CEOs that work in the city coming into the stores and buying Common Projects or Lanvin. Women are shopping more for sneakers than they have before too, which is great. Our youngest customer is 9-years-old. She bought a pair of Balenciagas a couple weeks ago. Nine year olds in Balenciaga? I think that’s where it’s going. So many kids in school uniforms come to the store and pick out Y-3. Not only that, but older and older guys come in. Guys who have established themselves and own a company or run their businesses and don’t feel the need to wear dress shoes to work. The middle point is getting harder and harder to define because it’s so broad now.
Do you have people that come into the stores and are disappointed that they don’t get to walk out with a bag?
We haven’t had a single issue to the best of my knowledge. It functions just like a normal store except that when people buy something, they get it delivered. That was the big risk though. Are people going to come in, try something on, buy it and wait for it to be delivered? It turns out that people are so used to buying things online that having it delivered is normal. The ease at which that works is a bit scary. You look at the classic retail store and the lines of inventory on site. You’re paying rent for storage and I question whether that’s necessary anymore.
It seems like it’s more convenient than anything. You don’t have to worry about lugging around a bag to places afterward.
I was the worst example because I had never walked into a store, bought a pair of sneakers and not worn them out of the store. As soon as I put a new shoe on my foot, I gotta wear it. But now I go into the stores and I sit down, look at something, get excited and order it. Then it shows up a couple days later and you get the box. You get this double thrill. It’s changed the way I shop now.
What is the breakdown between online and “in-store” purchases? How is it split?
Everything runs through the website. When you’re in the store you’re buying from the website. But as soon as a transaction goes through, it allocates where it came from. In the beginning, a majority of the business was going through the site, outside the stores. But we wound that back intentionally and we want to grow the physical retail sales partly because online returns can be so high, around 20%, while in-store purchases are around 1%. The online business is there, but we release a lot of things in-store only. We give the stores the first go in every possible scenario. In the beginning it was about 70% online, 30% in-store, but we’ve basically reversed things and it’s 70% in-store now.
You’ve started to carry more apparel. Do you want to keep expanding that?
I don’t see us ever dipping below 80% footwear as a merchandise plan. But it was always the plan to get some relevant clothing into the store as well. We’re working on something with Kris Van Assche in the ready-to-wear area. We had some great stuff come through with the Raf x Sterling Ruby collection. We felt that was really relevant for us. But we're not necessarily going to buy a full collection every season from a brand though.
The person wearing luxury sneakers is probably wearing luxury clothing anyway. So it pairs together nicely.
We’re working on doing some of our own apparel pieces too. Stuff like a Sneakerboy flight jacket, a basic tee, etc. Just some things we think are relevant to our customers and to us. Not everybody wears $2,000 Givenchy flight jacket. It fills a gap for our customer with some well considered pieces.
Where do your online orders end up most?
The U.S. is hands-down where most of our shoes ordered online end up. Asia can difficult with language and logistics, but the U.S. is pretty straight-forward.
What shoes move the most units for you? Are the typical choices like Margiela Replicas, Common Projects Achilles the ones that sell best?
Yea pretty much. The last couple seasons with the re-emergence of Y-3 has also been significant for us. It started with the Qasa Highs, then that trickled down to the low-top Qasas and Boost by Y-3 has been successful too. The Retro Boost this season was one of our best-selling silhouettes. We worked with Jon Buscemi from the get-go and basically launched at the same time. A lot of what he does has been successful too. The one that slides under the radar most is probably Saint Laurent. The SL01 low-top is one of our best sellers and the SL10 too. A couple weeks into the season you see them sell out. Next season, they’ve put out one of the best lineups that I’ve seen. So I’m looking forward to that.
What are your plans for expansion? Do you have concrete plans? We want one in the U.S.
That’s the goal. We went through a bit of a logistics restructure at the beginning of this year to refocus on a solid long-term goal and that long-term goal is for a couple stores in the U.S.. But what we are going to do in the next 12 months is open two more stores here in Australia. We’re going to get into a strong position logistically to make things better for the stores and once that’s proven, we can start to structure out how it would look in the U.S.
