Flight Club Drastically Cuts Seller Fees

Sneaker resale institution Flight Club is reducing its commission rate this week, bringing its cut of consignment sales from 20 percent down to 9.5 percent. Per an email sent to select Flight Club sellers starting on Monday and posted on Twitter by user @ballhardnocourt, the store will now take a 9.5-percent cut from each sale in addition to a $5 seller fee and a 2.9-percent cash-out fee. The lower commission rate means people who sell through the store get to keep more of their money when an item is sold.

The new commission rate is only available to select sellers for now, but Complex can confirm that Flight Club will offer the same smaller rate for all of its sellers in the coming weeks.

The email also announced that listed items will be available to buyers for two prices: a "lowest price" option and a "fastest to you" option that charges buyers an extra 6.5 percent processing fee. Flight Club will keep the money from the fees in the event a shoe is sold through that option.

The store's email also mentions that it will allow sellers to cross-list items from Flight Club and reselling app GOAT, which owns Flight Club, in the coming weeks. They will be able to list their same inventory for sale on both platforms. In the coming months, the email says, the two platforms will be consolidated into a single seller experience. The back-end integration will more closely connect the selling structures of GOAT, which launched in 2015, and Flight Club, the iconic resale store that opened in New York City in 2005. GOAT acquired Flight Club in 2018.

In the advent of apps for buying and selling shoes on the secondary market, Flight Club held onto its old model, continuing to take a 20-percent commission while companies like StockX arrived with lower fees. Still, even before this week's change in commission, Flight Club remained a viable spot for sellers. Partly because of its brand name and long history as the spot that set the prices, it's been able to charge higher prices for shoes, which helps offset the commission.

How do the fees of Flight Club and GOAT (9.5 percent, a $5 seller fee, and another 2.9 percent for the cash-out) fare against those of their competitors? Resale giant StockX starts users out at a 9.5-percent transaction fee and charges a three-percent payment processing fee, but prolific sellers can work their way to an eight-percent fee if they hit 100 sales or log $25,000 in sales. eBay, feeling the pressure from dedicated sneaker resell apps, did away with fees for sneaker sales over $100 in December 2019, but there's still a PayPal processing fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. (If a user sells a pair of sneakers for under $100, eBay takes a 10-percent fee in addition to this payment processing fee.) Resale shop Stadium Goods operates on the same 80/20 consignment split that Flight Club historically has.

While these fee structures can be complicated for sellers trying to discern where they'll maximize their profit, they do make one thing clear: the sneaker resale wars are still heating up.