eBay plans to take over the sneaker market

It seems ages ago when eBay auctions were the daily bread for millions of users ready to spend entire days online to raise every last penny in a desperate attempt to win. Then everything changed. The Internet has changed and with it the way of selling and buying online, on the one hand, invaded by e-commerce and on the other by much more solid companies such as StockX, Grailed and Vestiaire Collective. While the sneaker game flourished eBay remained behind, the victim of an incalculable amount of fakes on its website and the total absence of a guarantee filter on the purchase of a shoe worth hundreds of euros. 

Now, something seems to have changed and after partnering with Stadium Goods, eBay is ready to launch its sneaker authentication program. The mechanism is not so different from that adopted by competitors and is valid only on selected purchases: the seller sends the sneaker to an eBay authentication partner with the task of inspecting the product and guaranteeing its authenticity and then sending it to the buyer. 

Nothing new then, complete with an authentication tag linked to the sneaker to be scanned via the app. While the initiative is commendable, on the other one wonders if eBay hasn't moved too late in its transformation from an online auction site to a reference point for sneakerheads. Doubts made even stronger by the modalities chosen for this program, which will initially exclusively cover Jordan and Yeezy silhouettes with a value of more than $200 with the hope of extending it to all collectable sneakers by the beginning of 2021 for a program that will, however, be active only on a certain group of resellers.