Reselling Sneakers: Mainstreet Marketplace Set To Raise Funds

The sneaker market in India is growing at a high pace. The retail side of the sneaker business is booming from customising, reselling and limited editions. As per market and consumer data experts statista, the revenue in the sneakers segment in India is $2.6 billion in 2022 and it is expected to grow annually by 11.58 per cent.

The Mainstreet Marketplace is a sneaker retail business that recently organised the Indian Sneaker Convention which was to place most sneakers under one roof where people can buy and sell their sneakers. To know more about the industry we did a knowledgeable interaction with the founder of The Mainstreet Marketplace, Vedant Lamba.

How difficult is it to maintain the stock in this rapidly evolving sneaker market?

We are a platform and our goal is to facilitate whatever is happening in this market of limited edition products. Maintaining stock was never really a challenge. If we do our job well that is to connect with our end customer well and provide service.

What is your other major marketing channel besides Youtube?

Instagram and youtube are our major marketing channels, our goal is to maintain and authentically build a community of people rather than advertisements, the goal is to build an organic community. We have focused on creating content and our audience engages with that in a result our conversion comes through that goal is just to build an organic community.

What are your plans to cater to other age groups as it is currently focussed on youth?

Our overall business does end up serving a very wide variety of ages. We are focused on a specific kind of fashion where people who are into that come to us. We don’t discriminate against people who are into it by age. The energy that we build is representative of who we are, the energy is authentic that is how it speaks to people.

What are your plans to raise funding?

We are in the process of closing funding, we are very excited about it, people should be patient with it, once the money is in the bank and paperwork is done we will announce it.

What was your biggest challenge throughout this journey?

Our biggest challenge has always been acquiring supply, when and how to attract that to be in a state where the supply comes to you, it was hard to get to. It is quite a challenge to build a rapport with so many sellers to encourage them to sell with us and to provide them with service good enough so that they want to continue selling with us.

How did this idea of building a sneaker community come to you?

I grew up obsessed with business, I did not think about sneakers. When I found this opportunity it feels like an obvious gap to be filled in and that was the gap in the sneaker community. We thought we can build something and then I learned about the sneaker. we always tried to build our business, not anything sneaker related it was very objectively viewed.