Nike vs. "Sneakerbots"

A bit of background: if you look at Nike’s official communications, the sneaker company has been engaged for many years in a losing game of whack-a-mole; the winners have been the evil Nikebots. Limited-edition sneakers, you see, are a bit like Taylor Swift tickets (or San Francisco restaurant reservations): when they go on sale, they get snapped up by bots rather than humans. Sometimes, the bots are controlled by humans who really want the product in question; other times, the bots are controlled by arbitrageurs who simply turn around and try to make an instant profit on StubHub or eBay or Craigslist.

In Nike’s case, after trying various techniques to try to get buyers to prove that they’re human, the company has now decided that none of those techniques work. As a result, instead of selling the Air Jordan I Pinnacle and Air Jordan I High OG Varsity Red online, as originally planned, they’ll just distribute the shoes the old-fashioned way, in stores, out of the reach of the bots.

Read the rest of the story: http://fusion.net/story/143690/how-nike-could-kill-the-nikebots-and-why-it-doesnt/