$400 $450 $750
Getting the shoes you want is hard. Everyone who has spent $170+ on a pair of Jordans knows how easy it can be to tear through your budget. Even the comparatively low-priced Nike Dunk’s $110 price tag is frustrating for the quality you get. As everyone knows, Nike is able to make a healthy profit on pairs due to the extreme demand and limited release quantity of these shoes. Adding on resale prices for shoes that you missed the drop for, a pair of UNC Dunks can cost upwards of $420 + fees from the resale site you choose. Replica/Fake sneakers can solve this problem.
On a higher-end site, those same UNC Dunks are $30. A lightly flawed pair of Jordan 1s costs $15. When I discovered this for the first time, it did not seem real. You could get almost any shoe for under $50. That same $170, could be spread across 10+ pairs, but it is not as simple as that.
The main obstacle to buying from Wedian is that its stores only ship to China, and unlike many online retailers in the US, the shipping is not free. This presents a problem and many individuals resort to buying from middlemen rather than base distributors in China. These middlemen charge only a small percentage less than Nike, resulting in a similar base price of $150 for a generally low-quality pair of shoes. Though there are exceptions, many middlemen purchase flawed, low-quality batches for as little as $5 and raise their prices as high as they can. Low-quality batches are notorious for being hit or miss and are only a marginally better deal than buying straight from Nike. Instead of contracting middlemen, you can buy from what is known as a warehouse.
Warehousing sites serve as your personal hub in China. All the products you order are shipped to the warehouse, then packaged up into a parcel and shipped to the United States. Though this process can take lengthy amounts of time, it results in the best possible price and best quality if done correctly. The first step in this process is to pick a warehousing site. Three of the leading sites are sugargoo, wegobuy, and pandabuy. A quick search will bring you to any one of the three home pages. In this guide, I will be using sugargoo though the process is similar on all three of the sites.
After you make an account, step 2 is to pick the pairs that you want. Mainstream and new shoes are the easiest to find in shops as they are guaranteed to be in stock. Make a list of around 7-8 shoes that you are interested in, then search for them on Wedian pages. The specific sellers I recommend (all medium tier) are SK, H12, A1TOP, and LJRFB. Since these are all Wedian pages, sugargoo conveniently allows you to paste the product link into their homepage to seamlessly purchase the item. Without paying, you can add all the products to your “cart” and then add up the total, convert it to USD and add $200. This is a good baseline for how much your haul will cost. Then you can buy the pairs and send them to the warehouse. As a side note, be sure to use PayPal or any other payment service to make the purchase, many of these sites have had credit card information leaks. Pairs usually take up to 3 weeks to ship to the warehouse, and once arrived will be sent in photos to you. In these photos, I recommend quality-checking the pairs to the best of your ability, as some wedian shops do allow returns.
Continued in Blog 4.
Links:
Warehouses:
Wedian Stores:
SK: https://weidian.com/?userid=1625671124&spider_token=b268. High to mid tier.
SK ALT/SenK: https://weidian.com/?userid=1783900488&spider_token=b671 Same as SK.
LJRFB: https://weidian.com/?userid=215732834&spider_token=d50b Mid tier.
A1TOP: https://shop1624885820.v.weidian.com/?userid=1624885820&spider_token=3765&tabType=all Mid tier.
H12: https://weidian.com/?userid=202714577 Mid tier.
October 18th, 2022 at 7:19 pm
Anton, this is really interesting. I wouldn’t say that I am a shoe guy like yourself, but I did see a few shoes before that were completely out of my price range. I never really thought of buying reps of the shoes I wanted. I can also see that you have put the time and research into making this blog post by the wording you choose and how professional this blog sounds. I also liked how you explored options and helped take the reader along the journey of figuring out how to buy from Wedian. Writing about the main obstacles really helped my understanding of the journey of buying reps. Using an example such as the UNC Dunks was also really smart, because, without an example, I don’t know if I would have been able to really understand the process or the problem. I do have a question: this seems like the major shoe giants such as Nike and others would be mad and try to shut this down or make it illegal to buy reps. Has there been any sort of resistance from the shoe giants?
October 18th, 2022 at 7:42 pm
Vishal,
Answering your question: Reps are counterfeit goods, and that is why no replica factories exist in the United States. The Chinese police occasionally raid warehouses and sellers, which is why many of them are underground. According to US Law, it is illegal to produce, sell, or transport counterfeit goods, but the US DOJ states that “it is not a crime to purchase counterfeit goods, even if the consumer knew the goods were infringing on a trademark.” (from https://www.garfinkelcriminallaw.com/chicagocriminalblog/buying-counterfeit-goods-federal-crime). I do not know the laws in China, but I am sure it is similar to here. So to answer your question, shoe giants despise rep sellers and occasionally send cease and desist letters to sellers, but there is not much they can do because it is an underground industry.
October 19th, 2022 at 9:38 pm
Anton, as soon as I saw your blog post I clicked on it to read it, because I was very interested in the topic. I have been wanting to buy a pair of Jordan’s or two for a while now, but the high price from Nike had put me off. I found this guide extremely informative. I have no experience buying Nike shoes from any third-party online sellers, and so your post helped me a lot to understand the process. I also really appreciated how you included the links to all of the websites that you brought up in your article at the end of your blog post for easy access. The middleman problem that you addressed is definitely a huge issue not only for buying shoes, but for all online shopping in general. I loved how much detail you went into when describing the workaround for it, which was buying off Wedian from warehouses in China like sugargoo. I would be interested in learning more about the legal implications of this and how Nike is responding to this, if they are at all. I will definitely be reading your next Part 2 of this post and maybe even using Wedian myself to buy a new pair of shoes.
October 20th, 2022 at 3:43 pm
Jack,
I wish I could have covered the topic in greater detail, as it is easiest explained in a video, but I am glad that you were able to find this guide informative. In part 2, I will cover the international shipping side, which I believe to be the riskiest part. I will most likely make a video to pair with this blog to better explain this step, and I hope you find it both informative and interesting. On a side note, if you are seriously considering getting a haul, send me a text and I can help anytime.
October 20th, 2022 at 4:48 pm
Hi Anton, I have always been interest in shoes but not a sneakerhead at all. I go through my shoes pretty fast,so its always a struggle to find shoes that look decent and are cheap. Also, if I want to were shoes just for looks, they are usually even more expensive. I remember you told me once to buy replica shoes, but I forgot about the idea. I liked how you used the example of the UNC’s to show the people who aren’t sneakerheads how expensive certain shoes can be. I do find it kind of irritating that Nike doesn’t spend much money to make the shoes but they price them so high, so buying these fake shoes feels like satisfying revenge. I do have a question though, if I wanted to use fake basketball shoes to actually play basketball, would they fall apart instantly or would they hold up nicely?
November 3rd, 2022 at 7:20 pm
Hi Anton!
Your blog is really interesting as a passion project and inadvertently brings to mind the morality of fake vs real.
I feel like the true motivation to buy something original is to support the designers. As Nike and other shoe giants often produce unethically and on a large scale, however, I don’t necessarily condemn this practice.
Designer bags are frequently copied and sold cheaply on roadsides. In regards to this, I feel like it is wrong if the main value is derived from the logo. For example, YSL and Chanel bags look like every other black handbag, differentiated only by the brand name, making fakes invalid because they aren’t the brand.
However, if the garment or piece is unique in some aspect, I feel that knock-offs are valid as they help make that design more accessible. For example, a specific Lululemon tank top went viral for its flattering fit, and countless producers created dupes. In this case, the actual value is derived from something intrinsic to the piece. Shoes might fall under this category, as many designs are unique and cannot be commonly found.
Reading this blog reflects the depth of experience that you have with the subject– the amount of thought you put into this is admirable!