How Does StockX Make Money? The Genus Business Model

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Again, another genus business model to discuss today is StockX. As such, we will be taking about how does StockX make money, StockX revenue and business valuation, etc.

The StockX business model is based on levying a certain percentage on sellers as service fee for every single sale they make via the platform.

On this platform, fees are dependent based on the amount of items or products previously sold and it usually varies between the range of 11% to 12.5%.

What is StockX?

StockX is one of the popular online marketplaces that enhance the sale of collectibles and rare apparel.

Since the company greatly deals with luxury items, it therefore also handles both the items authentication process as well as the proper shipment.

The e-commerce store also facilitates auctions between potential sellers and passionate buyers for the purchase of high demand articles or limited edition items like sunglasses, sneakers, collectibles, etc.

A brief history of StockX

The fascinating StockX business organization was founded by Josh Luber — who was former CEO — now board member), Greg Schwartz, and Dan Gilbert in 2015.

Before StockX came into limelight, Luber launched an online Kelley Blue Book known as Campless for the sale of sneakers.

The Campless app major work is to track resale prices of every available sneaker on eBay. It works and did great then.

Plus, the Campless also served as a secure database for sneakerheads thereby giving room for the community members to upload and track current sale prices of several models.

While Campless was still hot, Gilbert’s noticed that his kids usually spend most of their time on eBay tracking and buying sneakers.

Since at that time, eBay doesn’t authenticate the sale of sneakers, purchase prices on Campless most often vary.

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These actions and inactions motivated Gilbert to contacted Schwartz, who at that time too, working on a calendar app. Gilbert then invested in app before they started consigning for sneaker marketplace.

In February 2016, the fantastic StockX was given birth to. In the beginning, StockX offered more than 20,000 sneakers on it platform for sale.

The company rose into limelight and became a household name in the sneakers market. The success was huge.

By 2017, the incredible StockX e-commerce was processing more than $100 million worth of products on its platform. That’s huge, right?

Within short time of its establishment, StockX had employed over 800 staff and have branches in five different countries of the world.

As of 2019, the company facilitated the sale of products worth $1 billion or more. Isn’t that great and fantastic?

StockX Genus Business Model: How StockX Works

As we have stated earlier that StockX is an online marketplace that enhance the sale of streetwear related items like sneakers and other related collectibles.

StockX underled the buying and selling of items using a familiar mechanism that’s similar to the one used in stock markets.

No wonder that the company brand itself as the “stock market of things.” The sellers on StockX place what is called Asks and the buyers, bid.

That is to say, the sellers determine the price for their items while the sellers place bids indicating the actual amount they are willing to spend.

The moment the two sides find a suitable price — where the buyer placed a convincing bid and the seller is okay with the price, the a transaction will happen.

One can infer from the above that the StockX business model is similar to the genus eBay model where buyers can make direct purchase so far the seller place a “Selling Now” bid.

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By and large, since StockX (both the web and the app) handles high ticket items too, the company being the marketplace operator perform some other functions.

They make sure to handle the authentication and shipping process with care and caution. Hence, making sure that bidders get exactly what they bid for and no fakes.

StockX Funding, Valuation, and Revenue

Findings show that StockX has in its Crunchbase profile, a whooping statistic of a fund raised by the company to worth $690 million over 9 rounds.

And the company has a valuation of about $3.8 billion dollars according to the press release issued out the business organization in April, 2021.

Since 9 rounds gave the company that figure, the StockX valuation of $3.8 billion in April 2021 officially made the company a unicorn.

Some of the company’s classic investors include General Atlantic, DST Global, GGV Capital, and some individuals like the Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, etc.

How Does StockX Make Money?

Having opened your eyes to what StockX is all about, StockX genus business model, how it works and operates, etc.

Now is the time to answer the question, ‘how does StockX make money?’ the answer to this is not farfetch.

As you can see from the above discourse, StockX generate billions of dollars as yearly revenue over the sale of wears and collectibles.

One will begin to curious that what kind of business model is the company using and how does the company make its money.

Well, one thing that is obvious and glaring is that the company has only one source of income. It generates its revenue by doing one thing.

As an online marketplace, StockX makes money by taking a share of every successful transaction the company facilitates.

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That one revenue generation model is via Commission fees.

Unlike the other online marketplaces like eBay, StockX handles the authentication and the consecutive shipment of items bought on its platform.

This is as a result of the fact that the e-commerce website deals with high ticket products, which many of them worth thousands of dollars.

On this note, on every successful sale made on StockX, the seller is obliged to pay a flat rate of 3 percent as the processing fee.

On top of that, the company is charging a transaction fee that falls between the range of 8% to 9.5% per sale.

Using this simple revenue generation model, StockX facilitated more than $1 billion in GMV for its seasoned and new sellers in the year 2019 alone.

Conclusion

How does StockX make money? I believe by now you must have known the perfect answer to that question. The company’s business and revenue model is genus and fantastic.