Is It a Bad Idea to Open a Sneaker Store in 2026?

The obvious answer is yes. I'm not sure the obvious answer is right.

People keep asking me some version of this question. Not always directly. Sometimes it comes wrapped in a news item they're forwarding, sometimes it's a comment on a post, sometimes it's a friend in the industry who just shakes their head when the topic comes up.

I was at an independent record store recently. Nothing remarkable about the trip, which is kind of the point. Local thrift stores, record stores… I go pretty regularly. I flip through bins, talk to whoever’s working, listen to whatever is playing, maybe buy something and maybe don’t. It’s the same thing millions of people do at these kind of stores all over the country, in cities where Spotify has existed for fifteen years and every song ever recorded is available for the price of a gym membership.

Nobody thinks independent record stores are a bad idea anymore. And thrift stores have quietly become one of the more consistent community gathering points in any neighborhood, the kind of place where you're as likely to run into someone you know as you are to find something worth buying. At some point the conversation shifted from "why would you open one" to "what kind are you opening." The ones with a point of view survived. The ones that understood they were selling a reason to be somewhere, not just a physical format, are doing fine. The ones that were just distribution nodes for content you could get anywhere else closed.

I keep coming back to that when people ask me about sneaker retail.