What StockX's 2025 Data Reveals About Who's Winning... and Who's Pretending
Numbers don't lie, but they can be deceiving.
Nike sold more than the next four brands combined on StockX in 2025. But if you think that means The Swoosh is winning, you’re not paying attention to what the numbers actually say.
This is Part 1 of a two-part analysis of StockX's 2025 Big Facts Report. Today: sneakers. Tuesday: what 200 brands breaking records tells us about where culture is actually moving in 2026.
I was employee #9 at StockX (and also recently caught up with Co-Founder Chris Kaufman). I watched this company go from tracking single sales in a Detroit office to publishing data that shapes billion-dollar brand strategies. I know how to read between these lines. And what I’m seeing in this report should terrify some executives.
The Big Picture
StockX just published their seventh annual Big Facts: Current Culture Index—hard sales data across sneakers, apparel, accessories, collectibles, and electronics. This isn’t marketing fluff. This is actual transaction data. Real money changing hands on the secondary market.
Before we dive in, it’s important to understand what this data actually represents. StockX is a great place to keep an eye on trends, but the secondary market is different from traditional retail. Sometimes these massive percentage increases show up because a brand barely existed on the platform the previous year, or because they’re just now breaking into the resale market in meaningful ways. A 200% increase might mean a brand went from 1,000 sales to 3,000 sales, not that they’re suddenly outselling Nike.
Context matters. But even with that caveat, the patterns in this data reveal something fundamental about where culture is moving.
Nearly 200 brands set new all-time annual sales records on StockX in 2025. That’s not a typo. Two hundred brands reached heights they’d never hit before on the platform. That tells you something fundamental is shifting in how people buy, what they value, and which brands actually matter.
The brands that show up here are the brands people actually want badly enough to pay more than retail for. That distinction matters more than anything you’ll read in a quarterly earnings report.
Retail sales tell you what brands can push through distribution channels. Resale data tells you what people actually desire. There’s a massive difference between those two things, and most companies still haven’t figured that out.
StockX CEO Greg Schwartz put it perfectly: “The brands that will win are those that understand scarcity, storytelling, and community — not just scale.”
Let me show you what the data actually reveals.
The Sneaker Throne (And The Cracks Showing)
Nike’s “Recovery”
For the third straight year, Nike, Jordan, adidas, New Balance, and ASICS topped StockX’s best-selling sneaker brands list. Nike and Jordan are showing what StockX calls “early signs of recovery,” with average sneaker prices up 5% and 6% year-over-year.
But here’s what that statistic hides... they’re not recovering because they’re doing anything revolutionary. They’re recovering because they finally stopped flooding the market with garbage (please understand, I say this lovingly… the “Panda” Dunk should be an iconic shoe on the level of the white-on-white AF1, not a shoe whose quality makes me miss Payless Shoe stores). When you’ve spent years devaluing your own brand through endless retros and lazy releases, simply pulling back creates artificial scarcity.
From my time at Complex, Finish Line, StockX, and Stadium Goods... Nike has always been the best. The default. The safe bet.
I’m not chasing views with corny “Nike is dead” hot takes with what I’m about to say…
But for the first time in my 20+ year career, I’m watching their cultural grip loosen. Not because they’re making bad shoes—the product quality is noticeably on the comeback—but because they stopped making memorable ones.
Look at what’s actually moving on StockX’s platform. It’s retros. Legacy models. Nostalgia products. The Jordan 1. The Dunk. The Air Max 1. These are shoes that mattered 20, 30, even 40 years ago.
Where’s the new Air Max moment? Where’s the innovation that makes people line up at 6 AM? Where’s the shoe that defines this generation instead of reminding them of the last one?
I wrote about Nike’s relentless layoff cycles destroying institutional knowledge and how Elliott Hill took over a mess that might be too big to fix. The StockX data proves why those changes were necessary. Nike’s still selling, but they’re selling the past. Still playing catchup.
A 5% price increase isn’t innovation. It’s inflation plus scarcity management. That’s not a sustainable strategy when your competitors are building the future.
The Real Winners: Mizuno, Maison Mihara Yasuhiro, Saucony, Salomon
Want to know where the actual growth is? Look at these numbers:
