A healthy high-end sneaker marketplace has met the success of the fractional collectible ownership space.
On Tuesday came Rares, an app that allows collectors to fractionally invest in extremely limited edition sneakers.
“Sneakers are this generation’s Matisse,” said founder and CEO Gerome Sapp, a former Notre Dame safety who played five years in the NFL with the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts. “They are clearly a tangible, digestible and investable asset class.”
The first pair, the Air Force I HOV, originally limited for 10 pairs and made in 2010, IPO’d on Tuesday – with 2,000 shares being offered at $13 a share.
Rares has done almost no marketing, but got the most buzz last month when they bought the Nike Yeezy prototype shoes that Kanye wore at the 2008 Grammys from Sotheby’s for $1.8 million.
Helped by the news from the buying of that shoe, Sapp said that, as of Tuesday, 30,000 people had signed up on the company’s mailing list.
“I was shocked,” Sapp said.
Rares is registered by the Securities and Exchange Commission/ Sapp notes that 27 pairs of limited edition sneakers, never produced on a mass scale, have been approved to IPO. There are another 180 or so waiting in the wings.
“Storytelling will be the key,” Sapp said. “It’s what makes shoes more than leather, rubber and stitches.”
Trading will be once a week.
The company has raised capital through investments by Warner Music, Concord Entertainment, The W Fund, Urban Capital Network and Blair Garrou, managing director of The Mercury Fund.
