Still, just before 11:00 AM on a recent Thursday morning, the scene outside Supreme’s Bowery store was little different than it has been in the past. “When does it become corny to have, you know, my Supreme fire extinguisher, my silverware, my mug?” he said. Steiner, who now works for the Brooklyn-based art and fashion collective MSCHF, has moved on, too-the last Supreme item he bought was from a Kaws collaboration in 2021. You're talking about a brand that releases something on the same day at the same time every week.” “I mean, even some of the biggest collectors that I'm friends with, like-it's a real thing. “I think it's natural,” said Steiner, who told me he has noticed a sense of fatigue among the kinds of guys who probably own superfan collectibles like Supreme nunchucks. In 2017, that number was around $200 million. According to VF, Supreme revenues hit $561.5 million for the year ending in March 2022 VF had been expecting revenues of $500 million. A Supreme representative declined to comment.Īs Supreme expands into new markets like China (via a dedicated shop at Dover Street Market Beijing, which opened in November), the brand is certainly selling more box logo-emblazoned gear overall than ever before. But it stands to reason that, in an effort to refocus on their core customer, Supreme could be making more of certain garments, especially now that they can draw on VF’s supply chain expertise (the company also owns The North Face, Dickies, Vans, and Timberland). Supercop is speculating-nobody really knows how much of anything Supreme makes. “People are much less likely to impulse buy a bot now that Supreme has sold out and is producing much larger quantities of goods,” the company said in its statement. “Supreme,” they continued, “specifically has made it a bit more challenging than just a regular Shopify store.”Īccording to Supercop, Supreme’s best defense hasn’t just been technological. These days, according to the team behind bot service Supercop, which claimed to be “ranked #1” among all Supreme bots when reached via email earlier this week, “there’s significantly less demand” for their services. Which didn’t always work: Steiner stopped running Supreme Saint in 2017 not because he could no longer outsmart the website, but because there were too many rival botters.īut Supreme appears to have finally triumphed when, earlier this year, the brand migrated its webstore to ubiquitous e-commerce platform Shopify, which touts strong bot protection services. Supreme has been locked in an arms race with bot networks for years, introducing measures like Captcha forms and bot detection to stymie hypebeast hackers. The problem wasn’t with the website but, seemingly, with the bots. It would be like, there's a huge problem with the website if they're still in stock after five minutes.” The stock-clearing bot swarm, in other words, had not materialized. So Steiner was surprised when I told him that by Thursday afternoon, hours after the prescribed 11:00 am drop time, I could still add practically every product from the North Face collection to my cart. A little over two years since Supreme was acquired by The North Face parent company VF for $2.1 billion, the New York label has started to resemble something that was once basically unimaginable: a regular fashion brand. These days, the experience feels distinctly different. The Supreme business model was frustrating, but it was also brilliant at breeding obsession: the more you wanted something, the harder it was to actually buy it. Like many other young men before and after me, I loved every second of the experience. (As many hilariously scathing Yelp reviews over the years attest to.) Once I finally got inside, I found my prize-no thanks to the staff of brusque skaters who, ever since James Jebbia opened the original Supreme shop on Lafayette Street in 1994, have been famously unhelpful to interlopers. So I had to go to the store in LA, where I waited in line in the hot sun on Fairfax with no idea of whether the hat was even in stock. Like just about every other piece that dropped on Supreme’s website that week, it sold out in an instant. About ten years ago, I was determined to buy a hunter green moleskin five-panel hat emblazoned with the brand’s iconic box logo. Anyone even remotely interested in menswear has experienced the unique and often confounding experience of trying to purchase something from Supreme.
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