Buying Rare Sneakers Is Almost Impossible—Unless You Join a Cook Group
As sneakers morphed from coveted footwear to veritable asset class, the number of people interested in buying them increased exponentially. The difference between buying and not buying a sneaker was no longer felt in the closet, but in shriveling checking accounts. Suddenly, enterprising resellers realized that it was more profitable to help people buy sneakers than the inconsistent work of trying to actually buy each individual sneakers. The cook group was born.
Buying sneakers has never been easy, even before the cook group. People would camp out all night outside a store for a pair, only to wake up to crafty cutters or folks who were friendly with the shop’s owner sneaking ahead of them. When sneaker sellers took things online, determined buyers invented technology—often called bots—to automate the checkout process. The result was that anyone trying to buy streetwear and sneakers without help was left empty-handed, while bot users walked away with multiple items. Buying sneakers and streetwear became an absolutely agonizing process: websites suddenly flooded with users would buckle under the traffic. Sometimes, even if it appeared you bought the sneakers online, you’d get an email telling you your order was canceled. Sneaker drops are now regularly followed by a chorus of people on social media cursing the retailer. Sneaker companies have tried to fight back with tools like waiting rooms or dedicated apps like SNKRS, where Nike drops many of its most-wanted sneakers. Still, many buyers have found ways around these preventative measures. Buying shoes has become such a bummer that sneakerheads call Saturday, the day many of the most anticipated pairs release, Sadderday.
Cook groups try to solve most of those issues by treating drops like military operations. Take the recent drop of a pair of Jordan 1 Seafoams. Almost as soon as the shoe was announced, a digital card populated with the shoe’s retail and resale value, along with a link to every store where it’s releasing. The shoe was scheduled to release at 10am on the site Footaction—but a monitor found the queue for hopeful buyers opened 15 minutes early. Users were instructed to start using their bots at this time to give themselves the best chance. For less seasoned users, the site also offers something called “checkout slots” where users can fill out a form with their credit card information and shipping address, and let bots manned by a Steady Soles administrator go to work on their behalf.