Making 20x return on investment trading sneakers for a living. Here’s how 

Watch the full interview here :

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we talked with David. David is the founder of Svn.kl and Limitd, Malaysia's first authentic streetwear marketplace. David shared with us his lifelong passion for sneakers and how he turned his passion into business. We hope you guys can learn something from David’s story, enjoy!

Svn.kl Instagram https://www.instagram.com/svn.kl/?hl=en

Streetwear Malaysia FB Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/474417826014308/

Limitd - Malaysia's first authentic streetwear marketplace   https://www.instagram.com/limitdsneakers/?hl=en

Limitd app (Beta): limitd.io

Hey David, can you introduce to our community about your background and maybe how you entered the sneaker scene?

Hi guys, my name is David. I always found sneakers interesting and I'm a sneaker collector myself at heart, but back then I couldn't afford what I wanted ,all the nice things normally aren't cheap. What got me into reselling sneakers was like four or five years ago when I went to the UK to study. It's then I realized like there's actually profit to be made in this whole sneaker community. Let’s take a pair of Yeezys as example, the retail price would be about 180 pounds which is like about 1000 ringgit so like if you manage to get a pair for retail, you are able to resell it upwards like 2 000 or even 3 000 ringgit! So that's how I started and then gradually snowball to what I am doing today. 

That’s cool so how do you even get the first batch of money to start off this sneaker reselling business?

Well...this one is a bit tricky because it's not really a recommended move but basically I took the risk and I used the tuition fees that my parents gave me for uni and invested all of it into reselling before paying my tuition fees. I even requested a deadline extension to pay my tuition fees because i haven't liquidated all my stock yet from all the sneakers but yeah that's where i got my first investment from, which is literally my tuition fees. 

Did you do it yourself the whole time I mean, do you have friends or partners with you on this?

Yeah, i wouldn't say partners but when we first started out it was with a group of friends who i met in my university. So basically what we did was like we would go to London and camp up for the newest sneaker releases because I were to go camp alone, i would only get one pair of the sneaker only as it’s limited to one pair per person, but with a group of friends, we might get to cop six or seven pairs of the sneakers and then resell it for profit.

Okay, can you also tell us a bit about which university you went to and which degree you took, and why?

I studied at the University of Warwick for a degree in Biomedicine. The main reason that I chose that course is because since SPM and A-levels,  I always thought I liked science, particularly in biomedicine and about how our human bodies work. But then there's actually a fine line between having an interest in a particular subject and actually don't mind doing it for the rest of your life, so by the end of the first year ,I already knew that I didn't want anything to do with biomedicine after I graduate and started focus more on sneaker business.

How's the landscape like today? If someone is studying in the UK and wants to repeat the steps you did right, are they able to do it?

You can try but right now it’s a bit hard to be able to do what we were doing four years ago as the market is super saturated right now so your chances of getting even one pair is very slim. 

Since we're on this topic, do you mind sharing with us what were the biggest gains you had in one investment?

The biggest gain would probably be the Off-White Jordan 1 that was released in 2017. The retail price that time was around 800 or 900 ringgit and today, the same pair is worth around 20,000 ringgit, so that’s around a 20X return for me just from this 1 pair of shoes.

I remembered when you found out that I started to learn how to code, you told me something about using bots and paying a lot of money for bots. Can you share a bit on that, just for our techie friends out there, if you're comfortable sharing it?

Yea sure, so basically in the sneaker community, there's this group of people that called “botters” right, they are not developers, they're just average joe and they don't know how to code but what they are doing is they will buy like bots from the sneaker market and attempt to cheat the system. They have a script which allows them to enter as many accounts as they can into the system, for example, if the chances of you getting a Jordan sneaker online is 1 over 10,000, but by using these script, you are able to enter more accounts and thus increase your chance for securing a sneaker for yourself.

Now that the sneaker reselling market is getting more saturated, what is your future plan? What are you working on now to overcome this?

I'm more of a community type of person and since I've already made enough to live comfortably now, I don't need to go out there and compete with everyone to flush out the newcomers, that’s not what I intend to do. Which brings us to why i started Limited, Malaysia first virtual sneaker marketplace for users to transact, to buy and sell sneakers and that's what i'm really working on right now.

For Malaysian, the current issue that most sneakerheads in Malaysia face is when they try to get a particular shoe they go through the whole tedious process of authenticating it and making sure there’s no scam from the seller. Likewise on the seller's end, we are trying to give sellers the best payout possible.

The current scenario in Malaysia right now,  is they sell it on facebook groups and of course the best part about Facebook groups is there's no transaction fees involved right? 

But...this can go wrong in so many ways, firstly as from a buyer's point of view how do you trust this random stranger on the internet that after you transfer your money to his/her bank account, what’s stopping them to just run away and not ship your product?  Whereas for sellers it's the hassle of having to list multiple products and keeping track of it all the time.

So these are the main issues faced by sneakerheads in Malaysia and Limited is here to resolve all these issues and provide a better experience for for both buyers and sellers in the sneaker industry.

If compare with other resellers out there, you have a good brand right now. A community of 80,000 people and an Instagram page of 12 000 people. All these numbers add up to your credibility and I feel this is what sets you apart so who taught you all this marketing strategy to stand out from the crowd?

I wouldn't say there's a specific individual in terms of like who taught me this and that. It's more like you learn along the way,  you have to start up small somewhere so you gradually grow your credibility, like the more deals you make, the more references you have.

Are there any challenges throughout your years or was everything smooth sailing?

It's definitely not smooth sailing of course, if that were the case everyone would be millionaires right now right? I don't mind sharing this but basically one of the biggest problems that a lot of people in the industry are facing is logistics. I'm not going to name any names but if the courier messes up and the parcel goes missing right? It's on you,  so that's straight up you just lost money and it happens very frequently in the market.

If something happens to your business, Svn.kl or Limitd, would you ever go back to working?

That’s a very good question actually so if my businesses were to fail one day, i still don't think i will ever go back to working a 9-to-5 job, it’s just not a right fit for me. I like to take risks, even if my business fails one day, i would probably start ventures into a new one right away.

I heard that thing’s are going well for you and you're looking to expand your team for Svn.kl and Limitd, so what’s the thing that you look for when hiring a new team member?

When it comes to hiring, what I can relate to Deric (host a.k.a co-founder of THC) is that we don't really look for qualifications.  We honestly don't really care that much about whether your degree is packed or your portfolio is stacked. What we really value is results and the willingness to learn new skills along the way.

Thanks for the awesome interview !

Hope you enjoyed this series! 

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