StockX Says It Has Turned Away Millions Worth of Fake Sneakers
● In a new report, StockX covers key areas related to its investments in product verification, brand protection relationships and more.
StockX is offering a view into its anticounterfeiting and fraud prevention work through the release of its first Brand Protection & Customer Trust Report.
According to the sneaker and streetwear resale marketplace, the new report covers key areas related to StockX's investments in product verification, brand protection relationships and its efforts to combat bad actors. The platform said it plans to release the report annually to provide further transparency into the work its doing to protect both consumers and brands.
Among the findings in the new report, StockX said that since its launch in 2016, the company's verification experts have reviewed more than 55 million items and turned away more than $600 million worth of products across all categories that failed to meet its authentication requirements. Sneakers that were suspected to be fake accounted for about 13 percent — or $80 million — of that total.
StockX added that in 2023 alone, the company rejected more than 325,000 products valued at more than $82 million.
“One of our core values as an organization is to be a champion for our customers by, amongst other things, staying on the cutting edge of verification, investing in talent, constantly evolving our technology and systems and increasing transparency into the process,” Scott Cutler, chief executive officer of StockX, said in a statement.
Thursday's report also highlighted the company's continued efforts to develop new processes and partner with industry leaders to proactively block bad actors from defrauding shoppers on its platform.
In 2023, StockX noted that it unveiled a new fraud review process for sellers. Before a seller places an ask, StockX now uses advanced machine learning models as well as expert third-party fraud models to analyze hundreds of user and transaction data points and determine if the ask should be allowed on the marketplace.
This check aims to help protect buyers and legitimate sellers from fraudsters. In 2023 alone, StockX said it blocked nearly 850,000 bad asks from being added to the marketplace and suspended more than 9,000 suspected fraudulent sellers before their asks could be added.
“This report points to how we've doubled down on that commitment to the customer and on our efforts to work directly with brands whenever we can,” Cutler added. “As the lines blur between resale and retail, collaboration between the two means market growth that delivers benefits for both sides and allows us to create a safer ecosystem for everyone to trade what they love.”
This new report from StockX seems to be an evolution of its “Big Facts: The Verification Report,” which offered a look into the company's review process, the reasons for rejecting a product and broke down the counterfeit activity it experienced during the past 12 months.
In its June 2023 verification report, StockX said the leading reasons a product was rejected in the past year are manufacturing defects (27 percent) and fake products (20 percent), followed by damaged box (13 percent), used product (13 percent), wrong product (12 percent), wrong size (11 percent) and other (4 percent).
At the time of the report's release, StockX said that the top five counterfeit sneaker styles that authenticators have seen most frequently included looks from Nike, Jordan Brand and Yeezy. Leading the list is the Nike Dunk Low “Panda” from 2021, followed by the Adidas Yeezy Slide “Onyx,” the Travis Scott x Air Jordan 1 Low “Reverse Mocha,” the Air Jordan 1 High “Dark Mocha” and the restocked Adidas Yeezy Slide “Pure.”