Why Is Supreme So Expensive?

Why Is Supreme So Expensive?

People who aren’t very familiar with streetwear clothing brand Supreme tend to ask “why is Supreme so expensive?” after seeing the resell prices online. It makes sense when they see a sweatshirt with a small logo priced at $1,000 with no background information on the brand. But the reality is that the price the original buyer paid from Supreme isn’t really anything out of the ordinary, especially compared to other brands out there. For example, the majority of graphic t-shirts from Supreme retail for $36, which isn’t very much more than you’d pay for any other t-shirt. Don’t get me wrong, if you can’t purchase a Supreme item that is hyped up and everyone wants, you will definitely have to pay a premium price for the item. But we’ll get into that.

Basically Supreme as a brand runs on a supply and demand business model. They only make a certain number of each item, and for hyped up items everyone wants, they usually sell out before a lot of people have a chance to check out and get one. For example when Supreme dropped their famous box logo design on crewnecks during their Fall/Winter 2018 collection, all 9 colorways and 4 sizes for each color way completely sold out in 32 seconds. And on top of that the majority of people trying to buy a crewneck right when they dropped got a card decline error, which is a result of all the traffic on Supreme’s website and Supreme trying to block bots from purchasing the item to fast. And then instantly after they sold out, you would have to pay $600-$1,000 for one of the crewnecks that someone else just bought for $158.

And then obviously a TON of celebrities are wearing Supreme nowadays, which only adds to the hype, and makes people more willing to pay a premium price for a product. Along with Supreme being worn all around the world, and tons of people “flexing” their new rare Supreme purchases on all social medias. But really Supreme isn’t that expensive of a brand if you can buy it straight from Supreme when it drops and avoid paying resellers. People take reselling Supreme as a business because of how hyped up the brand is and how many people are willing to pay a premium price for the clothing. You can checkout an article on reselling Supreme here if you’re interested in learning more about the reselling culture! For anyone who still doesn’t understand the Supreme culture, it started out simply as a skateboard shop in New York, and now it has crazy collaborations with tons of huge brands such as Nike, The North Face, and even Louis Vuitton!

The thing about Supreme nowadays is that a decent amount of their items can be found for under the retail price and at an affordable price. It’s just the super hyped up items and logos that still have a crazy high resell price on aftermarket websites. An item that doesn’t resell for more than the original retail price is what we in the Supreme community call a “brick”. And there are lots of brick items on all of the reselling platforms if you’re interested in getting a Supreme item without paying a crazy premium price! Here’s some information on the best places to buy authentic Supreme items if you’re interested in checking out some prices.

So next time you see someone asking “Why is Supreme so expensive?”, hopefully you can help them understand the culture behind Supreme.