Greek 17-Year-Old Makes Thousands Selling Sneakers From His Bedroom

One of Greece’s best-known sneaker resellers is none other than 17-year-old Giannis Louloudis, who started selling shoes out of his childhood bedroom on the island of Rhodes.

Reselling rare and sought-after sneakers is a lucrative but accessible business, which many teenagers across the world have become involved in over the years. Young business-savvy individuals can get started with only a couple of hundred euros or dollars and start making upwards of $100,000 within a year.

One of the most successful sneaker resellers in Greece

Louloudis, who now has access to a warehouse space to store his gargantuan stock of footgear, started his business when he was only thirteen years of age.

Five years later, he’s still hard at work selling sneakers, and many unique and coveted shoes have passed through his hands. Professional highlights of Louloudis include a pair of “Nike Air Jordan 1 Chicago 1985” sneakers, “Back to the Future” themed special “Nike Mag 2011” shoes, and a pair of custom sneakers emblazoned with the logo of the now-defunct political party PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement).

In August of 2017, Louloudis was given 800 euros and a computer by his grandfather. He planned to use the money and the computer for a business venture involving the launch of exclusive clothes and shoes by designer brand Supreme. He would quickly buy up stock and then resell it for profit.

He received inspiration for this through a coveted designer streetwear hoodie he discovered on YouTube which he later found out cost 600€ ($732). His parents informed him that was out of their price range, and upon further investigation, he discovered it was originally sold for only €160 ($195).

That prompted him to become interested in reselling sneakers in Greece, where there wasn’t yet as much competition as in other countries.

The first time Louloudis tried to buy stock for the purpose of reselling it, he spent a lot of his money on items with low resale value but quickly learned the ropes of the game. Speaking to gazzeta.gr, he highlighted his first good purchase, a Supreme jacket he bought for €470 ($573), which he was able to quickly resell for €1,050 ($1,280).

Stand-out items

Although clearly one of the most important functions of being a sneaker reseller is to sell footwear to others, most resellers are big fans (“sneakerheads”) themselves.

This means that a lot of sellers like Louloudis also have a personal collection where they keep certain items they can’t bear to part with despite how valuable they are. Louloudis’ prized possession as one of the most famous sneaker resellers in Greece is a pair of light-up “Nike Mag 2011” shoes, which are modeled after shoes featured in the 1985 film “Back to the Future.”

Louloudis has also managed to sell a single pair of sneakers for a six-digit payoff. He was also featured at a sneaker convention in London, “Sneaker Con,” showing off his 1985 pair of “Air Jordan Chicago 1” shoes.

Sneaker reselling is likely to continue to be lucrative for Louloudis and other teenagers involved, as there are few signs of the demand slacking off.

New sneaker launches are generally almost entirely sold out by resellers, who are willing to wait hours in line or use internet bots to automatically enter their details on the check out page to buy up pairs of shoes online.

Sneaker fans will always want new sneakers, and as a rule, rare shoes are hard to come by without interacting with a reseller.