Ray Cao started reselling sneakers and apparel when he was 17 to pay off family debt.
Cao currently sells primarily on StockX, with over $1.4 million in market sales.
He started reselling Yeezys and Supreme products, but shifted to reselling readily available items.
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Ray Cao helped his family get out of $200,000 in debt by turning to resale as a teenager. Eight years later, his hobby has turned into a profitable sideline.
As a teenager, Kao’s parents accumulated gambling debts and invested in penny stocks that backfired.
“I decided to resell because I was desperate to improve my family’s financial situation,” says Cao. “There will be discussions every day about what we can spend our money on.”
In 2015, at the age of 17, he used his salary from working at a bubble tea shop in New York City to invest in sneakers and merchandise.
He started by reselling Supreme clothing and Yeezy sneakers.
“I was able to increase inventory and scale, and that’s when I realized, ‘This could be a huge revenue stream,'” he said.
His parents have been active participants in his reselling business from the beginning. Cao recently quit his full-time job in finance to pursue his ventures in other businesses besides resale. However, his side business remains a family business. His parents regularly help sort through defects in incoming orders and ensure that all items are shipped.
His family is now debt-free, and Cao has made over $1.4 million on StockX since 2017, according to a screenshot of his seller dashboard seen by an insider.
Cao’s parents have supported his reselling efforts from the beginning.
Lei Cao
Reselling on StockX is expensive, but saves time
A turning point in Cao’s business came a few years ago when StockX called for a meeting.
“I finally got the attention of my StockX account manager at the time. We had coffee and this is where the business really took off,” he said.
Cao climbed the StockX seller rankings. The company offered his Mr. Cao the opportunity to store the inventory in a local warehouse. This has helped Cao’s team reduce the time it takes to authenticate and ship items to customers.
The platform’s automation tools, such as bulk shipping, have reduced Cao’s active work hours to just 10 hours a month, he said. When he first started reselling, Cao recalled he was manually shipping as many as 1,000 items a week.
scout, What StockX Acquires in 2021also provides sellers with online inventory management and pricing tools. Scout’s mobile app allows sellers to use their phone’s camera to scan shoeboxes and list their products on StockX.
Cao does not have an exclusive deal with StockX, but says about 97% of its sales occur on the platform. He started selling on his market in 2017. StockX is now open to the publicCao also sells inventory to other resellers at a premium.
“It’s true that you can’t make the best profit on StockX,” Cao said, referring to market-imposed fees to coordinate sales. “The best money is always local meetings and stuff like that. But if the company saves me time, I’m happy to spend less money.”
Cao takes the New York City subway after picking up his Yeezy 350 V2 sneakers.
Lei Cao
No need to wait in line or stay up all night to get the best inventory
Cao started reselling in 2015. He remembers staying up all night to manually purchase multiple of his Yeezys at Yeezy Supply. For many, this is just part of the resale game. Availability of products when they drop is important to ensure inventory.
At the time, Supreme’s products were also highly profitable, so Cao was queuing up at stores and on the streetwear brand’s website to scoop up lots of items.
Now he is actively seeking stock that is readily available and below retail price. The go-to items he now sells include Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and Travis Scott artist merchandise (usually artist-sold his T-his shirts, hoodies, hats, and other accessories). It is included. But his biggest seller is Fear Of God Essentials, an apparel brand created by his fashion designer Jerry Lorenzo.
“I just buy in bulk for my own convenience,” he said. “I don’t have time to stand in line or stay up all night.”
Cao said he never relied on bots to secure sneakers or apparel for resale. A bot is a computer program that performs automated, repetitive tasks that make it almost effortless for resellers to checkout large quantities of products online at once.
Instead, he relies on several third-party cookgroup connections and the Google Chrome extension Page Monitor. Browser plugins alert users when new items are listed on websites.
Cao Cao’s house has a ton of inventory, but it’s rarely in his closet.
Cao also resells Converse and Gucci Ace sneakers, but the apparel requires far less storage space, he said.
Still, his house is full of items waiting to be resold.
“My house just looks like a mess. It’s just stock everywhere. Fear Of God hoodies seem to be piled up on the ceiling in my parents’ room and my sister’s room,” he said. “I plan to buy a bigger apartment and put everything in the condo I’m moving into in the next few months.”
Cao Cao’s house has a ton of inventory, but it’s rarely in his closet.
Unlike most resellers, Cao has never been enamored with the latest Off-White or Supreme releases.
“I never had a passion for sneakers or streetwear or anything like that. Everything was like a business to me,” he said. “It was just about making money.”
As the in-house writer for GallantCEO.com I prefer to remain anonymous as I do not seek anything from my writing only the self gratification of writing for a good cause such as this.
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