Flip The Script

Tech entrepreneur Kemar Newell is shaking up the sneaker resale scene with his game-changing app.

- Max Bell

In 2016 Forbes reported that the sneaker resale market had an estimated worth of over $1 billion. If you’ve never camped curbside for a pair of retro Jordans or the latest Kanye-designed Adidas, this sum might seem unfathomable. But for lifelong sneakerheads like Kemar Newell, the size of the gray market has been a foregone conclusion for years.

“I used to skip lunch to save money so I could buy the next sneaker that was coming out,” the Brooklyn-born 28-year-old says from his high-rise apartment in downtown Los Angeles. “I was that passionate about it.”

Long before the Forbes report, Newell had developed FLIP, an app that allows users to buy and sell sneakers on their smartphones. While many potential investors balked at the size of the market, Newell’s persistence prevailed. With investments from a Google director and seed accelerator Y Combinator, he was able to get FLIP through beta testing and in the Apple App Store by March of 2016.