What Nike’s International Shipping Ban Really Means For Sneakerheads

At the start of the year, reports began flooding in stating that Nike will be banning retailers from shipping internationally. According to the Swoosh, doing so may result in "corrective actions up to and including discontinuing retailer access to Nike product.” With this said, stockists worldwide started halting their international shipping services - but what does this actually mean? Even after a month, sneakerheads are still a little confused by the Beaverton brand's latest policy, so we'll try our best to explain it in the simplest way possible.

The number one reason why Nike would do this is to keep specific sneakers in-demand. For instance, if you wanted to cop a pair of NYC-exclusive Nike Air Force 1s before, you didn't even have to be in the Big Apple, but this new rule forces retailers to keep things in their territory so that hyped sneakers are kept hyped. This is great for those living in that particular country, but awful for those residing outside of it.

This move means that international sneakerheads won't be able to buy a pair of shoes that they want, meaning that they'll really only have three options. Firstly, you can get a friend or relative to buy them for you, but we don't all have this luxury. Secondly, you can just forget about copping altogether and just drown in your sorrows. And finally, you can pay resell, which is sure to be a lot higher than ever before due to how exclusive it is now.

So what does this mean for us living in the UK? With Brexit officially here, will we still be able to cop from European retailers, or can we only buy from those in Britain? Will Brexit even affect anything at all? Well, the short answer is that nothing's really changed.

According to the new policy, retailers in an open market, such as the EU, will still be able to ship across borders so long as the destination country is within the predetermined trade union. This means that retailers like 43einhalb and asphaltgold can still sell to us Brits, even though we aren't part of the European Union anymore - for now anyway.

While this is good news for us, it might not be the best for the stockists themselves. Because they can no longer ship across borders, those from other continents can no longer cop from their site, essentially meaning that they've lost half their customer base pretty much overnight. This is a massive reason why Sneakersnstuff have set up base all over the world. With four stores in Europe, two in North America, and one in Asia, they're pretty much covered from all angles.

While it's still early days, we can foresee other brands such as adidas following in the same footsteps. Just last year, Yeezy dropped a ton of regionally exclusive Yeezy Boost 350 V2s that you had to be in that specific country to cop. In fact, this weekend's Yeezy 700 MNVN "Black" release is also being launched in the same way, being limited to just stores in London, New York, and Tokyo.

This forces sneakerheads to essentially have to "work" for their shoes, and while this may sound kind of ridiculous at first, it's a great metaphor for everything in life. As the late, great Abraham Lincoln once said, "Great things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

Let us know what you think of Nike's international shipping ban, and be sure to keep it locked at The Sole Supplier for the hottest sneaker news and releases!