How the New Balance 550 became an important sneaker for resellers.
Retro sneakers are the bread and butter of the sneaker game, and because of high profile releases, every brand continuously tries to cash in on the hype of re-releases. The less-than-typical production costs mean brands can make more money from re-releasing legacy products and the familiarity often hooks consumers with nostalgia, resulting in a profitable combination for resellers. Unfortunately, most attempts fall flat and are quickly moved to the discount rack or sale section. One retro sneaker over the past few years that seems to have avoided the inevitable is the New Balance 550.
Like many of the most popular retro sneakers, the New Balance 550 was originally released in the late 1980s as a performance basketball shoe. While it wasn’t a mainstream hit for New Balance the way their running shoes have been throughout the years, the NB 550 stood out on the basketball court because of the iconic New Balance “N” branding. As New Balance removed itself from basketball sneakers in the years that followed, the 550 was lost in the archives of the brand until 2021.
Bringing back a shoe in retro form seems easy. We see it regularly with nearly every brand. For many of the brands in the footwear industry, however, Nike’s ability to market its products is the gold standard. Specifically, when it comes to retro sneakers like the Air Jordan 1 or the Nike Dunk, the limited edition and collaborative releases drive energy for the silhouettes, which in turn drives sales of the general release product. While many footwear brands have tried to emulate the formula, the clearance sections of online sneaker stores are littered with heavily discounted shoes that brands had once hoped would be the next successful style to become a staple amongst future sneaker releases.
New Balance, the company known for its “Made In The USA” and “Made In England” retro runners, found success through a tried and true recipe of limited production collabs, paired with accessible and traditional colorways, all driven by energy of Teddy Santis’ Aimé Leon Dore brand. With their first release, ALD and New Balance reintroduced the 550 in limited quantities at the perfect time. Consumers were looking for retro footwear, and the Nike Dunk had never been more popular with a bigger audience. So, when the Aimé Leon Dore x New Balance 550 came out in September of 2020, the slightly more advanced “technical” features of the shoe gave sneaker enthusiasts a familiar but different something to be excited about.
The ALD 550 regularly sells for 4-5 times its original retail price, but the true value in the release is the interest that it created for dozens of other colorways. Since the first release, Aimé Leon Dore has released a handful of their own colorways, LeBron James’ agent and business partner, Rich Paul, and sneaker designer JoeFreshGoods, have both released their own 550 collaborations. Teddy Santis, founder of Aimé Leon Dore, has since taken on the role of Creative Director at New Balance, and dozens of general release New Balance 550 colorways have sold out. Most importantly, hundreds of our consignor partners have been able to pad their pockets reselling the New Balance 550.
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