Supreme built a billion-dollar brand by selling ultra-limited items like pinball machines and bricks to create hype. Only 11 stores worldwide, lottery entry, and artificial scarcity fuel a resale market where cheap tees sell for thousands, spawning counterfeits that are now hard to distinguish from real pieces.
Supreme is a billion-dollar brand, but half of their products are fakes. Here is why. Supreme was an underground streetwear brand worried that its products wouldn't sell, so they started selling products in super limited quantities— pinball machines, nunchucks, even selling a brick— and people went crazy for it. It worked so well, they make these limited quantities the foundation of every element of their business, and it's called scarcity. So they launched just 11 stores worldwide and open only a few weeks out of the year, and you have to enter a lottery just to get into the door of a Supreme store. And how do you know you've won the lottery? You have to wait around on for an exclusive text to see if you made the cut. But this scarcity has become an issue. Scalpers are going nuts and hypebeast collectors are driving up the cost of everything Supreme. They're buying products like this $30 t-shirt and flipping it for over $1,000. So of course the market is flooded with counterfeits. And if you've got your hands on some secondhand Supreme merchandise, you might want to ask this question: Is your crowbar legit?
