Lack of Yeezys Leading to Increased Botting

Production of Yeezy has been halted by Adidas, a massive impact on Adidas, as Yeezy is estimated to make up $2 billion a year in sales, close to 10% of the company’s revenue. Beyond Adidas, there has been a large ripple for the entire sneaker industry, impacting sneakerheads, sneaker stores, and botters.

Removing Yeezy, one of the most desirable brands, has forced more scarcity and competition in the market for other products. This has caused the never-ending clash between sneakerheads and botters to become more prominent, as there is less supply to be won. Simultaneously, sneaker stores are struggling to replace a highly desirable and profitable brand.

Unfortunately, this has created a nightmare scenario for sneaker lovers. There are fewer releases to win, making competition fiercer for raffles. Within the last month, we have seen a significant uptick in botting activity with several prominent instances: A Ma Maniere AJ 4 Retro, Concepts Lobster, and Nike Anti-Bot Statement.

Though these brands and stores are always heavily targeted by bots, there is a newfound intensity with increased competition. Botters have been making 10s-100s of thousands of dollars and will not easily give up their business. It has caused more focused and creative workarounds to bypass existing prevention mechanisms (firewall, queuing, and creating a new website).

Since Yeezy was disbanded, we have seen a 30% increase in raffle entries for our customers, with most of the entries being bots. Beyond raffles, we have seen an influx of botters targeting medium-heat items (non-raffle), discounts, and price anomalies (freebie bots).

Identifying and preventing bots is extremely tedious and time-consuming, as brands spend many hours creatively crafting obstacles to trip up bots. If bots scope up an entire release, like what happened to A Ma Maniere and Concepts. It will take days to manually verify and cancel those orders — not mention the public outcry on social media!

We anticipate that bot activity will continue to increase, given the success of bots, especially smaller brands and stores that do not have the resources to combat them.

We hate bots, and since it is the holiday season, we want to offer any brand impacted by bots 3 months free of Yofi! We have been helping brands successfully mitigate bad actors (bots, serial returners, resellers), eliminate unnecessary software expenses, and create meaningful relationships with their customers.