Image via Complex Original
In a nondescript warehouse at an undisclosed location in Northern New Jersey, there sits a garage space full of neatly stacked sneakers—some on shelves, some not—a basketball hoop, an Armenian flag, and a fridge full of beer. Twenty-one-year-old Ari Sarafyan, the man behind cook group AK Chefs and soon-to-be-launched resale shop Private Exhbit, wears a white Supreme x Hanes T-shirt dirtied from moving boxes around all day, a pair of basketball shorts, and Nike x A Cold Wall Vomeros. I hadn't met Sarafyan yet, but had known his brother, Lawrence, who goes by Armenian Kicks, who also works as part of the sneaker reselling operation, for quite some time.
That afternoon over grilled meat, bottles of Ararat brandy, and pickup games of basketball, I get to know some of the ins and outs of Ari's business, not only as a reseller, but as someone who helps facilitate other resellers.
He started reselling sneakers seven years ago, when he was first inspired by a high school friend who was buying sneakers in-store and selling for profit. He then introduced Sarafyan to a simple auto-fill bot, and the rest is history.
He started with Air Jordans and Nikes, and then mixed it up with shoes such as NMDs, Ultra Boosts, and Yeezys. Business started slow, with Sarafyan making $400-$500 a month in profit. After a year, he bubbled to $1,000 a month. Three years in, he was making $3,000 a month. His sixth year saw profits of $6,000 a month. His profits have grown in the seventh year of business, but he doesn't want to disclose a hard number.
Ari and Lawrence pictured on the top left. Image via Complex Original
At 21 years old, that sort of money is hard to pass up. Sarafyan had initially gone to college for one year before dropping out. Sarafyan's parents, Armenian immigrants from Turkey, wanted him to focus on getting an education. After he spoke to them about wanting to sell sneakers full time, they understood. His father owns a jewelry store in New York City's Diamond District and Ari sees the sneaker business as a modern day version of that.
"Us Armenians, we're totally devoted to business, man. That's all we do," he says. "Most Armenians start a business and sneakers are a very, very good business for Armenians at a young age. Because we were growing up to learn how to hustle. And I think sneakers are the next thing for Armenians. I have a lot of Armenian friends that sell shoes."
Sarafyan said his cook group is a good business, but he still makes more money selling sneakers himself. "It's very profitable. But I have very high expenses," he says, "because I have a lot of employees that push out all their support, and I have developers, and most of my money's invested into that. So I really don't get a crazy return, but I do make a good amount of money."
Ari’s brother works on a separate side of the business, away from the bots and cook groups, but in a role that’s still vitally important to the operation. Lawrence, 24, focuses sourcing sneakers from sellers, buying and selling sneakers in bulk, and taking care of shipping all the shoes that they sell. He says his job can involve moving as many as 150 sneakers a day, although the ROI is lower on sneakers bought in bulk than those purchased through bots.
His latest venture is his online shop Motion, which he hopes can one day find its name mentioned amongst brands and retailers such as StockX and Flight Club. "StockX is killing the market. They're probably No. 1 in sales and discount sales on it," he says. "With creating Motion, we're letting our customers know we're not going to charge you a lot for a shoe. We're going to match StockX. There is no competition. There are no excuses not to buy from us. We're matching. We're matching the StockX price. So we're trying to make our customers happy."
Are you a young entrepreneur or someone who loves sneakers and wants to get into botting and selling sneakers? There’s a lot you need to learn. It’s not as simple as buying sneakers and selling them for profit. Sarafyan, in his own words here, breaks down everything you need to know to get into the business.
Learning About Sneaker Culture
"This is a problem right now, because the people who care and know a lot about sneakers rarely exist anymore. It's very uncommon to find people that know actually about shoes from the bottom of their heart. I think it's getting to the point where people just look to what sells and what doesn't instead of knowing what the shoe actually is and what's the meaning behind it.
"In my eyes, it's 100 percent important, because if you know the meaning behind the shoe, you could grasp it better. You could know what's the long-term progress of the shoe, what it means to a lot of people, how fast the market's going to drive. It has a lot of meaning. I think people should actually look more into it because people don't realize it."
Overhead Costs
"When you want to get into sneaker reselling, you have to look into a decent cook group, which is typically a Discord group where resellers trade information and often work as units to purchase sneakers. That's going to help you navigate through what actually sells. They're going to provide you restock monitors. They're going to provide you guidance, support, bot support. It's infinite. There's so many more. It's not only about sneakers. It's tons of stuff, like sports cards, Pokemon cards. The average cost today is $50-$60 a month. I don't see any group charging more than $60 a month.
"You're going to need a bot. A lot of bots are resold, believe it or not. And you can't get your hands on them besides paying resale for it, because they barely restock for retail. So if you can catch a bot for retail, it's going to cost you from $300-$500 a year. If you're going to pay resale, you could pay from $1,000-$8,000. There's a bot called Cyber, it goes for seven grand. There's a bot called Wraith, it goes for eight grand. There's a bot called Balko, it goes for $3K. There's a bot called Sole AIO, it goes for $2K. And there's so many more I could keep naming.
"Some people don't have good computers, so they have to get a server. Servers can cost you almost $80 to $100 a month. Proxies, it honestly depends on how many tasks you run. The average person runs 50 to 100 tasks every release. Proxies help hide your identity and IP address from websites so they can’t block you for being a reseller. So that can cost you $100-$150 a month.
"Each Gmail account is usually a dollar. So you could end up paying $30 a month for Gmails. Gmails are used to help bypass CAPTCHAs on retailers’ websites.
"Nike's SNKRS accounts, they cost $1.50 an account. And believe it or not, SNKRS accounts get banned very quickly. So you could actually end up paying more. I know people that pay $100 a month for SNKRS accounts because they keep getting reset.
"Overall, you may pay $800-$1,000 per month on everything you need to be successful. If you're only going to bot and resell sneakers, you could get away with $600."
How to Join a Cook Group
"Joining a cook group is done through Twitter restocks. There's no group buys for cook groups. You have to join from Twitter restocks and you're going to have to catch a restock. It's usually Shopify restocks. When you join, you're going to have to read a lot of guides. When a new member DMs me, "Hey, I'm a new member. What should I do?" I say, "First, read the master book. After that, get familiarized with all the channels. Recognize all the staff, recognize your roles, your notification so you don't get spammed. That's pretty much it. And then if you have any questions, let me know." It's more knowing your grounds.
"Cook groups provide release guides, support, monitors, free tools. Not only reselling on sneakers, it provides reselling on all different topics: electronics, baseball cards, Pokemon cards, Funko Pops, so much more. All the information learned through this story would be in a cook group.
"I'm not a biased person. I'm just honest. Most of these groups, times have changed, everyone's trying to make quick money now. There isn't a lot of reliable groups. Everyone's just trying to make money right now."
How to Buy a Bot
"There's a couple bots you have to think of when going into the sneaker reselling market. There's going to be Shopify bots, Nike bots, Adidas bots, Footsites bots, Supreme bots, and Yeezy Supply bots. The best bots for these sites are going to be Cyber, Sole AIO, Balkobot, Splashforce, Polaris, MEKPreme, VeloxPreme, Wraith, and Nike Shot Bot.
"I don't even recommend buying all-in-one (AIO) bots anymore, because that's all a marketing scheme. There's no bot that supports every site. They could say they support it, but actually don't work, because the sites change so much that these developers can't keep up.
"To get these bots, you have to follow them on Twitter. They do restocks occasionally. There's actually tools and bots to get the restocks. People use bots to buy bots. The majority of people are getting their bots from resale or restocks.
"Usually you can get a bot from $1,000-$8,000. I can name you three different resale markets for bots that are the most popular ones: BotBroker, Bot Mart, and Tidal.
"Don't get scammed.
"Often when people buy bots, they go through middlemen. There are people that join those bot marketplaces and make fake names of the real middleman. And they try to scam. They try to scam the middlemen. And they ask for money. People actually do that. Usually you look at the profile. The real one has the real number on it, and the fake one you could notice right away. It's something that's not really hard to notice, I'll be honest with you. Rarely people get scammed."
How to Use a Bot
"Having a bot doesn't mean you're going to cop any shoe you want. You have to get used to it. You have to know the delays. You have to know the style of release, how the site works, does the site have bot protection. It's all memory techniques you have to have in your mind. It takes months. It's not something you pick up once you get a bot.
"Having an expensive bot won't assure you to get sneakers. There's people, usually the people copping and cooking shoes have been in the game for a long time. They know it from the back of their head. And then you see the new resellers, they have no idea what's going on. That's normal because they need time. The delays, the proxies, when you start the tasks, it really plays a huge role."
How to Get a Proxy
"Getting a proxy, you could catch it in cook group group buys or you can catch it on Twitter for restocks. There's Unknown proxies, Oculus proxies, Leaf proxies. And the most popular types of proxies are ISP and residential.
"Residential is usually for sites with very high bot protection. And these residential proxies are always rotating IP addresses. And data center, data center doesn't rotate. So if the IP gets banned, it's banned. You have to wait until you're unbanned."
How to Get Gmail Accounts
"Gmail accounts are usually used for four different sites in my opinion: Supreme, Yeezy Supply, Footsites, Shopify. And what the Gmails do is, when a CAPTCHA pops up, the Gmails make it easier for you to solve the CAPTCHA and it will give you an easier time with it.
"These are all aged Gmail accounts. These are 2010 and older Gmail accounts. People sell new Gmail accounts, but the favorite is old Gmail accounts. And people farm the Gmails. What that means is they put a lot of activity on them so they don't look fake."
How to Get Credit Card Profiles
"There's a lot of ways to get credit cards. There's something called virtual credit cards. You could sign up for a credit card, and they give you virtual and you can make unlimited cards. So you don't get canceled. All these sites, they don't allow save profile checkouts anymore. They'll cancel you. So people use different credit cards, names, numbers, addresses."
How to Jig on Credit Cards
"Basically what jigging means is, let's say my address is 123 Maple St., right? So by jigging, let's say I put 'Apartment 1' at the end. Then, the next profile, I put 'Apartment 2.' The third profile, I put 'Apartment 500.' The next one, I put 'Apartment 10,000.' That basically shows the company or the site that's dropping the shoes that this guy is not getting multiple pairs. He's using different addresses. But in reality, I'm just changing the apartment number."
Updates to Bots
"The developer of the bot pushes updates. All developers usually push updates every day. This is because the sites combat the bots and developers fight back. They usually inform their users on Discord when there's an update. If you don't update, you have a chance of it not working. You might get a bunch of errors during the drop."
Is Botting a Pyramid Scheme?
"It could be a pyramid scheme, because there are a lot of people that do it just for the money. But if you really look into it, really, really strongly look into it, there are actually legit businesses in sneakers and legitimate people that actually offer their services. People make a lot of money. Because all my clients and customers, I know a bunch of them, we're raking in millions and millions of profit a month. In November, we secured 5,000, 6,000 PS5s. And it's $400 per console, and we're talking about 100 percent ROI for each member. So you have to find the right person. It all comes down to that."
Backdooring
Botting is how a lot of people think resellers get their shoes. But there’s also an option for the less technologically inclined, or simply for those with more connections than computer skills. Or really anyone who wants to do both. Backdooring. It’s a practice as old as time itself, but something that’s become rather controversial in recent years. Buying shoes from retailers in bulk before they come out, sometimes at retail, sometimes at package prices. It takes inventory off a retailer’s hand and lets them not worry as much about a release. Often, retailers will make a reseller also purchase less desirable shoes to clear their inventory of shoes that aren’t moving. Want the Yeezys? You gotta buy the Reeboks, too. In recent times, Marcus Jordan has come under scrutiny for allegedly backdooring his Trophy Room x Air Jordan 1 release at the top of 2021. People point to it being what’s wrong with sneakers. Getting a backdoor plug isn’t easy. You need to know people, create connections, and have cash to pay for it upfront. And then, you might not even get what you want. Cold DMing or calling a store will not get you access to the backdoor, so think again.
Lastly
"There is something very important to say. It's not all everyone getting rich. Everyone should know that this is not an easy business and it's not like you're going to be making instant money. I don't want anyone to expect that, because you're not going to make instant money. Expect it to take six months to a year, maybe two years, to get the ball rolling. Nothing is overnight.
"If you're buying a bot to get personal pairs, I wouldn't recommend it, because it gets very expensive.
"People are very discouraged and people are actually leaving. Like I told you, people want the quick money. Once they don't see that, they get discouraged and they don't want to do it anymore. Every single month, I get five to 10 cancellation requests for memberships. And that's because they don't want to do it anymore. It's too much stress."