StockX, a web site that connects buyers and sellers using stock-market-style bidding, has secured a new $6 million funding round from an eye-popping list of big names. The news come less than one year after the service launched.
Among the investors in StockX’s new round are: actor Mark Wahlberg; rappers Eminem (a previous investor since June) and Wale; agent Scooter Braun; NFL cornerback Joe Haden; and investors Ted Leonsis, Steve Case, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, and Ron Conway.
It is a lineup sure to help StockX grow its name recognition and buzz through promotion and plugs by these celebrities, not unlike the UFC’s glitzy lineup of 23 new investors, announced in September, that includes Tom Brady, Serena Williams, Mark Wahlberg and Conan O’Brien.
StockX started out as a sneaker resale data site called Campless. Josh Luber, a former IBM consultant and self-proclaimed “sneakerhead,” launched Campless in 2012. It was like a Kelley Blue Book for sneakers instead of cars.
Campless evolved and relaunched as StockX in February of last year, with Cleveland Cavaliers owner and Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert as cofounder. (See the above Yahoo Finance video with Luber for more.)
StockX relaunched with a focus on sneakers—it is widely called the “stock market for sneakers,” but has aims of being a marketplace for all manner of consumer goods, such as watches and wine, so these days it is calling itself, more broadly, “the stock market of things.”
The sneaker resale market does more than $1 billion in sales each year. Nearly a third of those resales happen on eBay (EBAY). But Luber says it’s an inefficient way to shop for hot sneakers. “If you go to eBay and you search for a shoe,” he says, “you will get 500 or maybe a thousand listings for that. If you go to the New York Stock Exchange and you want to buy a share of Apple stock, there is one page for it, and every bid and ask is right there. That’s what StockX is.”
Luber says in a statement that StockX’s new investors “have changed the world in their respective fields and… are already helping us do the same.”
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Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
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