Part 1: How to get more from your skate shop’s hot drops

Skate shops, and the independent, passion-driven spirit they represent, are more important than ever these days. At the same time, it’s never been harder to be a small business in our era of big box stores and corporate retail. One of the key ways indie shops have managed to stay afloat is by running drops of exclusive, highly in-demand products that customers can’t find elsewhere — but participating in these launches brings plenty of challenges and hardships to stores, too.

If your skate shop is struggling to make exclusive launches pay off to their full potential, you’re not alone. And thankfully, new tech solutions in the retail world may offer the answer to help you get more ROI out of your hot drops. 

The potential: Why hot drops are worth it

Skate shops serve a need in communities that’s important, and increasingly rare. Just like when they got their start in the 70s and 80s, when skateboarders sought spaces where they could be treated with respect and connect with like-minded folks, modern times have bred cynicism and frustration with the mainstream retail market. Skateboarding may be more favorably regarded by society as a whole, but it’s become increasingly rare and special to find spaces where people can find community that’s built on shared passions, not profit.

At the same time, challenges have mounted for those still running independent businesses that stick to their values and demonstrate genuine care for their customers and community. Margins are thin, costs are high, and with the constant pressure of competing with big box stores and eCommerce giants, there’s little room for error.

But unlike mainstream retail, skate shops can tap into real passion from their customers. Playing in the passion economy means being able to participate in product drops that make the biggest cultural waves — like the limited-edition releases from the fashion icons who have helped define skate style from the beginning.

Participating in these hot product launches gives skate shops an edge over the retailers that will never get a chance to stock the hottest collabs (not that they’ll stay on shelves for more than a second, anyway). Launches like these are for the real ones only — and they’re a reminder to customers that nothing can ever take the place of their local independent skate shop.

Plus, when done right, they generate nice bumps of revenue that can keep shops afloat, helping them keep their doors open to the community even during leaner times.

But few skate shops are reaping the full potential from their hot drops — and it all comes down to the same set of (solvable) issues.

The problems: Shops are working too hard for too little return

Having worked with some of the top indie skate shops in the world, we’ve heard the same story again and again: participating in hot sneaker or gear drops can be great, but it’s so much more labor-intensive and difficult than it should be.

Logistical hurdles

The primary issue is one of simple logistics. When you have the opportunity to sell a few hundred units of a product that thousands of people want, how do you pull it off?

First-come-first-serve? Sure — just watch out for that stampede. Running crowd control and managing a scene out of a Black Friday nightmare is definitely not what any of your staff signed up for.

Collecting raffle entries in a fishbowl? Sounds great, until you and your team get stuck counting out entries, making hundreds of phone calls to winners, and manually collecting shipment and payment details.

Some shops get around this by running their launches online through their eCommerce platform. This strategy can certainly resolve some hassles, but it comes with its own set of difficulties — and worse, it eats away at what makes your drops special in the first place. When people aren’t coming into the store to join the launch, they’re not connecting with the community. You lose the old-school-cool “I was there” feeling.

When drops don’t go well

Despite your best efforts, many hot drops will not go according to plan. Your in-store launch event might devolve into chaos. The manual effort of choosing raffle winners may open you up to human error and communication breakdowns.

Or you may even just get a jilted customer calling “unfair” when they’re bummed at the odds consistently working against them. And unfortunately, the lack of transparency means there’s no real recourse — no way to prove that your staff isn’t just choosing their friends to win, or if you’re launching online, that it isn’t bots and resellers buying up all the inventory.

Whatever the problem is, the result is the same. An erosion of what matters the most for independent skate shops: the trust and loyalty of their community.

When sell-through falls through

We hate to make it all about revenue, but when you’re devoting so much time and energy to it, running a hot drop simply has to pay off.

Unfortunately, margins aren’t massive on hot products, and hitting the ROI sweet spot gets difficult when promotional efforts and labor costs add up. 

Worse, even when you’re selling some of the world’s most in-demand products, sell-through simply isn’t a guarantee. Problems can arise when people fall off between entry and fulfillment. Plus, when you’re prioritizing your community and focusing on selling to locals, you’re limiting your audience by necessity. It can be difficult to predict a hyper-local market, and it’s easy to overestimate how much you might sell. 

Ending up with unsold units of a drop you invested a lot to take part in is not going to do your business any favors.

The solution: A better way to run your hot launches

That may feel like a lot of challenges to navigate, and it is. But it doesn’t have to be that difficult for your shop.

If you’re sick of your big swings coming with too much risk and too little reward, it’s time to bring in the tools that have been developed especially for these hurdles: technology designed for running in-demand product launches, like EQL. It works differently from your standard eCommerce platforms because it was engineered for sales that run hot, happen fast, and have a lot riding on them.

Yes, technology has created at least as many problems as it’s solved for small businesses like independent skate shops. But choosing a tool like EQL enables you to keep doing everything that’s working well for you — like the launch parties that bring your community together — while taking away the manual effort and guesswork.

With EQL, you can run launches through your shop with 1000% less hassle. You can be fully hands-off on payment and fulfillment. You can collect useful data that will eliminate the guesswork for your future drops. And you can make sure your local fans get dibs while still guaranteeing sell-through with flexible audience controls.

Most importantly, EQL was built on the same values as your shop, putting fans first and prioritizing community and trust above all. It’s crucial to invest in solutions that uplift the fan experience and demonstrate that you’re staying true to your roots. All the things that make your customers cherish you in the first place.

Learn more about EQL for skate shops

Want to see exactly how EQL can power launches for your skate shop and help you get more out of them? In part 2 of this blog series, we’ll dig into the nitty-gritty of EQL’s features and how they move the needle for independent shops, marrying the best of classic skate culture with practical, time-saving tech.

Ready to chat with one of our reps? Our team (most of whom are no stranger to the skate shop scene) is here to chat about how we’ve powered launches at some of the world’s best-loved skate shops, and what we can do for your next high-demand launch.