How Old Sneakers Have Created A $1.2 Billion Market

Old shoes are far from being "old hat," as the demand for older sneakers remains strong.

The sneaker resale market is worth $1.2 billion and has existed for the past 30 years, StockX CEO Josh Luber recently told Fortune.

In 2014, Nike Inc NKE joined the resale market and captured major share of the market. In February 2015, Luber said the market turned to Yeezy from adidas AG (ADR) ADDYY.

Luber attributes the growth in the sneaker industry two distinct factors. First, in 1999–2000 when eBay Inc EBAY launched the online sales of sneakers, followed by the real boom in 2011–2012 with the growth of social media and particularly Instagram (Facebook Inc FB).

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In fact, Luber directly attributes the growth of sneaker resale market to the corporate growth of Instagram.

"In the first quarter of 2012, Instagram had just been bought by Facebook. It started to really take off and we can see that in the sneaker market as well," Luber noted.