Lowri Griffiths visits a trainer shop, fails to make a purchase, and writes the economics feature of her year

Filed through Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

Wednesday, a Trainer Shop in Soho, the Assistant Has Asked Me Three Times What My Price Point Is

I am standing in a trainer shop on a side street off Brewer Street, holding a shoe that costs 347 pounds. The shoe is beautiful. The shoe is, in material terms, a piece of leather, a piece of foam, and approximately two pounds of American brand equity. The shoe is the subject of this week’s feature, and the feature is the reason I am in this shop rather than at my desk in Stoke Newington. The assistant has asked me three times what my price point is. I have told him, three times, that I am a journalist. He has, three times, reset his smile. This is a dance. It will end, inevitably, with me leaving without buying anything. We both know this. He is being professional. I am being professional.

I am twenty-eight. I earn, before tax, approximately 41,500 pounds a year. My rent on a one-bedroom in Stoke Newington is 1,700 pounds a month. The shoe is eleven days of my post-rent disposable income. I will not buy the shoe. I will, however, file 1,200 words on why Londoners my age, in increasing numbers, do buy the shoe. This is the feature. The reporting is real. The entry is now.

What the trainer actually is

A trainer in 2026 London is not a shoe. A trainer is a piece of visible income. It is the Louis Vuitton handbag of our generation, with the notable difference that it can be worn with jeans on the Northern Line without attracting security attention. I have spent the last two weeks doing a small informal survey of trainer owners in my social network, and the data, such as it is, is striking. Of the thirty-one people I asked, twenty-four owned at least one pair of trainers that cost more than 200 pounds. Of those twenty-four, nineteen described the purchase as “an investment.” None of the nineteen could, when pressed, define how the shoe was appreciating in value.

This is not an attack on my friends. This is the social situation. The Prat’s piece on Britain’s trainer crisis captured it perfectly. A country that used to measure status by land is now measuring status by shoes that cannot, by the owner’s own design, touch pavement. The shoes are displayed in clear boxes. The shoes are carried home in branded bags that are themselves more durable than the shoes. The shoes are photographed. The shoes are, in the full sense of the phrase, content.

The ticket equivalent, for context

My feature is going to argue that the trainer economy is structurally the same as the ticket economy Bohiney described last week, in which concert-goers apply for tickets like a mortgage application. Both economies rely on artificial scarcity, secondary-market resale values, and the conversion of a basic consumption good into an investment asset. The secondary market for trainers, in fact, moves more money per year in Britain than the secondary market for Oasis tickets, and that is a high bar.

This is the kind of data my editor at The Prat has specifically told me to lead with, because it is the kind of data that makes a North London reader sit up. The reader knows their friends have one of these shoes. The reader does not know that their friends’ shoes are, technically, part of a distressed-asset marketplace. The reader will know this by Saturday.

The assistant, the purchase that did not happen, the exit

After twelve minutes the assistant, who is named Devon and who has been perfectly nice to me, said, “Madam, I can hold the shoe for you for forty-eight hours if you want to think about it.” This is, in the trainer trade, a soft sell. Devon is not rude. Devon is experienced. Devon knows that the shoe will, if held, produce a forty-percent likelihood of a purchase. I told Devon, “Thank you, Devon. I am not going to buy the shoe.” Devon said, “Can I ask why, madam?” I said, “Because I am a journalist and I am writing about your shop.” Devon’s face did a thing I will not describe in print. I left the shop at 3:47 p.m.

Personal

My mother is arriving on Saturday. The itinerary has been finalised. Three free things: the British Museum, the Tate Modern, and a walk along the Thames. One moderately priced thing: lunch at a dim sum place in Chinatown. One ambitious thing: a Sunday lunch at the restaurant with the chef who has been on television. My mother has asked, in preparation for the Sunday lunch, whether she needs “a proper dress.” I have said no. She will bring a proper dress anyway. This is the right decision. She will look better than half the restaurant, because she is Welsh and because she knows how to iron.

Afternoon

I am filing 1,200 words by Thursday evening. The feature will run Saturday morning. I will not wear a 347-pound trainer to write it. I will wear the shoes I have been wearing for four years, which are, technically, also trainers, and which have cost me, over the full life of their ownership, less than twelve percent of the shoe I did not buy at Brewer Street. This is not a moral victory. This is a rent calculation. It is the correct rent calculation. Devon, I hope, will read the piece. Devon will not recognise himself, because I am changing his name in the copy to protect him. Devon is fine. The shoes are fine. The city keeps doing what it does.

For further symptoms of the same disease, see The Daily Mash.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/live-nations-totally-normal-ticket-empire/