From sneakers to Ikea: how scalping turned affordable design into luxury

Desire was once detached from speed.
Speed belongs to need; desire wants to last, not end. It takes shape in time — in waiting, in possibility. But today, that’s no longer the case. Desire has become a victim of the market. People rush in, filling their carts to the maximum allowed per purchase — eight, ten pieces — and leave. Shelves stand empty. Someone has already calculated their profit margin before even arriving at the store. Most don’t even bother going to the store at all. There’s always an online shop.

On the web, the items reappear almost immediately. A lamp that once cost forty-nine euros now sells for one hundred and fifty. A vase goes for eighty instead of twenty-five. Prices have always been arbitrary, but now they are so in a different way. It’s not the object’s value that changes — it’s the time between wanting and having. That time has been compressed into a kind of commercial nervousness.

They call it scalping. Once a term reserved for concert or football tickets, it now applies to a pink ceramic vase, a stool, or even a scarf attached to a magazine. The word comes from the English verb to scalp — to tear off, to strip away. There’s something violent in the etymology that clashes with the gentle nature of the objects involved, but not with the act itself: taking from others for one’s own gain.

Take, for instance, the Gustaf Westman x IKEA collection: a pink lamp that sold for seven euros now goes for seventy. “Brand new with tag,” reads the Vinted caption. And so it goes for every other item — even those not yet sold out, because sooner or later, they will be.

The logic is simple: if it’s free and everyone wants it, someone will pay. If it’s a limited edition, it’s worth more. If it disappears quickly, it must have been worth it. The secondary market isn’t an anomaly — it’s the natural consequence of a system that has learned to feed on scarcity and desire. It doesn’t matter whether that scarcity or desire is real or fabricated. What matters is that it works.

During Milan Design Week, queue after queue — which seem to grow longer every year — forms for objects that technically cost nothing, handed out as gifts, and soon turned into cult pieces. Take Etro’s stool, distributed during the week and reappearing online at dizzying prices. Or the tote bags, the posters. Anything goes, as long as others can’t get it without paying triple. Women’s magazines have long known this mechanism. They attach scarves, tote bags, lipsticks, branded pouches. The issue hits newsstands on Tuesday; by Thursday it’s sold out. By the weekend, someone is reselling it online at twice the price. It’s rarely the magazine that matters — it’s only the object (of desire).

Sneakers were the first laboratory where scalping took shape. Limited editions, collaborations between sports brands and designers, sudden drops announced on social media. Lines outside stores at six in the morning. Bots buying out entire online stocks in seconds. Air Jordans, Adidas Yeezys, Nike Dunks — shoes that launch at €150 and are worth €500 the next day. The resale market for sneakers is worth billions. It’s no longer a subculture — it’s a parallel industry.

Three seemingly separate worlds: design, publishing, streetwear. Yet it’s the same system repeating itself with minor variations. Different objects, same ritual — announcement, anticipation, rush, sell-out, resale. The cycle always ends the same way: someone has what everyone wants; someone else pays to get it; everyone else is left out.

There’s a paradox at the core of all this. The objects targeted by scalping are almost always conceived as democratic products. Ikea exists to make design accessible. Magazine freebies are meant to reward loyal readers. Sneakers began as functional sports shoes. But the moment they become desirable beyond a certain threshold, they stop being accessible. Scarcity turns them into unintentional status symbols. The secondary market repositions them in a price bracket that negates their very reason for being.

Capitalism has always been good at creating new needs. Now it has become brilliant at creating new urgencies. It’s no longer enough to want something — you must want it immediately, before it’s gone, before someone else takes it. The time for reflection has vanished. Either you buy now, or you miss out. It’s a form of pressure that doesn’t need to be spelled out — it’s built into the structure of supply itself.

Social media amplifies everything. Seeing someone obtain the desired object creates a measurable kind of envy — in likes, in comments. It begins with influencer ads, early previews, posts, stories, unboxings. Possession becomes performance. You don’t just own the object — you own the right to show it.

Empty shelves, cleared-out newsstands, sold-out webpages: images of a present in which the ordinary becomes exclusive — not because it has changed, but because it has suddenly become difficult to obtain. And what’s difficult to obtain becomes instantly desirable, even if five minutes earlier you didn’t know it existed.