Believe it or not, college essays about a sneaker resale business are actually more common than you may think. In fact, it’s one of the most common business-related college essay topics.
Below we’ve listed some of the most common business-major related college essay topics.
- Anything in the resale business (shoes, clothing, tickets, etc.)
- Working under your parents in their business (restaurants, blue-collar work, etc.)
- Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media-related content.
- Etsy and other Arts & Crafts businesses (sewing, crafts, etc).
- Dropshipping and affiliate marketing.
- YouTube, TikTok, and other video-related social media content.
Make no mistake: that doesn’t mean you’re not a unique candidate. In fact, any student who runs their own business is going to be impressive. If you run a shoe resale business, you’ll be quite attractive to admissions officers.
However, there are a few things you’ll need to consider. There are many pitfalls in writing about this topic. And, there are also a lot of great opportunities to impress admissions officers. In other words, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword.
In this guide, we’ll be covering everything you’ll need to know to write your college essay about a sneaker resale business. This will cover both red flags to avoid and opportunities to capitalize on. We’ll also cover our version of a successful college essay about running a sneaker business that you can use as inspiration!
With that said, let’s get started!
Table of Contents
- How to Write Your College Essay About a Sneaker Resale Business.
- Things to Avoid.
- Things to Write.
- Example College Essay About a Sneaker Resale Business That Worked.
How to Write Your College Essay About a Sneaker Resale Business.
Most students who write their college essays about running a sneaker resale business don’t maximize their topic’s potential.
They typically don’t realize running a sneaker resale business gives them A LOT of positive things to write about. Yet, there are a lot of negative connotations to the resale business. This is especially true in sneaker culture. The sneaker resale culture can cast you in a negative light to admissions officers. So, it’s crucial to avoid those elements whilst talking about all the positives.
Below, we’ve covered how to do exactly that. Think of it as the “Do’s and Don’ts” of our article.
Things to Avoid.
Most of the “Don’ts” of this list involve things that give you a bad impression. Some of them are tied to sneaker culture, and others include having a better writing style.
If you avoid these 4 major factors, you’ll write a sneaker resale college essay that stands out without showing any red flags.
Bragging to the Point of Arrogance.
This is a common one.
Sure, running your own sneaker resale business is quite impressive. In fact, most students ages 18-25 can’t even operate their own business, let alone a freelancing operation. Nonetheless, it’s seldom possible for students at this age to truly know everything about business.
In fact, some of the greatest minds in business and entrepreneurship admit that they have a lot to learn. Every day is a learning experience; and, it’s this “student mindset” that truly makes people successful.
If you want to truly impress admissions officers with your sneaker resale business, you should not flaunt your success. It’s okay to brag a bit; but, it’s also important to demonstrate humility in your writing. Humility in the face of success is a sign of a student who is open to learning and more likely to succeed.
Besides: if you’re open to learning, you’re open to a university experience! That’s what university is for, after all: to learn!
Anything Bordering Scalping.
This is an important point.
One of the reasons people in the sneaker world dislike the resale business is due to how close it is to scalping. In fact, many even equate sneaker reselling to scalping. And, on the internet, people aren’t afraid to voice their opinions about sneaker scalpers.
Yikes.
This can make writing about running a sneaker resale business a little bit tricky. Admissions officers are going to know what your operation is about. They’ll know you’re buying products at a lower rate and selling them for a higher price. What determines whether their impression is good or bad is how you communicate.
We heavily recommend writing a separate paragraph in your college essay about a sneaker resale business. In this paragraph, elaborate on what your business does and focus less on the profit. Instead, focus more on the “business systems” elements of your operations. Additionally, try to focus more on what kind of value you’re bringing to the table for your prospective customers.
So long as you phrase your business in a manner that strays away from scalping, you’re in the clear!
Trying to Make Money Off of Others Rather Than Providing Value.
This goes back to our previous idea.
You should not focus too much on the money elements in your essay.
Make no mistake. Mentioning how much you made in profit and revenue can be useful. It shows admissions officers that you’re willing to show your metrics and demonstrate solid, tangible results.
However, you don’t want to leave a bad taste in your reader’s mouth. The focus of the business should stray away from money-making (even if that’s the purpose of business.)
Instead, explain how you provide value to your customers and viewers. This is an important rule, as it’s the groundwork of any functioning business. Providing value to the customer shows admissions officers you have a proper business mindset.
Now, this may not seem all that important initially. After all, you already run a resale business, right? What’s the big deal about showing everyone you have a business mindset when you’re already running a business?
Well, you want to do this because you need to demonstrate you’re not “that guy.” In other words, you’re a REAL business person and not just a leech.
Remember: it’s easy to presume that sneaker resellers are just “lazy” and willing to suck money off others for little to no labor. And, while that may be true for some, you don’t want to appear that way. You want to show that while sneaker reselling can be a low barrier of entry, you’re still learning. And, showing that you value the customers and are doing all you can to increase customer satisfaction proves you’re a businessperson at heart.
Big or Obscene “Business-ey” Words to Sound Smart.
While it’s great to show admissions officers that you’re a business-minded person, it can certainly go too far.
We’ve worked with a few business students in the past who tried a bit too hard to be “business-ey.” Often, these involved shoving in corporate terminology and business school vocabulary.
Now, it’s not always bad to write using corporate vocabulary. Some students take internships at the management level and others get exposed to these terms in school anyway. So, using new words you learn over time is quite normal.
But, it’s important to use words only when they’re appropriate.
In other words, don’t try to shoehorn any words like pivot and ROI when it’s not actually necessary to do so. If there’s an opportunity to use business-ey words and it’s appropriate, by all means, use them! But, you want to limit your business vocab usage to avoid looking ostentatious.
This site is a good source of “corporate BS” that lets you see what NOT to write!
Things to Write.
Now that we’ve got the bad stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the positive parts of sneaker resale businesses. These are all things you should aim to discuss when writing a college essay about a sneaker resale business.
Though, don’t feel obligated to cover ALL of these topics! Even having just a few of these four elements below would improve your essay quality significantly!
In our example essay in the last section of this article, we didn’t even include all of the listed 4 elements below. Even then, it worked out beautifully!
Business Management.
Every business operation requires some level of management.
As defined by Investopedia…
“Operations management teams attempt to balance costs with revenue to achieve the highest net operating profit possible.”
Investopedia –Operations Management: Understanding and Using It
In your sneaker resale business, you’ll likely be managing multiple moving parts in your operations. You’ll be considering the cost of delivery + tools such as online bots that provide instant notifications, assessing proper reinvestments, and methods of scaling operations laterally beyond the sneaker world.
These are all important elements that should be mentioned in the essay. Because any business operation has multiple parts that require management, you should mention these parts. Don’t leave them out! If you do, you’ll be losing out on a lot of context that shows just how impressive your sneaker resale operation is.
Additionally, think about what the process of business management must entail. As someone operating multiple parts simultaneously, your mind must be accustomed to being split multiple ways.
Being able to approach multiple fronts is crucial to being a future business leader, and ultimately useful for college students. In college, you’ll be taking classes in multiple subjects. In addition, you’ll likely need to focus on networking with others, getting research under professors, and working on your own side projects. This multi-variable workstyle will parallel well with your skills in running a sneaker resale business. So, don’t forget to mention this in your essays!
Client Acquisition.
Let’s be frank. Getting clients or customers is hard.
If you’re running a sneaker resale business, you probably know how difficult it is to close on a client. And, even if someone shows interest in your product, they may lack follow-through in contacting you.
If you’re getting any clients or customers at all as a prospective university student, you’re ahead of the game!
You just need to write about the difficulty of gaining new customers. Additionally, try to cover how you’ve overcome the obstacles you face in acquiring new customers. Perhaps you’ve needed to find ways to stand out from other resellers. Or, you needed to provide particular services as a reseller that would entice other customers to follow you. Maybe you’ve even optimized your funnel strategy through social media posts and increasing content quality!
Regardless, any form of customer or client acquisition is going to take some elbow grease. And, you want to make sure you’re getting all the details in when you’re explaining how you got customers. That way, you can “squeeze the lemon for all its worth!”
Don’t forget about the emotional strain getting customers can be! Sometimes, getting your first customer with little to no reputation can be daunting. And, even if you do get your first customer, finding more can take a lot out of you emotionally. It demands a strong stomach for rejection. So, remember to mention the emotional strength it takes as well!
Scaling or Pivoting.
If you’re writing your college essay about a sneaker resale business, chances are you’re also contemplating other businesses. This doesn’t apply to everyone. But, hey. Most students who start this business think about shifting their resale experience into other businesses they can do.
And, in your current resale business, you likely have had to scale or pivot to adapt to unusual changes in the market.
In terms of scaling your business, consider writing about how you’ve increased your sales and customer satisfaction. The creative strategies you’ll need to conjure will be great to discuss in your essay. It will show your ability to adapt to your environment and unexpected circumstances that push you to your entrepreneurial limits. And, this may parallel your success in things like upper-division courses. (This especially works well with prompts like the UC Required Transfer Question.)
Pivoting follows the same rules. If you need to adapt to unusual situations by looking at your obstacles from different angles, you’ll impress admissions officers. Write about how you’ve found unconventional pathways to success as a sneaker resale businessperson, and you’ll ultimately show how your creativity gets you out of sticky business situations.
Being Open to Learning.
This is one of the most important elements to add to your college essay. You must demonstrate to admissions officers that you’re open to learning new things.
When you’re talking about your experience selling sneakers in your college essay, make sure to show your curiosity to learn. The world of business is filled with new strategies to learn. And, no matter how successful you are in your sneaker resale business, an openness to learning is crucial.
By showing you’re open and curious to learn, you’ll show admissions officers that you have the drive needed to succeed. And,
Example College Essay About a Sneaker Resale Business That Worked.
The following essay was written in response to the first Common App essay prompt. This essay was later accepted into Vanderbilt.
“Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”
Common App Essay Prompt 1
“It was the final day after the soft release of our FBLA’s entrepreneurship competition results; as the winner, I had an ironically solemn discussion with both my cabinet president, their treasurer, and vice president. It was a hanging-lightbulb-under-the-basement interrogation; well, not interrogation; but, a questioning.
My president started.
“So, that’s it then, right? Just buying sneakers online and reselling them?”
“Well, there were some social media “things” and market funnel “stuffs” peppered about…” I started. “But… yeah. buying and reselling.”
“That’s all…?” she replied.
“Yeah.” I said.
“You know how much trouble this is going to put us in, right?”
“…yeah.”
It wasn’t intentional. At [REDACTED] high school, we were primarily a STEM and tech-focused school. And, it was customary for students of the FBLA club to share their fascinating startup ideas and successes during competitions to bring honor to our school. It was a sign of technological savviness, and ultimately good for our name. So, hearing “local sneakerhead outperforms students trying to cure cancer” –I’m being hyperbolic here, but you get the gist– isn’t particularly satisfying to our school’s administration.
Not only that, I was politely –if it could be called that– asked to cease my sneaker resale operation to make way for more legitimate businesses.
But, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it’s this:
Rudimentary businesses are not as simple as they seem. And, we shouldn’t be so high and mighty as to believe we’re above learning more about what they have to teach us.
Okay… that’s two things –all the more reason for me to hone my quantitative business skills at a great institution, right?
I conceived this sneaker resale business from a different plan.
Originally, I was to code an app that’d be sold to businesses to increase their efficiency. While a viable option, I felt disgusted by what my team and I were doing; it felt disingenuous. This wasn’t a business: it was a vanity metric. A true business would attempt to provide value to its clients, not go through unnecessary hoops to impress like with coding an app that doesn’t need coding. So, I switched to a simple business model: sneaker resales at a reasonable price that undercuts the scalping industry.
It would be barebones, reliable, and simplistic. And, I would see how it compared in sales and total profit to other proposed projects. Its winning demonstrated a deep problem in the vanity metrics rooted in our FBLA tech traditions. But, it was easy to brush off my project as rudimentary and ultimately too simplistic.
Yet, this experience taught me so much. I never took sneaker resales as an important industry; but, I learned how to listen and correspond with clients, market using social media, experiment using AB testing, increase sales through optimizing funnels, and a myriad of other real-world business applications. Sneaker resales humbled me to the world of getting ghosted by customers, missing opportunities, and solving problems in optimizing my business operations to make everything run smoothly. It tested my patience and drilled grit into my character.
But, it’s still an unsung path.
Ultimately, as an aspiring entrepreneur, I felt this experience taught me to truly listen to my own path when pursuing my business goals. I will never truly know what the best path is until I try it. And, the best ideas may even be the seemingly silliest ones.
Actually, no.
There’s another thing it taught me: that I really don’t know as much about business as I thought I did. I started off as a well-respected member of FBLA; yet, now, having surpassed competitors in earning 15,000 in profit, I don’t feel I know as much anymore. The more I succeed, the more I realize just how rudimentary my knowledge really is.
Nonetheless, I don’t mind starting my path at university with my trainers on; I’m ready to learn anything new that comes my way.”
Example College Essay About a Sneaker Resale Business That Worked
Are you still struggling to write your college essay about a sneaker resale business? We’ve seen it all, and we’d be happy to help. Schedule a free consultation with us, and our college experts will get back to you within 24 hours to help with your essay. Our advising has helped students get accepted into some of the most prestigious schools in the nation including but not limited to Brown, Cornell, UPenn, Columbia, Dartmouth, UCLA, UCB, and USC!
