No great solution exists: Either the sneakers are sold out in seconds (sometimes snatched up by bots) with a tremendous load on the e-Commerce infrastructure and many potential buyers frustrated, or retailers have to find other ways like Instagram raffles. This mechanic comes with a lot of manual work and cumbersome steps to sell a relatively small number of items.

Our Strategy

Embedded in an overall e-Commerce Strategy, we created a concept for a Mobile App that allows customers to apply for the purchase of hot-release sneakers in a given time period.
All details like size, shipping and payment details are collected at the time of registration and are saved in the customer account.
At the end of the draw period,  available products are matched with the participations by a fair draw algorithm. Selected winner payments are captured and orders are fulfilled. All other entries are cancelled automatically.
The whole system is is set up using Shopify Plus as the e-Commerce backend and the front-end apps are available on Apple iOS and Android.

Outcome

The Asphaltgold Releases App was launched in March 2021 and immediately became a regular member of Apple's Top 50 Shopping Apps on the App Store.
Customers all over the world praise the app for great easy user experience and its fair draw method.
Asphaltgold's process went from 10 manual steps for processing an Instagram raffle to a fully automated system that handles releases end-to-end.
End to end, the experience is dramatically improved for customers as well as for the business.

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