Three years in, he was making $3,000 a month. After a year, he bubbled to $1,000 a month. He started with Air Jordans and Nikes, and then mixed it up with shoes such as NMDs, Ultra Boosts, and Yeezys. Business started slow, with Sarafyan making $400-$500 a month in profit. He then introduced Sarafyan to a simple auto-fill bot, and the rest is history. He started reselling sneakers seven years ago, when he was first inspired by a high school friend who was buying sneakers in-store and selling for profit. That afternoon over grilled meat, bottles of Ararat brandy, and pickup games of basketball, I get to know some of the ins and outs of Ari's business, not only as a reseller, but as someone who helps facilitate other resellers. I hadn't met Sarafyan yet, but had known his brother, Lawrence, who goes by Armenian Kicks, who also works as part of the sneaker reselling operation, for quite some time. Twenty-one-year-old Ari Sarafyan, the man behind cook group AK Chefs and soon-to-be-launched resale shop Private Exhbit, wears a white Supreme x Hanes T-shirt dirtied from moving boxes around all day, a pair of basketball shorts, and Nike x A Cold Wall Vomeros.
In a nondescript warehouse at an undisclosed location in Northern New Jersey, there sits a garage space full of neatly stacked sneakers-some on shelves, some not-a basketball hoop, an Armenian flag, and a fridge full of beer.
