OCTOBER 15 2021

Published in the Australian Financial Review

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There’s something about sneakers.

Limited edition sneaker trading platform Pushas has closed a $1.2 million funding round, bringing on established funds such as TEN13, Our Innovation Fund and US-based funds CapitalX and Plug and Play, as well as a range of angel investors.

Leading the list of notable individuals is Twitch founder Justin Kan, Airtasker’s Tim Fung, BetaShares’ Ilan Israelstam and Deliveroo Australia CEO Ed McManus.

The company is designed to help sneaker resellers, providing channel management, sales distribution, authentication, warehousing, fulfilment, and also offering the world’s first sneaker investment vehicle - which has achieved 52.8 per cent growth since inception 12 months ago - and underwrites sneakers to give sellers guaranteed liquidity.

It competes with the likes of celebrity-backed sneaker exchange StockX, but caters better to high-volume resellers, rather than one-off traders.

The company is led by co-founder Justin Truong.

The capital will allow the company to build out a smarter liquidity algorithm and scale up its local operations, before expanding to other international markets.

“Our mission is to unlock the potential of sneakers - by building a seamless, trusted platform that empowers and pushes boundaries,” Truong said.

“The secondary sneaker market’s growth continues to accelerate drastically, and we’re confident Pushas is perfectly positioned to power the economy of hype.”