a guide to copping supreme

tyler the creator, longtime supreme poster child keeping the venture-capital backed brand afloat in a saturated streetwear industry, is the center of this season’s initial drop

for any hypebeast coming out of retirement, buying supreme can be anxiety inducing. besides the herculean feat of waking up at 8am PST or sneaking away from responsibility at 11am EST, the supreme drop, which was once an elusive mystery of inventory levels, checkout procedures, and sellout times, is a fairly straightforward shopify drop in 2024

while it is still uncertain that you’ll be able to easily check out with a cart full of this week’s most wanted items, chances you’ll be able to purchase this week’s top item are fairly good due to rising inventory levels and relatively lower resell demand

whether you’re new to supreme or have been buying from the new york skate brand for over 10 years, here are a few tips to help you make that coveted impulse purchase

- initiate checkout with your top item first -

when the clock approaches 8am (and probably a for a minute beforehand), you’ll want to begin refreshing the page and immediately add your highest priority item to the cart once it’s available. once that is added and you begin the checkout process (after verifying that you’re human with a captcha), you will be added to the shopify checkout queue

if all goes well, you will probably have a 1-2 minute wait time before completing the checkout process by entering payment information. in this time, you can freely go back to the site in another tab and add more items to your cart. this will allow you to purchase multiple items without delaying your checkout process

it’s important to get into the queue earlier than later, because wait times increase as more people enter the queue. this is basically the equivalent of having someone hold your spot in the grocery line while you run and grab the bananas and frozen food you forgot about earlier

this technique works for all shopify sites, so it’s a valuable life skill i guess

- payment method -

apple pay is probably the fastest of the payment methods, but make sure to have your billing and shipping address match up. supreme used to be very strict about this to prevent duplicate orders, but i think it’s safe to keep both addresses as the same

when paying with apple pay, don’t bother to fill out the checkout form, as that will auto-populate anyways. also, another time-saving tip is to make sure your default card is ready to go (in iOS settings) with the correct address, as any seconds you save will really make a difference

checking out with card saves an extra loading step though if retrieving your apple pay details takes a while. this is something you can test on any other site even though the online shop is currently closed

don’t bother paying with paypal, the redirect will take way too long since it takes you to a separate URL

- second attempts -

if you can’t get your ideal size/color it’s okay to go back and try for another option, as you most likely will not have to go through the checkout queue again if you are still in the same browser session

however, if at least one item in your cart becomes sold out, you will have to remove that item and re-attempt the final checkout step. keep this in mind if you have multiple high profile items in your cart, as this can block you from completing the checkout process if items are selling out fast or if you keep re-adding an item to your cart that is already sold out

if you re-initiate the checkout process more than 5 or so times, it may send you back into the checkout queue, so just another factor to keep in mind while your heart races around 8:05am

- overall thoughts -

the first drop of the season is the most chaotic but also arguably the easiest, since there is a lot of inventory dropping at once, and the shop resets so it can introduce a new captcha or some new url structure

with a decent internet connection and a little bit of strategy, most people will be able to purchase what they want. if not, just wait for resell prices to dip after a week or two once the vast majority of purchasers get their shipments

regardless of what your opinions about supreme are, the fact that they can consistently start each season off with a high note is remarkable. even without the attention of resellers, their ability to create relevant product that resonates with their fanbase is worthy of their namesake 30 years deep into streetwear