As streetwear continues to dominate as the new style trend, one young entrepreneur has turned his passion into a powerhouse business valued at $8 million.
Meet Adnan Jassat, the 21-year-old businessman behind Thriller – one of the Middle East’s biggest platforms for sneakers, streetwear and collectable accessories.
While the company now operates with over 55,000 active users, 10,000 sellers and thousands of products, this was not the case seven years ago. Jassat’s journey began at the age of 14 when he became one of Dubai’s biggest sneaker resellers.
“From the time I was 14 to 16, I was the biggest sneaker reseller in Dubai, I was already selling hundreds of thousands worth of sneakers to celebrities, influencers, actors, etc,” he said in an exclusive interview with Arabian Business.
The young entrepreneur has sold sneakers to several international names including Jason Derulo, Russell Peters, Offset and more.
The demand Jassat witnessed was tremendous, even more than he could manage himself. “I came to a point where I could only sell so many sneakers,” he recalled.
Facing a hurdle that most would consider the threshold, Jassat’s entrepreneurial mindset saw this as an opportunity to put together a small team, secure an investor and start a platform to facilitate the trade of sneakers – the platform that is now known as Thriller.
“We are officially the loudest marketplace to buy and sell sneakers, streetwear and collectable accessories in the Middle East,” he proudly stated.
In a market rife with counterfeits, the platform not only facilitates transactions but also authenticates products.
“There was a big gap in the market, because there’s no platform or any mediator to buy and sell your sneakers, and there was no way to know if the sneakers you were buying or selling were original. So, we put together a team that would inspect your sneakers for you, allowing you to buy and sell easily, keep everyone safe, keep the buy and seller safe,” he asserted.
The Middle East: A sneaker paradise
“I don’t think there’s a better place in the world to start up a company in this industry than the Middle East,” Jassat said, recognising the benefit that the region has with the “perfect customers” for exclusive sneakers, collectables, streetwear and high-end fashion.
“It’s a booming industry for sneakers. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain – these are all fantastic havens for fashion, for limited edition items and for exclusivity for sneakers. You’re not even competing with the likes of the US and UK EU. I think the Middle East is the number one place in the world,” he explained.
However, in a market filled with opportunity, Jassat highlighted a significant hurdle – counterfeit products.
He considers this to be “the biggest challenge in the Middle East.”
“We get a lot of counterfeits that are listed on our platform. Currently, we have somewhere between 90,000 and 95,000 products available. Let’s say for about every 500 products we receive, 499 of them are original. One is a counterfeit,” he explained.
He attributes this to the simple fact that “the counterfeit market is huge.” For Thriller, having an authentication service is one of its biggest assets in a market riddled with fake products.
“We are in place to stop the counterfeits. We are in place to make sure that everyone gets what they pay for. They get an original pair. I’d say the main obstacle starting this business in the Middle East, relative to anywhere else, is just the amount of counterfeit products that you get here,” he said.
On a personal level, Jassat faced several hurdles too – mainly to do with starting at such a young age.
“When you’re dealing with these investors, you’ve got millionaires. Sometimes you have got 100 millionaires… You’re there at the age of 18, first business, not so sure how all this works,” he admitted.
Additionally, managing a team as a teenager where most of his employees were much older than him proved to be a significant challenge.
“I’m 18, my employees are older than me, 30s, 40s, late 20s. And you know, we’re dealing with them. We are assigning them tasks. We are getting things done. We’re setting KPIs. We setting deliverables,” he explained.
“I think all of it, coupled with young age, makes it a very adverse situation,” he exclaimed.
Streetwear: A fad or is it here to stay?
For a fashion trend that was not as popular many years ago as it is now, a question that lingers is how long is this trend expected to stay.
Jassat’s strategy remains to focus on brands that have “proven themselves over the years.”
Diving into the details, he said, “So, Supreme, everyone’s heard of Supreme, from 2018 it was booming up until now. It is still booming, showing a trend of incline, where it just keeps going up. Then you have Essentials, which has recently spiked a boom in the Middle East. It was big in the US, but now it’s come to the Middle East. That’s some brands that we sell, and we only allow the selling of brands like those on our platform, the brands that people say are going to come up and come down – we don’t partake in selling those.”
The Global Streetwear market is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate between 2024 and 2031, according to the latest Streetwear Market report.
One of Thriller’s biggest transaction to date was the sale of a limited Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 for a whopping AED75,000.
The Thriller founder advocates for sneakers as “an amazing investment class.”
“You could easily make at least the 400 percent to 800 percent return on a sneaker if you get it at retail price,” he explained, recommending to have sneakers as a “minor part of everyone’s investment portfolio.”
Looking to the future, Jassat’s vision is bold – “to be the largest marketplace for sneakers in the Middle East.”
Thriller aims to compete with the likes of reseller giants such as Stock X and GOAT.
“The long-term goal would definitely be to compete with them, overtake them, gain their market share, gain their user base because our platform is significantly better than their platform,” Jassat sternly concluded.
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