[chirau]

Some shoes have limited editions where only a specific number of pairs are manufactured. e.g. Yeezy Boosts by Adidas. They are Kanye West's design and very exclusive. So when they go on sale they run out within seconds. Most of the people who buy them then put the up for auction on other sites like eBay where they can fetch up to 20 times the price.

So people who want them have to get them quick so they need automated scripts that can add to cart, fill in credit info and check out the moment they are released. (The manufacturer usually announces in advance exactly the date and time they will be released).

People pay a lot for these bots. I once wrote a bot for somebody off Craigslist for a certain clothing brand that was selling exclusive jackets and shirts like this. ( I do a lot of automation and scraping for my day to day work so it was not difficult). The guy paid me $600, didn't even try to negotiate downwards. The bot bought 10 items (max allowed in the cart) at like 250 each. I looked the items up on eBay sometime later and they were going for slightly above 1k. So I actually felt I could have asked for much more.

Anyway, long story short, people put a big value on exclusivity and brand so they are willing to go to lengths to secure these limited items.