John McPheters and Jed Stiller co-founded the premium sneaker and apparel resale marketplace Stadium Goods in 2015 and have since raised $4.6 million in venture funding by Forerunner Ventures and the Chernin Group. Most recently Farfetch acquired the company for $250 million, while LVMH Luxury Ventures previously acquired a stake for an undisclosed sum.
Before starting Stadium Goods, McPheters served as vice president of business development and e-commerce for Flight Club and previously took charge of Nike’s social media whilst employed as digital director at Team Epiphany. Stiller owned and managed various New York nightclubs and restaurants and held a number of Fortune 500 members as clients through talent procurement agency CMEG. They both co-founded SM Ventures in 2012, a venture capital firm focused on e-commerce and technology-based investments and strategies as well as own Blades/Blades.com, a 25-year-old skateboard and lifestyle apparel retailer based in New York. They were also partners and investors in Swarm Mobile, which was sold to Groupon in 2014.
Stadium Goods began as a physical retail space in New York and online site in 2015 and has since expanded with distribution on eBay, Zalando, Amazon and Alibaba, among other outlets, and most recently they completed a distribution deal with Farfetch to sell a selection of sneakers exclusively to Farfetch customers. The LVMH Luxury Ventures investment from February 2018 would be used to grow its proprietary tech offering, brick-and-mortar expansion, marketing efforts and staffing, said Stiller.
McPheters graduated from Boston University with a degree in advertising and obtained an MBA from Fordham University in 2009. Stiller attended Wesleyan University from 1997 to 2001.
