Heat Archive's Andrew Kounouzvelis Will Coin-Flip You for a Pair of Rare Jordans

A few years back, a younger friend of mine from Los Angeles told me a riveting story about selling a pair of Dior x Air Jordan 1s to an affluent suburban teenager. This 16-year-old paid him $8,000 in cash. I was familiar with the resell market when Supreme was peaking, Round Two had lines around the block, and you could get killed for a pair of Nike x Off-White Prestos. I was merely an observer, a little old to participate, but the numbers were always fascinating.

The market chilled out a bit but shifted to higher-priced designer items and more niche streetwear—everything from Virgil’s Louis Vuitton accessories to Chrome Hearts leather cross-patch jeans to Denim Tears and Spyder sweatsuits. The buyers are younger and more savvy and want Rolexes, Goyard duffles, and Prada windbreakers. Justin Reed has gone the high-end route with an appointment-only showroom in Los Angeles full of Hermes Birkin bags and Tom Sachs folding chairs. Luke Fracher, formerly of Round Two, has a store in New York and Los Angeles but takes a more fun and lighthearted approach to selling Balenciaga and Rick Owens.

I have been traveling a lot recently, with hours to kill and finished books sitting in the overhead compartment; I have fallen victim to Instagram Reels. TikTok I avoided—it was another app, if I didn’t download it, I wouldn’t use it—but unfortunately, Instagram is already a part of my life, so it was only a matter of time before Reels crept into my daily scrolling. This is how I discovered Heat Archive, a resell store based in Columbus, Ohio. The videos feature Andrew Kounouzvelis, one of the store’s owners, doing what are called “buy-out videos.” The formula is simple: a customer comes in with items they want to sell or trade for credit, and Andrew negotiates with them. He is tough, but not rude or demanding, and also offers to do coin flips to decide the pay or trade value. When he sees something fake, which is often, it’s “no good” or “nasty work.”

Something about Andrew’s friendly demeanor, pearly white Midwestern smile, and easygoing attitude made these videos completely addicting. He gave sneakers away to kids, he lowballed, he overpaid—but most of all, you could tell they had built a community around something as trivial as Nike Air Jordan sneakers and costly designer accessories. The videos have blown up, and they have nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram. People drive hours to buy or sell but also want to see how it feels to be in the store. I had to know more, so I emailed Andrew, and he was happy to chat with me on his iPhone from the store. From my hotel room in Copenhagen, we discussed being on camera, creating a community, hot new brands, expansion, and reselling his first Rolex.

GQ: When I got into Reels, one of the first things I stumbled on was you and Heat Archive and I found it fascinating. When did you start?

Andrew Kounouzvelis: We originally started our business about six years ago in Columbus, Ohio. We started doing content, social media, and Reels about a year and a half ago. It's been a journey.

Did you have the desire to be on camera or was it like “This is my store so I’ve got to do it?”

I never minded being on camera. When we first started it was four of us doing the buyout vids. We had four buyers in here so we were all doing them, but then it seemed like they started liking me. More of it went viral so we just ran with it.

This genre is called buyout vid?

I guess you could say buyout videos, yeah, because the majority of it is me taking something in, giving a price, offering something.

People often come in referencing prices they saw on StockX and it's shocking to me how many people don't understand that you have to make money.

Oh, yeah, it's crazy. At the end of the day, it's people just wishing they could get the deals we get. But at the same time, any other store in the city probably doesn't pay as well as we do. I'm watching some of these videos back and I'm like, “I overpaid on that, for sure.”

That's what really kept me watching. You're generous and you give stuff to people. It's not like you're playing hardball all the time, you know how to approach each individual customer.

Yeah, no doubt. And we've always tried to really give back and do that. It's nice to at least capture some of it because it definitely warms people's hearts. I love watching that back. Sometimes I’m like, “Damn, I should have blessed them a little more.” It looked like I could have helped them out. It goes both ways.

Young men are into clothes now. I used to be into clothes because of subcultures like music or skateboarding, but now 13-year-olds are coming to you like "I need Chrome Hearts jeans!" and they don’t even know why.

Our main customer is probably from 18 to 30, but yeah, it's the culture. People see the Chrome Heart everywhere on social media, brands like Hellstar, Denim Tears—people see that and want to emulate it. It's definitely somewhat cringe because you'll have the person coming in that's 15, in the full Hellstar fit, it’s just a little... Maybe put on the light wash jeans and a hoodie or something, brother.

I live in New York, so I see 14-year-olds on their birthday going to Prada and I'm like, “What?!” But it's a shift in our culture I think where it's okay and even cool for men to like clothes at any age.

Definitely. When we first started our business I remember telling my dad about it. He's 60 now, grew up hard. He thinks it's fascinating that people pay $1,000 bucks for a t-shirt and a hoodie. He thinks it's insane.

I mean…

He came around and he understands why people are doing it. And especially how big social media has gotten, showing people what you got and what you're wearing. People pride themselves on there. Everybody likes to do it at a certain point. You got athletes copping $100,000 fits to wear down on the runway. I mean, if they can do it, all power to them.

I had never seen the coin flip. Is this common in resale or is this something you pioneered?

I didn't pioneer it, definitely not. Back at the shoe shows, growing up, you might have a price that you want to pay for an item and the sellers are like "Nah bro, I need 30 more or 40 more." And a coin flip is like hey, let's leave it up to fate. We started going crazy with the flips because people enjoy those vids more. We started doing some crazy ones like “0 or 3000.” Just crazy flips. People love the recklessness. We try to make it like must-watch TV.

I assume you have people coming in from all over the country because they've seen you on Instagram.

It's pretty crazy. New York is pretty common, which is crazy. That’s like a ten-hour drive. It really excites me when they're like "Bro, I just drove six hours from Nashville just to come up to your store." And they'll bring a couple pair through trade. Like, that's fucking awesome.

Do you think people are coming because they want to be on camera or just to see what it's like?

A mix of both. People like to be on camera, definitely, but there are a lot of resale stores now that try to emulate. There’s stores in my city that will pop up on Instagram and I'll be like, “Bro, I didn't even know y’all were there.” People want to be part of the culture too, seeing us on the video like “Damn, I want to experience that,” because it’s like an experience in itself.

Absolutely, I think you've created something that's desirable and fun. You could also just come in and buy something. How did you get into this? Were you a sneakerhead when you were younger?

I remember it was Black Friday when the Black Cement 4s dropped, the Bred 4s, and brah, my business partner, he had copped them that day. We were probably 13 or 14. He lived a couple houses behind me in the neighborhood. Same grade in high school. We'd always be together. I remember telling my mom and dad, "I want these shoes. That's the only thing I want for Christmas," but they were going for $400. They said, "You're out of your mind if we're spending $400 on Christmas. We'll give you a $200 budget if you want a pair of shoes." They thought it was crazy. But it was like all right, $200, too bad. I remember these Raptor 7s were on eBay for $215 or something. I pitched in the extra $20 just to have them. After that it was Craigslist, Instagram, the sneaker show… Just continuing that cycle. About a year and a half after high school we opened the first location of Heat Archives. It was up from there, day-to-day, staying consistent. Because we literally were open every day except Mondays at our old store. We literally had that shit running 70 hours a week.

And now, are you shooting every day?

Not every day. We're recording probably five days a week, in-store.

Who's doing the editing?

Brother, I was editing the vids, no cap, until about two months ago. It got low-key overwhelming.

At this point, what’s your closet looking like? Are you wearing all this shit or are you desensitized now and just want to wear a t-shirt and jeans?

I know more or less what I'm wearing when I wake up or else I catch myself wearing the same couple fits. When we first opened the business I was more tempted to keep stuff. It was hard to not buy everything I wanted, but I always give the customers the first chance. It's awesome when we get a piece I want, but it's like “Let me see who else wants this.” At the end of the day, we're trying to serve the customers. The shit that people bring in is exciting, and they're like "Damn, I'm trying to trade for a watch. I got a bunch of old shit I'm not really wearing." I'm like "Bro, let's do it."

When people are coming in with shit like that, do you think they're in trouble?

Some of the time. But normally you can tell. Somebody might bring in 10 pair or 12 pair for someone else. I try to help them out, hook people up. But a lot of the time people come in because they're not wearing that shit any more and trade it out for something they want to wear.

How fast do the trends move? Do things stick around or is it a two-year turnover?

Oh, no it changes quick! New brands are what people want to see. Chrome Hearts, Spyder, or Hellstar kinda took the back burner to some of these new brands.

What is a new brand?

Lost Shadows.

I've never heard of Lost Shadows.

It sells in-store like crazy. Sweatsuits. They're not too expensive, like $300 tops, $300 bottoms. A little pricey but it doesn't break the bank. I mean, Denim Tears, of course, is getting to that Hellstar level. Happy Memories Don't Die, that brand's huge.

I’ve never heard of that either!

We actually just bought a bunch of it.

That's so interesting. Are you aware of these things just because you're keeping up with everything or is somebody putting you on at some point?

My general manager, Tan, bro, he knows all these brands. He's right here before I even hear about them.It's nice to have someone like him in here buying. We're always putting each other on. "Oh, bro, you've seen this piece? This is dope, what this brand's doing." Everybody helps out everybody. We’ve all got our specialties.

So what's the plan? Do you want to open more stores, go to different cities?

We were looking at a few cities. I like the idea of Miami a lot because the money in Miami's crazy. The spending out there is wild. We were looking at Dallas, Texas. We love the idea of that, but nothing's set in stone yet. We've really been focusing on the Whatnot and growing the live shopping. Increasing revenues while keeping overheads the same. Live shopping is endless possibilities. The growth is crazy. We stream about five times a week right now so that's a huge part of our business.

Do you think that is the future of this stuff? Do you think the live selling is more important than expanding physically?

100%, bro. 100%. Overhead for the standalone store with rent, inventory, keeping the lights on, all the employees, bro, we're spending next to 50K a month. When we set up the live stream you're really not paying for anything other than the product you're getting. You could do that in my apartment. I love doing the in-store, I like shopping in-store more. I'm really not the type of person to order too much online. But being Columbus and not being a city people travel to as much, there's a certain cap that we could possibly receive in store. We would never close down the store, at least for the foreseeable future, because it does get pretty busy. Fridays and Saturdays are huge in the city. People go out, come in and get fits.

The in-store is the brand, the baseline. Everything is on top of that.

The traffic now from when we first started is night and day, just from the social media presence and people treating coming in like an experience.

What would you say is your biggest splash out, personally, that you haven't flipped?

It’s tough because , at the end of the day, it’s like Jay-Z, “Everything for sale,” right? I've gotten some awesome pieces I didn't think I was going to ever sell. Recently somebody wanted my AP. They'd seen the vids, so they traded me three watches and threw a good amount of bread on top. My first Rolex, I didn't think I was ever going to sell that.

I'm proud of you. You're a businessman first. Especially a first Rolex, that's sentimental.

Oh, for sure. But when we opened up the watch business I was like "We'll put my desires aside for a sec just. Let's grow this for the long term."