Hear how StockX brought the sneaker scene to Detroit

At TechCrunch’s Detroit City Spotlight this week, I sat down with

Rae Witte

, the journalist behind the StockX EC-1

.

TechCrunch’s EC-1 push allows individual authors to go deep on a particular company. And as StockX has been headquartered in Detroit since its inception, we took the chance to dig into our reporting in front of our friends from Motor City.

All about StockX

• Introducing the StockX EC-1

• Origin story: How StockX became the stock market of hype

• Authentication and StockX’s global arms race against fraudsters

• Where StockX fits in the business of sneakers

• The consequences of scaling up sneaker culture

Witte has been covering the now-unicorn, and the larger sneaker beat, for a half decade. That experience helped enrich her reporting arc, giving her more insight into the company’s business model, founding story and recent growth.

StockX is a behemoth today, having recently been

valued at $3.8 billion

in a round that was announced this month.

But even before the company added another billion dollars to its valuation, TechCrunch was impressed at its business progress.

Back when the company was worth a mere $2.8 billion, we called its then-current round of capital “

pre-IPO money

.”

And, of course, we asked Witte at the end of the conversation when we should expect to see not just an EC-1 from StockX, but an S-1 as well. Soon, we reckon.

Hit play above to enjoy a behind-the-scenes chat about the company. For more,

here’s the EC-1 itself

, which Witte absolutely crushed.