eBay has long been a go-to platform for sneakerheads, but as the sneaker industry has gone from niche to non-stop, sneaker drops have become ubiquitous as a means to acquire exclusive products. In order for eBay to prove that they were still the number one player in terms of community, inventory and trust they needed to plan a drop like no other. And while the holidays proved the perfect opportunity, the challenges of 2020 called for some technological ingenuity.

The premise was simple enough: NBA star, Anthony Davis dropped a bag of 500 sneakers somewhere over the United States while filling in for Santa. Now fans had a chance to win one of the rare pairs via an augmented reality experience. INPHANTRY was enlisted to create an interactive AR experience at the last minute which in and of itself is no small feat, but there was more. In order to ensure widespread use, we needed to pull off the experience without requiring users to download an app. The client had very real concerns about the quality and fidelity of a web-based AR experience, but with ingenuity that included developing 3D models and some creative hacking, we delivered a realistic, high-quality experience.

The result was unprecedented with nearly 4 million site visitors and over 2 million contest entries over the course of just 3 days.