the artificial scarcity is what people want it's the psychology of having exclusive shyt which is why something sitting or bricking is stated with a negative connotation. people don't know what they want. the game is the game. you create scarcity to create illusion of exclusivity. when shyt is easily accessible the desire is not the same it is not a status symbol to have it. we are seeing this right now even with the yeezy releases. it's not that the shoes fell of it's the artificial scarcity of the low stock and then the bots snatching up all that shyt for people to turn to resell market that was driving up a frenzy.Part of that is on them though and the artificial scarcity they would create with certain sneaker releases though. Not to mention the fact that they were literally letting retailers out here benefit profit wise off their sneakers by hiding raffle releases behind buying the stores product to even have a chance to buy. Hell, some of them even got caught backdooring themselves (End Clothing, ShoePalace).
I get thought process in trying to go direct to consumer, but all it did was have other companies take up that empty shelf space and doom a lot of their distributors in the process.
there is a lot of psychology at play in marketing. hand out shyt for free without a line up and nobody wants it. create a line up and you will see people stand in line not even knowing what they are getting just because there is demand from others. This is basic and observable in so many places in life. It is the basic mentality of the hype driven sneaker consumer. they demand access but when they get too much of it their desire is lost. you can literally see people having second thoughts when they win raffles too easily on pairs and so forth.