🧪 Supreme's Strategic Friction

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I went to a concert a few weeks ago. Just outside the arena there was a whole campsite set up. Some fans were camping overnight just to be the first in line when doors opened.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never resonated with anything less.

The thought of lining up for hours is one thing, but sleeping overnight in a queue? Not for me.

That being said, it reminded me of what iPhone release days used to be like, with customers lined up around the block for hours before the store opened. The line didn’t just build anticipation for the people standing in it, it built intrigue and FOMO for everyone who wasn’t.

So this week I decided to look at a brand who have made it a conscious strategy to build hype through introducing elements of friction to the customer experience.

— Isaac Peiris

Quick Hits

• Move over Spotify and Apple, YouTube has its own podcast charts now [Tubefilter]

• Airbnb called rival Vrbo 'desperate' for putting a sarcastic billboard outside its office [Linkedin]

• Employee-generated content: creating a video-first strategy [Social Media Examiner]

• Marketers lean into storytelling over branded content to combat ad fatigue [eMarketer]

• AI job interviewers are going viral on TikTok [Mashable]

Supreme's Strategic Friction

In 2017, a Supreme product drop transformed a New York City street into a makeshift campsite.

Teenagers slept on the pavement. Adults took shifts. Some enthusiasts hired line-sitters for hundreds of dollars.

All for a t-shirt.

They didn't even know which t-shirt they'd get. But they knew that whatever it was would resell for 2-3 times the retail price within hours.

Intentional Inconvenience

Supreme's product drops operate with deliberate vagueness. The store might open at 11 a.m., but the queue forms the night before. Once inside, customers only have minutes to grab available items. No time for deliberation. No returns accepted.

This chaos isn't accidental. People crave it.

While most brands obsess over eliminating friction, Supreme turned it into their core strategy.

Founded in 1994 as a skateboarding shop in downtown Manhattan, Supreme evolved from cult favourite to billion-dollar empire by 2017. Just three years later, VF Corporation (owner of Vans, The North Face, and Timberland) acquired the brand for $2.1 billion.

The interesting part is they built this empire by making almost every element of their business deliberately difficult.

Their retail approach directly contradicts conventional wisdom. While everyone talks about expansion, Supreme only has 13 physical stores worldwide. Their website consistently crashes during drops because traffic surges by up to 16,800%. Their distribution is so limited that there’s a thriving secondary re-sale market.

Even their marketing defies norms. No press releases announce upcoming collections. No celebrity-filled campaigns on billboards. Just cryptic Instagram posts and organic word of mouth.

While everyone is championing frictionless experiences, Supreme thrives by creating deliberate hurdles at every turn.

The Magic of Making It Difficult

When most businesses hear "create a better customer experience," they immediately translate this to "make it easier." But Supreme interpreted it differently. Sometimes the most impactful experiences aren't the easiest ones, they're the ones customers feel they've earned.

This approach works because it taps into something fundamental about human psychology. We value things more when we work for them. After waiting 12 hours you're not just buying a hoodie, you're buying a story. A badge of dedication.

Plus there's the social element. The queue doesn't just make items harder to get, it puts that difficulty on public display. Customer’s effort gets witnessed, photographed, shared on social media.

All these elements combine to create a friction flywheel.

Difficulty generates desire. Desire drives demand. Demand justifies increased difficulty.

Each season, Supreme intensifies the friction. Each season, their popularity grows.

Strangley customers don't resent this friction, they celebrate it. The queue isn't a nuisance, it's part of the experience. Your presence means you belong to something. A community. A culture. You aren't just buying clothes. You're earning them.

Good Friction vs. Bad Friction

It’s important to call out that not all friction delivers equal value. There's a critical distinction between strategic friction and just being annoying.

I saw this firsthand when I was managing paid subscriptions for a media company. My whole job was to add just enough friction to the user experience that they would pay. I found that the line between pissing people off and creating value mostly involved expectations and transparency. When users knew there’d be friction, they barely complained.

What drove conversions wasn't traditionally “useful” content. It was personal storytelling. Content that helped subscribers feel connected to our brand identity. By focusing on deepening this connection rather than simply putting up paywalls everywhere, we grew to about 30,000 subscribers and $170,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

My experience mirrors what Supreme has perfected. Friction works not just as a barrier to overcome but as a way to make what's beyond it feel more valuable.

Four Types of Strategic Friction

Supreme uses four distinct categories of strategic friction:

These friction points succeed because they serve clear purposes. They're not just random hurdles, they're strategic choices that reinforce the brand's exclusivity.

Compare this with brands that try, but fail, with similar tactics. When a luxury fashion website crashes during a sale, customers get frustrated. When Supreme's site crashes during a drop, the event becomes part of brand folklore. Customers know it’s because of the intense demand and limited time window.

The difference is expectations and intent. Supreme incorporates difficulty into their brand promise. The friction isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature.

When Everyday Brands Use Friction

Strategic friction isn't just for high-end brands. Here’s some more examples:

Every example shows how friction creates value only when supported by a clear purpose.

The Anti-Friction Trap

We've become conditioned to believe smoother experiences always deliver superior results. One-click checkout. Instant delivery. Seamless onboarding.

For most functional products and services, this is true. When you’re paying an electricity bill you’ll always prefer a painless process.

But something is different about the world's most valuable lifestyle brands. Nearly all of them use some form of strategic friction.

• Hermès won't just sell you a Birkin bag. You have to join a waiting list, sometimes for years.

• Nike's SNKRS app uses a lottery system for limited releases, making shoe purchases a high-stakes competition.

• Even Disney, the master of customer experience, facilitates queues at their parks. The anticipation becomes integral to the memory.

These brands understand a truth that feels counterintuitive at first. When everything becomes convenient, nothing feels special.

Pure convenience leads to commoditisation. If your only value proposition is ease, you'll remain vulnerable to competitors making processes even easier.

But emotional connections are built through meaningful experiences, and those are significantly harder to replicate.

When Friction Doesn't Work

Not every brand can successfully implement strategic friction. It fails when:

• It contradicts your brand promise. If you've always championed convenience, suddenly introducing friction will feel inauthentic.

• The payoff doesn't justify the effort. The reward has to warrant the hurdle, or customers just walk away.

• It feels manipulative rather than meaningful. Customers will quickly figure out what’s friction that creates value vs friction that reduces it.

• It affects your core customer experience. Netflix making password sharing more difficult worked because it didn’t impact the paying customers core viewing experience.

Before adding any friction, ask yourself: "Will this ultimately strengthen connection to our brand, or just annoy people?"

Putting It Into Practice

Supreme didn't become a billion-dollar brand by making things easy. They built an empire by making people work, which made them care more deeply.

The path to loyalty isn't always the smoothest, but often it's the most memorable.

How could you apply this thinking to your business?

• Identify exclusivity opportunities. Which aspect of your product or service could benefit from limited availability? Consider members-only features or limited production runs.

• Create meaningful rituals. What process could you introduce that makes customers feel special? This might involve unique unboxing experiences or personalised onboarding.

• Leverage community knowledge. What information could you share exclusively with your most engaged customers? This rewards loyalty and creates valuable insider status.

• Maintain transparency about trade-offs. When introducing friction, clearly communicate why it exists. Customers accept difficulty when they understand its purpose.

Start small and test methodically. Don't overhaul your entire customer journey overnight.

In our rush to eliminate all friction from customer experiences, we risk removing the very moments that could create the deepest connections. The brands that understand this don't just sell more, they matter more.

Next time someone suggests making your customer journey smoother, ask if this is a moment where carefully calibrated friction could create something more valuable than convenience?

After all, think about those teenagers sleeping on New York pavements. They weren't just buying a t-shirt. They were buying a story about themselves. One they created through effort, not ease.

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