What is a style code?
A style code is the brand's own product number for one model in one colourway. Nike calls it a style code. adidas calls it an article number. New Balance calls it a style number. They do the same job: every shop, warehouse and resale site uses the code to know which product it is holding.
Three other numbers sit near it on the same label, and they are easy to confuse with it.
The size is printed in several systems, such as US, UK, EU and centimetres. The barcode number changes with every size, so it identifies one size of one pair. The production date shows a date range when the pair was made. The style code is the one that stays the same across every size of the colourway.
What does a Nike style code look like?
A Nike code has two parts joined by a hyphen. The first part names the model. The second part is three digits for the colourway.
Older codes use six digits for the first part. Newer ones start with two letters and end with four digits. The black and white Dunk Low nicknamed Panda is DD1391-100. The all-white Air Force 1 '07 is CW2288-111 on Nike's own site today.
The first digit of the colour part usually points to the main colour. Members of the NikeTalk forum have listed the pattern:
| First digit | Usual base colour |
|---|---|
| 0 | black or dark grey |
| 1 | white |
| 2 | brown |
| 3 | green |
| 4 | blue |
| 5 | purple |
| 6 | red |
| 7 | yellow |
| 8 | orange |
| 9 | several colours |
Both codes above fit the pattern. The Panda Dunk ends in 100 and the white Air Force 1 ends in 111, and both have white as the base. The same forum thread warns that Nike has followed the pattern unevenly for about ten years, so use it to check a guess, and do not rely on it alone.
What do adidas and New Balance codes look like?
An adidas article number is six characters, a mix of letters and numbers, with no hyphen. The Samba OG in white with black stripes is B75806. The code identifies the colourway as well as the model, so two colours of the Samba have two different article numbers.
A New Balance style number is built from readable parts. It starts with letters for who the shoe is for and what it is for. M means men and W means women, and a second letter can add the activity, as in MT for a men's trail shoe. The model number comes next, then letters for the colours. Once you know the pattern, you can read the model straight out of the code.
Where is the code, and can a photo show it?
The code is almost always printed on the size label. On most trainers that label is sewn inside the tongue. On some it is inside the shoe, on the side wall or behind the heel. The code is also printed on the label at the end of the shoe box.
A normal outfit photo will not show it. The label is inside the shoe and too small to read from a distance. Three kinds of picture often do show it:
- Unboxing videos. Many creators film the box label or turn the tongue toward the camera. Pause on that frame.
- Resale listings. Sellers photograph the size label to prove the size and the model. It is usually one of the last photos in the listing.
- A shoe on its side or upside down. In photos of a pair lying on the floor or a shelf, the tongue label is sometimes visible through the opening.
Zoom in and write down what you can read. Even half the code helps, because you can combine it with the model name.
Why can one shoe have two codes?
A shoe that stays in production for years is sometimes given a new code. The white Air Force 1 '07 was sold as 315122-111 from 2007, and it is now sold as CW2288-111. Resale sites list both codes on the same product page. StockX does the same for the Samba OG, listing it as BZ0057/B75806.
So if one code finds only a few listings, search the model name and look for a second code in the results. Older pairs, and older photos, may carry the older code.
Why do men's, women's and children's pairs have different codes?
The same colourway is often made in a men's, a women's and a children's version, and each version gets its own code. The size range is different, and on some models the shape and the materials are different too.
The Jordan 1 Low Panda shows how this works. StockX lists the women's pair as DC0774-100. Searching that code returns women's sizes only. If you want the same colours in a men's size, search the model and the nickname, then check the code on each result to see which version it is.
This matters when a size looks strange. A women's US 8 is a men's US 6.5 at Nike, so a listing can look like the wrong size when it is the right shoe in the other version. The guide to converting sizes covers the difference between the two scales.
What does the box label add?
The box label repeats the code and adds the official colour string, written the way the brand writes it. If a resale listing shows the box, you get the colourway name and the code in one photo, without reading the small print inside the tongue.
The box and the shoe should agree. If the code on the box label is different from the code inside the tongue, the pair has been put in another box. That happens for honest reasons, such as a damaged original box. It is still a question to ask the seller.
On a well-worn pair, the tongue label may be faded or washed blank. Print on fabric labels does not last as long as the shoe. When the label cannot be read, the box label, or the listing's own details, are the only way to get the code.
Does a matching code mean the pair is genuine?
A matching code proves only that the label and the listing agree. People who make fake trainers copy the size label too, code and all, because they know buyers check it.
The code is still worth checking. If a seller says a pair is one model and the label shows a different code, the listing is wrong, and you should ask the seller which one is true before paying. To check whether the pair itself is real, you need the checks in the next part of this guide.
How do you search with a style code?
- Type the code exactly as printed, including the hyphen on a Nike code. Put it in quotation marks in a search engine so the letters and digits are kept together.
- If you get nothing, check the characters that are easy to misread: 0 and O, 1 and I, 5 and S, 8 and B.
- On a Nike code, search the first part alone to see every colourway of that model. That also helps when you can read the model part and not the colour part.
- Search the code on a resale site. Its product page for that code also shows the original retail price and the release date. The date tells you the earliest the pair in your photo can have been bought.
- Once you find the pair, copy its official name and colour string from the result and use those in shop searches. Many shops do not search by code.
If you have the code, you may not need an image search at all. If the photo shows only the outside of the shoe, which is the usual case, Snagfit works from what the shoe looks like: it describes the shoe and searches current listings. The code is then a way to confirm the result. Open a listing it found, find the code in the details or the photos, and compare it with anything you could read in your own picture.