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Startup idea: create a high quality camera gear buying and selling experience for the web, with many protections and conveniences built in. Selling your gear on

Startup idea: create a high quality camera gear buying and selling experience for the web, with many protections and conveniences built in. Selling your gear on Craigslist and meeting with random strangers at McDonald's and Starbucks is pretty much the only real alternative right now and gets old pretty fast. This was an issue for music gear too, but somehow reverb.com managed to address it and make it a pretty painless experience. Their customer service is excellent, and if one of the two parties are unsatisfied, they'll intervene and try to find a compromise. They send you boxes to ship your gear in, they set up shipping for you, they automatically track the shipment as it gets picked up etc. I've been hoping to find something similar for camera gear, but have had no luck so far. The only downside is that the prosumer camera equipment world seems to be rapidly shrinking, so it might be not a great idea to step into this space right now. Whereas there doesn't seem to be a dearth of people buying guitars, drum kit pieces and effects pedals.

y2bd 7y ago
Keh (https://www.keh.com/ https://www.keh.com/) is sort of like this, except that they function more like a second-hand shop--you sell them your gear, and they hold inventory that other people can buy, meaning you never actually interact with the eventual buyer. Because of this though, I imagine they take a larger cut than Reverb does (and certainly more than eBay). As a buyer I've had zero problems with Keh the couple of times I've used them.
- akurilin 7y ago
  I've gotten quotes through a few of these sites in the past, and I was getting at best 50-70% of the value I would have gotten by selling in person through CL. I imagine it's in part because you ship it over to them, they have to inspect the items etc. I think those services can be useful for buyers, but sellers who want to get the most for their gear will avoid them. Like you said, something like Reverb could compete on taking a smaller cut.
  - mcyukon 7y ago
    Yeah its a good concept and I would love an easy, secure way to sell items however they are quoting $965 USD for my Nikon Z6 which is out-of box new and retails for $1,996.95 USD. That's pretty hard to swallow. For that I'll put in the time to sell it locally, meet and try in person, cash only.

y2bd 7y ago

Keh (https://www.keh.com/ https://www.keh.com/) is sort of like this, except that they function more like a second-hand shop--you sell them your gear, and they hold inventory that other people can buy, meaning you never actually interact with the eventual buyer. Because of this though, I imagine they take a larger cut than Reverb does (and certainly more than eBay). As a buyer I've had zero problems with Keh the couple of times I've used them.

akurilin 7y ago
I've gotten quotes through a few of these sites in the past, and I was getting at best 50-70% of the value I would have gotten by selling in person through CL. I imagine it's in part because you ship it over to them, they have to inspect the items etc. I think those services can be useful for buyers, but sellers who want to get the most for their gear will avoid them. Like you said, something like Reverb could compete on taking a smaller cut.
- mcyukon 7y ago
  Yeah its a good concept and I would love an easy, secure way to sell items however they are quoting $965 USD for my Nikon Z6 which is out-of box new and retails for $1,996.95 USD. That's pretty hard to swallow. For that I'll put in the time to sell it locally, meet and try in person, cash only.