5 ms·

Startup Idea: Reverse Amazon

46 points by antonpirker 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jak2k 2y ago
The page doesn't load.
advael 2y ago
I'm currently trying to help a relative who's a hoarder, and I have to say, reducing the friction of getting rid of things without just mass-dumpstering them would be a godsend I think this is one of those ideas that needs scale to work well, like craigslist or ebay pretty much got rid of all the friction you can without propping up a fulfillment network and appraisers etc., but if anyone's got a good way to make it participatory/crowdsourced or is willing to hire some workforce to get it started, I'd be happy to help with implementation or strategy. I'm not good at the marketing bit but not unwilling to try
- blowski 2y ago
  In the UK at least there are house clearance companies who do exactly this, typically after a death. They first look over the entire contents of the house, then buy it from you and either sell it on or dispose of it.
- RetroTechie 2y ago
  > and I have to say, reducing the friction of getting rid of things without just mass-dumpstering them would be a godsend Yeah, that's a big problem with modern consumerism: with money to spend, buying stuff is too easy compared to the effort to part with it later. Although if you 'have' to move fast, there's companies that specialize in house clearing (as another poster noted). Some thrift stores also do this, provided the resale <-> trash ratio is acceptable to them.
  - advael 2y ago
    Right, the missing niche is the fast piecemeal service AFAICT. Not "look through all my stuff and try to sell it" but "take maybe as little as one item I want to sell, today, seamlessly, and appraise and sell it"
jaggs 2y ago
I think this is a great idea. eBay did something vaguely similar when it introduced local agents who would sell stuff for a cut of the sell price. I used it and it was really useful for people like me who hate packing boxes working out post etc etc. I have a ton of stuff I'd love to get rid of if it was frictionless. Maybe the existing delivery gig network could be used? Uber, Deliveroo etc? I like the idea of donation or paying for disposal, because that makes sense. I guess it could start small if you could find a garage to store it in?
- christkv 2y ago
  Local agents is cool. I remember seeing a store in Berlin a decade ago where you could rent some display space and sell your stuff there
  - jaggs 2y ago
    I'm positive there's a business case, need here somewhere. The only problem is working out how to do it efficiently. I also saw a warehouse operation near me some years back which offered an eBay re-sale service. It went out of business after a year or so. Maybe the margins or product values are too low? Hence the need for massive scale?
avidphantasm 2y ago
As much as I dislike Meta, Facebook Marketplace is basically this. My town also has a “swap shop”, which makes it really easy to give away still-useful things.
- subpixel 2y ago
  Came to say the same. I often sell things within hours despite living almost in the middle of nowhere. People are glad to drive over an hour for all sorts of things and most are comfortable with digital payments.
- shireboy 2y ago
  Post mentions the downside of this: you have to deal with _people_. I don’t necessarily feel comfortable with strangers coming to my house, and don’t really have time or energy to coordinate meeting people. I see value in this idea over marketplace.
  - coev 2y ago
    Look up a consignment shop in your area, take your stuff to them, they'll handle it and give you like 30-50% of what they sell it for, done.
victorbjorklund 2y ago
We got this in Sweden. Sellpy: https://www.sellpy.se https://www.sellpy.se Works pretty much as you describe. Of course they sell it for cheaper (probably to get inventory out fast) than you might if you do it yourself and keep a part of the revenue as commission. But good if you don't wanna bother with the sales process.
xyst 2y ago
Unfortunately the potential for abuse makes this idea hard to implement. Abusers would use the system to sell their drugs (ie, junk item stuffed with cocaine lists for $9999). Let’s not forget the sale of illegal firearms (aka teddy bear stuffed with handgun with filed off serial number). Now you need a proper drug detection protocol, X-ray machines to scan all packages, dedicated security personnel. Then there’s the potential of dealing with disputes buyer claims item was not received. More people to hire, protocols to develop.
- jovial_cavalier 2y ago
  Don't all of these problems apply to existing successful platforms like Craigslist or eBay? In fact, it seems like it would be harder to do on 'reverse amazon' than on eBay.
- consumer451 2y ago
  What prevents Ebay from being abused like this?
- acc_297 2y ago
  But the user doesn’t pick the buyer the “reverse Amazon” does Or did I misunderstand
- jjk166 2y ago
  How would reverse amazon know to price your junk item extremely high? Seems like you're just losing a whole bunch of cocaine. How would reverse amazon know to ship a potential illegal firearm buyer your teddy bear versus one of the others in comparable condition they have in stock? I imagine you could set up some elaborate code to make side arrangements, like someone agrees to wire you money and you communicate to them a very specific pattern of damage to look for in a used item so they know which one to buy, but at that point why not sell direct? And people claiming not to have received items they purchased is a common problem to all online sales platforms.
Thews 2y ago
A consignment shop?
- mmcconnell1618 2y ago
  Physical stores to make it easier for people to sell on eBay were a thing for many years. Most people didn't know how to take a decent photo or post a listing or just didn't want to deal with it. Those stores never had enough margin to cover the amount of labor involved.
jacknews 2y ago
I want a reverse amazon where I specify the problems I have or products I want, and it gives me the best product/supplier.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Isn't this E-Bay.?
- coev 2y ago
  Yes. Or to go even older, this is a rehash of consignment stores/estate sales/liquidation centers, but with the internet involved.
criddell 2y ago
Selling is hard, but even giving things away is more difficult than it should be. When you list something for free you soon find out how bad people are at communicating and how unreliable they are at showing up when they say they will show up.
- doomroot 2y ago
  If you live in a semi-dense population, put it on the curb then post about it on your local facebook group and it will disappear in minutes.
  - buremba 2y ago
    Since it's free, people probably don't think they are missing out as they can get that "free" at some point later on. You take things more seriously when you pay for them.
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    That's heavily locale dependent advice. This is not something you can do without it getting reported and treated as trash everywhere, and in many places you'll just anger your neighbours and inconvenience the municipal trash department.
  - djtango 2y ago
    Funny story - I used to live somewhere very central in London. I noticed there was this one spot that always had something there. After living there for about 2 years I knew it was THE SPOT. So when it was my turn to move out, I had to get rid of all my furniture and thought I'd give it a go: over the course of a day I got rid of two 3x3 ikea kallax, a 2m cupboard and a tv amongst other stuff. An old woman even tried to tell me off for illegal flytipping but the ONLY time anything lasted more than 30 mins was when a guy found the 2m cupboard and was organising a car to come pick it up for him. And he stood there protecting his quarry for about 1 hr (I could watch the spot from my balcony) My fav was actually helping to carry one of the kallax shelves about 400m to the other guy's house with him. The life of selling stuff via listing pages
  - 2y ago
EricRiese 2y ago
I've thought about something like this. In my mind it all comes down to receipts. We need a system of ubiquitous standardized itemized and cryptographically signed digital receipts. That way everything you buy aggregates into your personal inventory app. Then making a posting is a matter of one click and one photo. The UPC in receipt means a full product listing can be generated automatically. This is crucial since most Craigslist posts don't have sufficient detail about the specific item model and specs. But with a UPC or equivalent that can be pulled in automatically. Once postings consistently have UPCs attached, you can figure out the market price for everything and push that to people who own the product when the price goes up. You can also push out product recall and class action lawsuit alerts. The receipt would really be a proof of purchase, since it's cryptographically signed. So it could be used to make verified third party product reviews without the conflict of interest of the site also selling products. You could hook your personal inventory database up to your social network to make a lending library with all your friends. Why buy something new when you can search all your friends' stuff and borrow from them?
- adampk 2y ago
  What is the "killer app" for something that would take this enormous level of effort?
  - EricRiese 2y ago
    I just listed several as far as I'm concerned. I don't see it happening as a Y Combinator Silicon Valley ad supported startup. The best I can imagine right now is to pitch the vision and have standards bodies and industry groups collaborate on the standard and then maybe find some place where the government can dictate "if you do business with us, you have to use this tech". For instance using the receipts for tax deductions. Give a preferential rate for digitally signed receipts to pass back the cost savings of not dealing with paper. And then hopefully it grows from there.
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  The market price for two used hypothetical coffee makers¹ (same manufacturer/type/age) is rarely the same. One has scratches, stood in direct sunlight for years, and has a few parts in need of replacing soon, the other was used twice and has sat in a cupboard ever since. Both work. Besides, who keeps receipts for anything but expensive items that might need warrantee? Most people don't. Sometimes you acquire something through different means: presents, inheriting, thrift shop, etc. And that's avoiding the huge privacy matter of buying something with a unique tracking number attached and linked to you. 1: I'll take mine without hypothetical sugar please.
lnxg33k1 2y ago
It must be challenging to live in a cave isolated from the world ^^
maklu 2y ago
Something like https://www.refurbed.de/ https://www.refurbed.de/ or https://www.backmarket.de/ https://www.backmarket.de/. Works great for tech (higher resale value, small weight), but I can imagine it is tricky to set up the same business model for small non-tech items, furniture etc.
moribvndvs 2y ago
I had a similar idea and tried building it, but everyone I talked to about it couldn’t differentiate it from Craiglist or (eventually) Facebook Marketplace. User traction is the obstacle here.
cushychicken 2y ago
The Buy Nothing movement is essentially the same as this concept.
- troq13 2y ago
  Giving something away on "Buy Nothing" seems like the same amount of work as selling the thing to me (except with no money exchange).
Apreche 2y ago
Facebook Marketplace exists.
karmasimida 2y ago
Facebook Marketplace To avoid scammers are hard though, so usually people meet in public place for transaction Imagine you post a picture then exposing your home address that is scary
- al_borland 2y ago
  The problem with Marketplace and Craigslist is the time they take. I can just send the stuff somewhere and wait for someone to buy it. I need to post it, wait, hope that someone wants it at the same time I’m selling, filter out scammers, negotiate the price, arrange a meeting place, and go meet the person and hope they’re normal. For one relative high value item that’s ok. When someone had a lot of stuff to unload, or lower value items, it’s too much work or not worth the time.
  - karmasimida 2y ago
    I mean it is a market, the market is THE mechanism to match and allocate. If it is low value, how do you know someone would want it anyway?
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  There's plenty of open databases to look up tons of things about you. In NZ only reason people don't give out their home address is when they are selling something defective so you wouldn't hassle them over it.
mg 2y ago
I wish there was something like a second hand store where you can just drop your stuff for 10% of its price on eBay. I don't want to deal with anything. Not wait for someone to pick it up. Not wrap it in a parcel and bring it to the post office. Not sign up for some service. Nothing. Just drop my stuff, get a little bit of money and am done with it.
- coev 2y ago
  Pawn shops exist and will give you about that percentage for your stuff.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    For that small subset of "stuff" which is likely to sell quickly at a suitable profit in the local market as understood by the pawnbroker.
    - Freak_NL 2y ago
      That is exactly the economic reason this idea doesn't work. Pawnbrokers know the value of things and how much effort they can invest in any one item. Selling anything they won't take yourself usually means that you'll have to invest a fair bit of your time to sell it. Anyone doing this commercially can't afford that labour unless the item is worth at least something like €100!
- bombcar 2y ago
  They are (or were) called consignment stores and most of them would be knowledgeable in their area to give you quick cash. If it’s valuable, you could pawn it. Most people just drop it on GoodWill.
- deleted 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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marban 2y ago
What's the point - this has been done dozens of times in various industries?
rglullis 2y ago
Kleinanzeigen is not a thing in Austria?
jgrizou 2y ago
That is what charity shops do in the UK. You don't make money as your stuff are donation, but the charity does when then resell. Works surprisingly well.
NietTim 2y ago
This is just ebay/facebook marketplace with extra steps and having to trust some company even more that they won't screw you over.
tootie 2y ago
That's called a "consignment shop". It's existed forever. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Taxis have existed forever and Uber is still a massive success.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
a_c 2y ago
I'm in a local parent group where people share second hand stuff all the time. It felt pretty efficient to me. I don't know, do we really want every interaction a big platform thing?
Euphorbium 2y ago
Exactly this was made in my country, Lithuania, and did not work. Maybe needed more advertisement, but I dont think that economics work without burning investor money.
neilv 2y ago
I'd like to use this service, too, if it worked reasonably. Pre-Internet, there were consignment shops for clothing. In earlier days of eBay, IIUC, there was a third party business with a chain of physical locations where you could drop off your stuff, and they'd do all the eBay hassle for you. eBay and Amazon have tried some ways to improve the one-off selling experience for select commodity-like used items (e.g., iPhones). There's also ways to get Amazon to warehouse and list misc. items (but that looked like more headache and risk than it was worth, for one-off). There's multiple businesses here that you can pay to remove most items, and I assume they cherry-pick some items for resale rather than trash. Goodwill takes donations, and has staff that intercepts some items to eBay (and perhaps elsewhere), lets professional third-party flippers into centers (e.g., finding designer clothing), and then the rest can go to their retail stores.
troq13 2y ago
That would be very nice. My suspicion is that a certain amount of work from the former owner, or from someone who is very knowledgeable about that type of object, is required to explain the value of the item to a potential buyer. Somehow the objects themselves are not the limiting factor (trash is full of good stuff that mostly stay there, because there is no one to do this work). It could work if the item was originally bought on Amazon and one could just point to the original listing, though.
antonpirker 2y ago
Thanks for all the comments! Really cool! I also got links to https://www.stuffle.com https://www.stuffle.com and https://www.circle-hand.com/ https://www.circle-hand.com/ via the blog. Some services mentioned really look promising, yet none offers the convenience that I would love (not thinking about anything) but I guess I will try some of the mentioned services!
picklebarrel 2y ago
Remoovit.com does this exactly. They pick up your stuff, then either sell, donate, or dispose of it. If they sell it, you get 50%, or if they have to pay to dispose, they charge you for it. Works great. Service area is just SF Bay and Phoenix so far.
DamnInteresting 2y ago
I built something similar to this for a client in 2002, I still have the Java source code. It was called CurbDiver [1], and the idea was that a local agent (a "broker") would list the thing for you on eBay (including taking nice photos), and if it sold, they would package/ship it for you and give you a percentage of the selling price (80% if memory serves). It had some promising early uptake, but it fizzled after a few years. There just wasn't much money to be made, even when being discerning about what items were allowed. It was a weak, inconsistent stream of nickels and dimes, and a lot of work to get it. One element that we underestimated was the volume of low value/no value stuff people wanted to try to push through. Pretty quickly agents learned when/how to say no, but even saying no consumes some resources. At its core it's not a bad idea, but such an operation would have to be very optimized to be profitable. [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/curbdiver.jpg https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/curbdiver.jpg
dzhiurgis 2y ago
IIRC Vinted is somewhat like that, they sort out shipping but you need to haggle yourself.
SJC_Hacker 2y ago
I don't think its a great business plan. Its basically an online pawn shop, but the company has to take your stuff. Warehouse space costs money unfortunately. Stuff that doesn't get sold, and its probably going >90% of items, has effectively negative value for the company, and then you add on transport fees. People overestimate how much their stuff is worth. Take furniture. Since it costs > $1000 for decent pieces, people think they can resell it. Except in certain rare circumstances, used furniture is effectively worthless, even negative value when you take into account you have to pay people to haul it away, like I did a few times when I moved. Even though THEY would never buy used furniture, they always think "someone" will. And it goes the same for alot of used electronics. Cars seem to be the exception, but there's already goodish solutiosn for those CarMaxx, etc.

46 points by antonpirker 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jak2k 2y ago

The page doesn't load.

advael 2y ago

I'm currently trying to help a relative who's a hoarder, and I have to say, reducing the friction of getting rid of things without just mass-dumpstering them would be a godsend I think this is one of those ideas that needs scale to work well, like craigslist or ebay pretty much got rid of all the friction you can without propping up a fulfillment network and appraisers etc., but if anyone's got a good way to make it participatory/crowdsourced or is willing to hire some workforce to get it started, I'd be happy to help with implementation or strategy. I'm not good at the marketing bit but not unwilling to try

blowski 2y ago
In the UK at least there are house clearance companies who do exactly this, typically after a death. They first look over the entire contents of the house, then buy it from you and either sell it on or dispose of it.
RetroTechie 2y ago
> and I have to say, reducing the friction of getting rid of things without just mass-dumpstering them would be a godsend Yeah, that's a big problem with modern consumerism: with money to spend, buying stuff is too easy compared to the effort to part with it later. Although if you 'have' to move fast, there's companies that specialize in house clearing (as another poster noted). Some thrift stores also do this, provided the resale <-> trash ratio is acceptable to them.
- advael 2y ago
  Right, the missing niche is the fast piecemeal service AFAICT. Not "look through all my stuff and try to sell it" but "take maybe as little as one item I want to sell, today, seamlessly, and appraise and sell it"

jaggs 2y ago

I think this is a great idea. eBay did something vaguely similar when it introduced local agents who would sell stuff for a cut of the sell price. I used it and it was really useful for people like me who hate packing boxes working out post etc etc. I have a ton of stuff I'd love to get rid of if it was frictionless. Maybe the existing delivery gig network could be used? Uber, Deliveroo etc? I like the idea of donation or paying for disposal, because that makes sense. I guess it could start small if you could find a garage to store it in?

christkv 2y ago
Local agents is cool. I remember seeing a store in Berlin a decade ago where you could rent some display space and sell your stuff there
- jaggs 2y ago
  I'm positive there's a business case, need here somewhere. The only problem is working out how to do it efficiently. I also saw a warehouse operation near me some years back which offered an eBay re-sale service. It went out of business after a year or so. Maybe the margins or product values are too low? Hence the need for massive scale?

avidphantasm 2y ago

As much as I dislike Meta, Facebook Marketplace is basically this. My town also has a “swap shop”, which makes it really easy to give away still-useful things.

subpixel 2y ago
Came to say the same. I often sell things within hours despite living almost in the middle of nowhere. People are glad to drive over an hour for all sorts of things and most are comfortable with digital payments.
shireboy 2y ago
Post mentions the downside of this: you have to deal with _people_. I don’t necessarily feel comfortable with strangers coming to my house, and don’t really have time or energy to coordinate meeting people. I see value in this idea over marketplace.
- coev 2y ago
  Look up a consignment shop in your area, take your stuff to them, they'll handle it and give you like 30-50% of what they sell it for, done.

victorbjorklund 2y ago

We got this in Sweden. Sellpy: https://www.sellpy.se https://www.sellpy.se Works pretty much as you describe. Of course they sell it for cheaper (probably to get inventory out fast) than you might if you do it yourself and keep a part of the revenue as commission. But good if you don't wanna bother with the sales process.

xyst 2y ago

Unfortunately the potential for abuse makes this idea hard to implement. Abusers would use the system to sell their drugs (ie, junk item stuffed with cocaine lists for $9999). Let’s not forget the sale of illegal firearms (aka teddy bear stuffed with handgun with filed off serial number). Now you need a proper drug detection protocol, X-ray machines to scan all packages, dedicated security personnel. Then there’s the potential of dealing with disputes buyer claims item was not received. More people to hire, protocols to develop.

jovial_cavalier 2y ago
Don't all of these problems apply to existing successful platforms like Craigslist or eBay? In fact, it seems like it would be harder to do on 'reverse amazon' than on eBay.
consumer451 2y ago
What prevents Ebay from being abused like this?
acc_297 2y ago
But the user doesn’t pick the buyer the “reverse Amazon” does Or did I misunderstand
jjk166 2y ago
How would reverse amazon know to price your junk item extremely high? Seems like you're just losing a whole bunch of cocaine. How would reverse amazon know to ship a potential illegal firearm buyer your teddy bear versus one of the others in comparable condition they have in stock? I imagine you could set up some elaborate code to make side arrangements, like someone agrees to wire you money and you communicate to them a very specific pattern of damage to look for in a used item so they know which one to buy, but at that point why not sell direct? And people claiming not to have received items they purchased is a common problem to all online sales platforms.

Thews 2y ago

A consignment shop?

mmcconnell1618 2y ago
Physical stores to make it easier for people to sell on eBay were a thing for many years. Most people didn't know how to take a decent photo or post a listing or just didn't want to deal with it. Those stores never had enough margin to cover the amount of labor involved.

jacknews 2y ago

I want a reverse amazon where I specify the problems I have or products I want, and it gives me the best product/supplier.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Isn't this E-Bay.?

coev 2y ago
Yes. Or to go even older, this is a rehash of consignment stores/estate sales/liquidation centers, but with the internet involved.

criddell 2y ago

Selling is hard, but even giving things away is more difficult than it should be. When you list something for free you soon find out how bad people are at communicating and how unreliable they are at showing up when they say they will show up.

doomroot 2y ago
If you live in a semi-dense population, put it on the curb then post about it on your local facebook group and it will disappear in minutes.
- buremba 2y ago
  Since it's free, people probably don't think they are missing out as they can get that "free" at some point later on. You take things more seriously when you pay for them.
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  That's heavily locale dependent advice. This is not something you can do without it getting reported and treated as trash everywhere, and in many places you'll just anger your neighbours and inconvenience the municipal trash department.
- djtango 2y ago
  Funny story - I used to live somewhere very central in London. I noticed there was this one spot that always had something there. After living there for about 2 years I knew it was THE SPOT. So when it was my turn to move out, I had to get rid of all my furniture and thought I'd give it a go: over the course of a day I got rid of two 3x3 ikea kallax, a 2m cupboard and a tv amongst other stuff. An old woman even tried to tell me off for illegal flytipping but the ONLY time anything lasted more than 30 mins was when a guy found the 2m cupboard and was organising a car to come pick it up for him. And he stood there protecting his quarry for about 1 hr (I could watch the spot from my balcony) My fav was actually helping to carry one of the kallax shelves about 400m to the other guy's house with him. The life of selling stuff via listing pages
- 2y ago

EricRiese 2y ago

I've thought about something like this. In my mind it all comes down to receipts. We need a system of ubiquitous standardized itemized and cryptographically signed digital receipts. That way everything you buy aggregates into your personal inventory app. Then making a posting is a matter of one click and one photo. The UPC in receipt means a full product listing can be generated automatically. This is crucial since most Craigslist posts don't have sufficient detail about the specific item model and specs. But with a UPC or equivalent that can be pulled in automatically. Once postings consistently have UPCs attached, you can figure out the market price for everything and push that to people who own the product when the price goes up. You can also push out product recall and class action lawsuit alerts. The receipt would really be a proof of purchase, since it's cryptographically signed. So it could be used to make verified third party product reviews without the conflict of interest of the site also selling products. You could hook your personal inventory database up to your social network to make a lending library with all your friends. Why buy something new when you can search all your friends' stuff and borrow from them?

adampk 2y ago
What is the "killer app" for something that would take this enormous level of effort?
- EricRiese 2y ago
  I just listed several as far as I'm concerned. I don't see it happening as a Y Combinator Silicon Valley ad supported startup. The best I can imagine right now is to pitch the vision and have standards bodies and industry groups collaborate on the standard and then maybe find some place where the government can dictate "if you do business with us, you have to use this tech". For instance using the receipts for tax deductions. Give a preferential rate for digitally signed receipts to pass back the cost savings of not dealing with paper. And then hopefully it grows from there.
Freak_NL 2y ago
The market price for two used hypothetical coffee makers¹ (same manufacturer/type/age) is rarely the same. One has scratches, stood in direct sunlight for years, and has a few parts in need of replacing soon, the other was used twice and has sat in a cupboard ever since. Both work. Besides, who keeps receipts for anything but expensive items that might need warrantee? Most people don't. Sometimes you acquire something through different means: presents, inheriting, thrift shop, etc. And that's avoiding the huge privacy matter of buying something with a unique tracking number attached and linked to you. 1: I'll take mine without hypothetical sugar please.

lnxg33k1 2y ago

It must be challenging to live in a cave isolated from the world ^^

maklu 2y ago

Something like https://www.refurbed.de/ https://www.refurbed.de/ or https://www.backmarket.de/ https://www.backmarket.de/. Works great for tech (higher resale value, small weight), but I can imagine it is tricky to set up the same business model for small non-tech items, furniture etc.

moribvndvs 2y ago

I had a similar idea and tried building it, but everyone I talked to about it couldn’t differentiate it from Craiglist or (eventually) Facebook Marketplace. User traction is the obstacle here.

cushychicken 2y ago

The Buy Nothing movement is essentially the same as this concept.

troq13 2y ago
Giving something away on "Buy Nothing" seems like the same amount of work as selling the thing to me (except with no money exchange).

Apreche 2y ago

Facebook Marketplace exists.

karmasimida 2y ago

Facebook Marketplace To avoid scammers are hard though, so usually people meet in public place for transaction Imagine you post a picture then exposing your home address that is scary

al_borland 2y ago
The problem with Marketplace and Craigslist is the time they take. I can just send the stuff somewhere and wait for someone to buy it. I need to post it, wait, hope that someone wants it at the same time I’m selling, filter out scammers, negotiate the price, arrange a meeting place, and go meet the person and hope they’re normal. For one relative high value item that’s ok. When someone had a lot of stuff to unload, or lower value items, it’s too much work or not worth the time.
- karmasimida 2y ago
  I mean it is a market, the market is THE mechanism to match and allocate. If it is low value, how do you know someone would want it anyway?
dzhiurgis 2y ago
There's plenty of open databases to look up tons of things about you. In NZ only reason people don't give out their home address is when they are selling something defective so you wouldn't hassle them over it.

mg 2y ago

I wish there was something like a second hand store where you can just drop your stuff for 10% of its price on eBay. I don't want to deal with anything. Not wait for someone to pick it up. Not wrap it in a parcel and bring it to the post office. Not sign up for some service. Nothing. Just drop my stuff, get a little bit of money and am done with it.

coev 2y ago
Pawn shops exist and will give you about that percentage for your stuff.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  For that small subset of "stuff" which is likely to sell quickly at a suitable profit in the local market as understood by the pawnbroker.
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    That is exactly the economic reason this idea doesn't work. Pawnbrokers know the value of things and how much effort they can invest in any one item. Selling anything they won't take yourself usually means that you'll have to invest a fair bit of your time to sell it. Anyone doing this commercially can't afford that labour unless the item is worth at least something like €100!
bombcar 2y ago
They are (or were) called consignment stores and most of them would be knowledgeable in their area to give you quick cash. If it’s valuable, you could pawn it. Most people just drop it on GoodWill.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

marban 2y ago

What's the point - this has been done dozens of times in various industries?

rglullis 2y ago

Kleinanzeigen is not a thing in Austria?

jgrizou 2y ago

That is what charity shops do in the UK. You don't make money as your stuff are donation, but the charity does when then resell. Works surprisingly well.

NietTim 2y ago

This is just ebay/facebook marketplace with extra steps and having to trust some company even more that they won't screw you over.

tootie 2y ago

That's called a "consignment shop". It's existed forever. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Taxis have existed forever and Uber is still a massive success.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

a_c 2y ago

I'm in a local parent group where people share second hand stuff all the time. It felt pretty efficient to me. I don't know, do we really want every interaction a big platform thing?

Euphorbium 2y ago

Exactly this was made in my country, Lithuania, and did not work. Maybe needed more advertisement, but I dont think that economics work without burning investor money.

neilv 2y ago

I'd like to use this service, too, if it worked reasonably. Pre-Internet, there were consignment shops for clothing. In earlier days of eBay, IIUC, there was a third party business with a chain of physical locations where you could drop off your stuff, and they'd do all the eBay hassle for you. eBay and Amazon have tried some ways to improve the one-off selling experience for select commodity-like used items (e.g., iPhones). There's also ways to get Amazon to warehouse and list misc. items (but that looked like more headache and risk than it was worth, for one-off). There's multiple businesses here that you can pay to remove most items, and I assume they cherry-pick some items for resale rather than trash. Goodwill takes donations, and has staff that intercepts some items to eBay (and perhaps elsewhere), lets professional third-party flippers into centers (e.g., finding designer clothing), and then the rest can go to their retail stores.

troq13 2y ago

That would be very nice. My suspicion is that a certain amount of work from the former owner, or from someone who is very knowledgeable about that type of object, is required to explain the value of the item to a potential buyer. Somehow the objects themselves are not the limiting factor (trash is full of good stuff that mostly stay there, because there is no one to do this work). It could work if the item was originally bought on Amazon and one could just point to the original listing, though.

antonpirker 2y ago

Thanks for all the comments! Really cool! I also got links to https://www.stuffle.com https://www.stuffle.com and https://www.circle-hand.com/ https://www.circle-hand.com/ via the blog. Some services mentioned really look promising, yet none offers the convenience that I would love (not thinking about anything) but I guess I will try some of the mentioned services!

picklebarrel 2y ago

Remoovit.com does this exactly. They pick up your stuff, then either sell, donate, or dispose of it. If they sell it, you get 50%, or if they have to pay to dispose, they charge you for it. Works great. Service area is just SF Bay and Phoenix so far.

DamnInteresting 2y ago

I built something similar to this for a client in 2002, I still have the Java source code. It was called CurbDiver [1], and the idea was that a local agent (a "broker") would list the thing for you on eBay (including taking nice photos), and if it sold, they would package/ship it for you and give you a percentage of the selling price (80% if memory serves). It had some promising early uptake, but it fizzled after a few years. There just wasn't much money to be made, even when being discerning about what items were allowed. It was a weak, inconsistent stream of nickels and dimes, and a lot of work to get it. One element that we underestimated was the volume of low value/no value stuff people wanted to try to push through. Pretty quickly agents learned when/how to say no, but even saying no consumes some resources. At its core it's not a bad idea, but such an operation would have to be very optimized to be profitable. [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/curbdiver.jpg https://www.damninteresting.com/temp/curbdiver.jpg

dzhiurgis 2y ago

IIRC Vinted is somewhat like that, they sort out shipping but you need to haggle yourself.

SJC_Hacker 2y ago

I don't think its a great business plan. Its basically an online pawn shop, but the company has to take your stuff. Warehouse space costs money unfortunately. Stuff that doesn't get sold, and its probably going >90% of items, has effectively negative value for the company, and then you add on transport fees. People overestimate how much their stuff is worth. Take furniture. Since it costs > $1000 for decent pieces, people think they can resell it. Except in certain rare circumstances, used furniture is effectively worthless, even negative value when you take into account you have to pay people to haul it away, like I did a few times when I moved. Even though THEY would never buy used furniture, they always think "someone" will. And it goes the same for alot of used electronics. Cars seem to be the exception, but there's already goodish solutiosn for those CarMaxx, etc.