Shady characters looking to make a quick buck from the gullible have made selling on eBay a bit of a minefield over the years, so selling your second hand goods online to a smaller network of friends may well seem like a better option. Looking to make this as simple as possible is new Kentucky-based startup Keepio.
The service allows you to build an online inventory of your possessions and makes it incredibly easy to offer them for sale publicly via Twitter and Facebook or just privately among a network of trusted friends.
Interestingly, Keepio doesn’t charge any transaction or listing fees. CEO and co-founder Dave Durand tells me it’s all about helping transactions happen, even if it’s offline. “Moms selling their kid’s clothes to another local mom won’t pay transaction fees or shipping; they’ll meet up for lunch later. Members of a local scuba diving club aren’t likely to ship items either, but they use Keepio to coordinate and recommend items they value and exchange goods at their monthly meetups.”
Instead, Keepio is looking to generate revenue by making use of the knowledge it hopes to build up about its users’ tastes, targeting offers to individuals based on their personal preferences or brand allegiances; or by cross and up-selling related products. Durand explains, “A member with a Sony TV might need to replace a remote someday or, at the end of its useful life, would simply appreciate a 10% coupon to upgrade to the newest model. We’ll work with the OEMs and resellers to make this extremely easy for members.”
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Keepio may also offer a white label solution to existing networks in future. A local community center, for example, could run its own Keepio-powered selling network.
By taking a more interesting route than the traditional “Second hand market” approach to online selling, Keepio could carve a niche for itself helping people get on with selling to people they trust without having to worry about fees and admin. Its survival relies on the upselling and cross-selling business model working but if it can amass a large enough userbase, and the offers are tantalizing enough, this may not be a problem.
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