BUY & SELL
A look at the rules and craze around the growing marketplace of online garage sales,
It’s already out with the new and in with the newer for some Facebook For Sale groups as there’s an app for that now.
The Leslieville Swap ‘n’ Sell group has moved to the smartphone sphere, and other groups are considering doing the same as Torontobased start-up VarageSale expanded into 24 more neighbourhoods across Ontario in July.
“We want to be at the heart of every local community,” says CEO Carl Mercier, who founded the app with wife Tami Zuckerman.
The app, which allows users to post items for sale directly to their virtual community and facilitate transactions all within the phone app, is already popular among some Facebook group administrators.
“It’s a little less work from an admin point of view,” says Vee Ledson, the creator of the Toronto Beaches Moms Buy And Sell group. “Facebook is just not organized. It doesn’t have the different options that VarageSale has.”
On any given Facebook For Sale group, you might find Himalayan bath salts on the same feed as puppy clothing or scaffolding. But on VarageSale, users can browse more than 40 categories and hundreds of subcategories.
You can find Baby Items or specifically Diapering items and kids’ cloth- ing by every age group. You can browse Antiques and Collectibles or seven subcategories of electronics.
“Right now, they’re two quite different platforms,” says Ledson, noting some still prefer Facebook. “They like to see what’s for sale in their Facebook feed.”
The VarageSale app is now used in 42 states and all Canadian provinces, part of a huge expansion after the couple raised $34 million (U.S.) from high-profile Silicon Valley investors responsible for other popular software such as DropBox and Snapchat.
On an altruistic end, VarageSale is providing new books to five schools in downtown Toronto including Orde Street Junior Public School, Sprucecourt Public School, Blake Street Junior Public School, Holy Cross Catholic School and St. Luke Catholic School, as well as 30 other schools across Ontario.
“We didn’t look at it as building another classified platform,” says Mercier. “We built a platform for local communities, where people could feel comfortable being in a friendly environment.”