Swop.it - Exchange stuff smart

@julie_kucher can I swop my old car?

@vlad_korobov Hi Vlad, publish your car and check this out 😉 we'll be glad to see you on Swop.it)

Awesome idea! Congratulations on the launch

@panphilov thanks for your support! We're glad to give more people a way to look at using their belongings different, now that there is a technological alternative to throwing them away or just bying new ones.

@serge_schukin It certainly was one of the many inspirations for the team :-)

@serge_schukin сan't lie — this amazing story is overwhelmingly popular, so it does pop up almost every time when we talk about group exchanges 🙂 Its morale is the exact reason why we engineered our product in a way where not only one person can get something valuable from the deal and enjoy it, but many.

@benoit_chambon It's a hard and high bar to keep, but we will try, thank you!

@benoit_chambon What’s a pity you can’t see our happy designer right now. Thanks ☺️

@maela_daugan Many thanks! It's great to see that this idea finds support. You're right, our platform supports the conscious consumption. There are no sell&buy deals — used things exchange for used ones too, so this mechanic doesn't stimulate overproduction.

@mish_mir Grateful for your support and twice as grateful for your suggestions and insights, Misha! Initially we thought we could do pretty well just with product categorization, but now it is clear (and you have it right) it's important to concentrate user attention on this. Topic-linked content in groups of interests sounds like an ambitious, but viable idea. Swop.it is not a marketplace, it's a community of like-minded people in the first place. And our task is to give them all the instrument they need.

@adityavsc pleasure to find like-minded person). We performed different tests with the audience and made changes based on the feedback and researches. Even tried to implement something similar to the mechanics of Tinder for goods, but there are some nuances 😅 The main categories of published and exchanged goods are electronics, household appliances, clothing, children's products, books and games.

@julie_kucher that's interesting. I can understand how important it is to try out various permutations and combinations before finding that 'right fit'. Rooting for Swop.it :)

@rubenwolff It's great you asked about group exchanges because it's the core of our non-standard approach. We engineered a mechanism in which user chooses desired item, but if he doesn't have a same-value trade for it or interests simply don't match — we find people with goods that can be placed in-between to complete the deal. That's how we create a group or a chain of exchanges, where it's important how exchanges are going to happen. Normally the original user would have to go through all people in the chain, which is a lot of stress. But if the chain exchange is settled through app by each member, it will be easier for them to speed the deal up by communicating in a sequence, one to another — or even use a delivery service and make it even faster. The more items are listed on the service locally, the faster and more efficient are those group exchanges. Coins are internal currency which helps to make exchanges for those people who have nothing to offer at all. It is also used to encourage and reward our users who bring value to the service. It also greatly helps to make Swop.it exclusive to private listers, not professional resellers who are in it only for the money.

@valentin_fokin great questions! Let me get a grip at them: 1) The solution is the spinning wheel of the watermill: the more you pour, the faster it spins, bringing more water onto itself. First you bring value to the community — this is where we come as makers of the platform, trying to give much needed instruments like ML-recommendations, secure messaging and calls, motivation mechanics and more. Users embracing it become the core of the community, bringing content and more users with them. It's true that at first it's a real hurdle, but that's why we know by now Swop.it is sure making value. 2) Absolutely, larger platforms can collaborate a feature like Swop.it core into their products — in fact, they do it a lot. Just a recent example — Nextdoor, which is already aiming to a forthcoming IPO, has a basic exchange functionality in it's neighborhood-based social network. But it's also obvious that classic marketplace/classifieds business model is oriented on sellers whose main purpose is making money, and when doing that the only goal is to maximize the profits in selling. Their main job is to attract business on to the platform (because it's where the top checks are coming from), so they really see their customers among the businesses, not so much among the users. These models don't really count the long tail effect, the regular user base who more often are consumer in these models, not the creators. What we trying to do is to embrace that long tail and the value it creates when it becomes a community, which we are able to do even with our limited resources because we don't need to follow the interests of businesses. That's how the whole service becomes valuable: it's a simple task to copy functionality, but a bit harder one to make a community switch to something else.

@kirill_malev I hope you enjoy using our app! What is unused for one could be a treasure for another ✨