Apply HN: Wantobuy – Post items you want so sellers can sell them to you

1. Items you cant find anywhere - they may be rare or in limited quantities such as a pair of Nike Air Mag sneakers. In this case you'll be better placed to find your ideal product.

2. When you don't know exactly what product you want - people create 'want to buys' for generic items e.g. 'a black trucker hat'. This way, wtb posts can actually aid product discovery and make the whole shopping experience easier and less effort since sellers are coming to you and not the other way round!

Thanks!

This would help with product discoverability since other users can suggest products the buyer had not originally thought of as well as helping the buyer to get the exact product they want.

Cheers

Yeah, we're both in so many Facebook groups our newsfeeds are purely streetwear posts! As you say, the challenge comes when we want to get people onboard. The great thing is that these WTB posts already exist within the groups so I'm sure we can find a way of getting these on our platform in the beginning so we at least have the supply side of things covered. Yeah you're right, raffling a pair of Yeezy's would get everyone and their mum to download the app - something we'll look at down the line for sure.

I hear what you're saying about the website and we are looking to get something decent up before too long, however from talking to members, a growing number of people are using the Facebook Groups app to get their 'fix' of streetwear throughout the day, so an app would seem like the natural progression there. I do understand what you're saying and we'll certainly look into the desktop presence asap.

Great stuff, thanks again - I'll ping you an invite to test the app so far if you're interested?

Cheers!

I agree, with scale a catalog of what people want to buy and how much they want to pay for it turns us into a market research company of sorts!

Cheers!

Ideally, we'll sync up with the stock these businesses are currently holding and then be able to let them know who wants to buy their products. Win-win since businesses are accessing new customers that didn't previously know about them and the buyers are getting what they need.

I like the locality aspect though and I agree that should play a big role in this side of things.

Cheers!

To clear that up, when we talk about 'posting' we mean creating a Facebook post in a Fb Group.

The only time something would be sent in the mail is the same as conventional selling, when something has been purchased.

On top of that, when a user sells an item they must take a photo on the spot, not choose from their photo library. The photo is tagged with their username and date so the buyer is confident the item they're purchasing belongs to that particular seller.

Payments can only be sent/received using PayPal to start with since this is standard practise with our beachhead segment - Facebook Groups.

Authentication service - for items over a certain price we're looking to offer an authentication service where we can act as the middleman for the transaction. This way we can ensure premium goods are legitimate before sending them onto the buyer.

Of course, with marketplaces there's risk, however, we feel these steps will help to minimise this risk.

Process - Although I never got a chance to use it, we have looked into this and it seemed like eBay's service was hard work for buyers. The whole process of creating a 'wanted item' listing and then eventually purchasing that item seemed to be fairly ugly and involved entering auctionId's or setting up new auctions to complete the purchase... not fun!

Fees - eBay fees are sky high at 10% + listing fees. Instead of charging fees we're looking to generate revenue through referral, not charge the buyers/sellers directly.

Product discoverability - We're not bound to one platform. From scraping top retailers such as Amazon, Etsy, Alibaba and eBay we've got a wider search area to find exactly what buyers want.

Community - We're building this for the Facebook Group community because we would love to have something like this ourselves - it would make our lives buying/selling so much easier. As a result, the ability to chat with sellers within the app (not email) and share WTB listings to Facebook Groups gives our users much more power to find what they want, fast!

We're only using PayPayl to handle payments, employing a feedback system to combat untrustworthy users and in the beginning only allowing Log In with Facebook so users are authenticated to some degree.

Happy to explain any aspects in further detail!