Swop.it

Exchange goods nearby

12 followers

Exchange goods nearby

12 followers

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Get the items you need based on your location and interests. No money involved — just swop it. Exchange stuff even of different value or if your interests with seller don't match. Place an offer and see what you can get in return immediately.

Free

Launch tags:Android•iOS•Charity & Giving

Launch Team

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Promoted

Swop.it

Maker

Hello, hunting! People have been exchanging stuff through all their history, nowadays using groups, chats, classifieds or local swaps. Some do it to save money: freshening up the wardrobe is better when there’s no extra spending. Others see a way of giving their stuff a second life instead of throwing it away. Some people just join the community and have fun. We made an exchange platform for all these people. It’s called Swop.it. It can be hard to find people interested in others’ stuff. That’s why we help to make deals happen with technology. An algorithm matches goods based on geolocation and interests, helping the user see what he can get in return for his stuff immediately after the listing. Impossible things happen too: Swop.it can create a chain of exchanges, so the user gets what he wants even if their goods are not of the same value or matching interests. The initiator doesn’t even have to negotiate with everyone in the chain. All it takes is to give the goods to the next person in the group and get what they want afterwards. 🤝List your goods and make a deal in a few clicks, wasting less time on meetings in person. 🚛Own delivery service and an option to exchange securely through a deposit system. Exchanges run smoothly and safely. 🎦Built-in video calls. It saves time: you can examine the goods without leaving the app, so no extra meetings and commuting. Moreover, it keeps users' data private: no need to disclose personal details like phone numbers. 👁100% made for private deals. The service is designed for individuals, not professional resellers. We are happy to tell the whole store for the first time here to the community of Product Hunt, and we can’t wait to learn what you think of it. So, welcome aboard!

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5yr ago

Timestripe

@julie_kucher can I swop my old car?

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5yr ago

Swop.it

Maker

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

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5yr ago

Neighborverse

Awesome idea! Congratulations on the launch

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5yr ago

A product looks nice and fun! I'm a pro-sustainability guy, so I like really much that the app encourages and enables re-use. I also like that the team introduced a couple of cool features (like chain of exchanges and coins) that would allow to resolve some natural bottlenecks in exchange. @julie_kucher do you plan adding a community feature? I can easily imagine a community of home plants lovers or collectors of all kind that would love to have it.

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5yr ago

Swop.it

Maker

@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.

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5yr ago

upvoted. wish a good luck with the launch. 1) how you solve chicken and egg dilemma in your product? 2) which markets your r aiming at and what is your comparative advantage? can ebay ruin your business by adding this feature to their product? product looks nice and smooth, hope there is market for that

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5yr ago

Swop.it

Maker

@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.

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5yr ago

Awesome project, I hope you'll go far and get plenty of users! Just one question: how do group exchanges work? And what are the coins we can see underneath a product?

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5yr ago

Swop.it

Maker

@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.

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5yr ago

Reminds me of the Red Paper Clip story. In a good way.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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5yr ago

Hunter

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

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5yr ago

Swop.it

Maker

@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.

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5yr ago

You have created a soft currency (coins), which acts as an estimated nominal value. And this immediately devalues the concept of"exchange/barter". You have invented a problematique (application for exchanging unnecessary things), but you will ruin it for yourself with the presence of an exchange currency. How is this better than other exchange services (for example youla.ru)? I can feed fake currency by selling fake things to a fake account and buy the right thing.

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5yr ago

Swop.it

Maker

@bozhinov The internal currency gives people another way to exchange, it stimulates the users' activity, in addition, and it's an important difference from buy&sale deals, it does not stimulate the production of new goods. We moderate unscrupulous users with algorithms based on behavior patterns. In addition, we are complicating coins' transactions - goods for coins can only be obtained through delivery soon.

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5yr ago

Product Hunt

?makers I love the concept and can totally relate to it, especially since I've seen thrift stores booming in business. Have you tested it with some users? If yes, would love to know their experiences - and what all type of goods are being exchanged primarily?

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5yr ago

Swop.it

Maker

@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.

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5yr ago

Product Hunt

@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 :)

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5yr ago

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