The Exchanges

Q is kind of the, you know, first off, marketplaces are really freaking tough. I mean, you know this. How, how did you saw, I mean, like, give me the, I'm assuming, like, you're a creative guy. You did some weird shit. You had to have. Otherwise, you wouldn't, it wouldn't be working. Like, what is the weird stuff you did to grow the sellers and the buyers on your platform?

A Yeah, so I mean, we had to get very, um, scrappy to get this off the ground. I mean, it's a two-sided marketplace, so we have to acquire supply through sellers, and we also have to drive traffic, and that has to stay pretty much in line. If you get too much supply, sellers are unhappy because they're not getting enough sales. If you drive too much demand without enough supply, you don't convert on any of those people visiting your website. So, uh, the way we got this started, we, uh, Leverage connect. We had pretty unique insight into the sporting goods world of where there was, where there was inventory that was sitting in garages, warehouses, and equipment rooms. So what we did was we went to former college athletes, professional athletes, and other people in the industry who had accumulated piles of gear, uh, over their years of playing in some cases, or in some cases they were, uh, liquidating college equipment rooms or professional equipment rooms. We took that, got supply on the site, Uh, and it was really unique inventory. So think like, uh, like we had Jimmy Vesey, who's on the New York Rangers now, um, sell his college hockey stuff from Harvard. We had, uh, like, 25% of the former college lacrosse players come on and sell their stuff. Uh, we had a bunch of guys in the U.S. ski team do the same. So we get this highly desirable gear for these guys who were not selling ot…

AI assessment note: “we went to former college athletes, professional athletes... liquidating college equipment rooms”

Q Nice. And give us a sense of kind of growth and usage. So how many total buyers and sellers have you, you know, split those out for me. How many total buyers have used the platform since launch?

A Yeah, so we have about 12,000 monthly active users, so that means just come onto the platform, are socially engaged. Kind of like a key piece of what we've built is that it's more than just transactional, which is what eBay provides, or most e-commerce sites. It's social, so you can comment on people here, you can follow their locker, you can search, you can browse. There's a lot of window shopping that takes place, so that's the monthly active number, which is 12,000. And then buyers all-time, we probably have, I think we have about 6000 buyers, uh, since last June, and about 3000 sellers. In the last month, we've about 1500 buyers, and over, or just over a thousand sellers.

AI assessment note: “I think we have about 6000 buyers, uh, since last June, and about 3000 sellers.”

Q How has it actually happened? Like, give me the bullet. For the person listening right now that's starting with, you know, a hundred Instagram followers wanting to grow, I mean, are you doing, Share for shares. Are you using some hashtag strategy? How are you actually getting the new followers? Are you manually following other people than unfollowing them once they follow you? How do you do it?

A I mean, those are all tricks that I know people do. We, uh, we've done a little bit of that stuff in the beginning, honestly, like, some of it works better than others, so what's worked for us is create, spending time creating really good content, and it's not, like, high-quality content, it's just finding stuff that kids enjoy, and that's highlight videos, trick shots, like, all that type of stuff, and if you look through our feed, that's what a lot of this is, And they tag their friends, and that's how we grow our calls. And just to get into the nuts and bolts a little bit, I think you have to get a base, and like, however you get your first couple thousand, there's a lot of tricks for that. But once you do it, it shifts into this quality game of, you can only do tricks for so long, and then you have to build, like, a really solid content funnel in order to continue to scale what you're doing.

AI assessment note: “finding stuff that kids enjoy, and that's highlight videos, trick shots”

Q you in terms of buying athletes, like their favorite college athletes equipment? I mean, is it almost like a collectible thing? It's a big buildup. Like, you know, Jimmy X is about, you know, who's the best lacrosse player at Harvard is about to list his cleats on Monday at Three, like tune in to make sure you can grab them. I mean, is it kind of marketing like that?

A Yeah, there's some of that. So if you look at our Instagram pages, we'll be announcing, uh, college and pro you can only sell after you're completed. You've completed your NCAA career, but once you do, we'll use that type of unique inventory and those types of players to, there is a little bit of a collector component to it. It's about five to This is a brand, this is a hockey stick that, you know, or hockey skates that cost eight, 900 dollars. I use them for one season. I'm selling them for 450 now. So most of the items you're purchasing are just general items that are 50% off and are still in good condition. Um, and so that's the main value of the marketplace, but from a marketing perspective, we also use this unique inventory to get eyeballs onto the site.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, there's some of that. So if you look at our Instagram pages”

Q What's the weirdest, what's the weirdest thing that's sold through your, I'm really nervous about asking this question, but what is the weirdest thing that sold through your platform?

A We try to avoid, uh, jockstraps, but they're the, uh, for the most part, uh, I, you know, it's not, there's nothing crazy up top of my mind. Honestly, some of the more fun items is that we see kids selling beats, headphones, and iPhones, and some more accessories because, and Vineyard Vine shirts and, you know, all types of apparel, any training apparel. Um, the, because the mentality is we're reaching a very young customer who's never sold online before, so if they have success selling their hockey skates, why not list some of the other stuff in their house that they know these people will buy? So we actually had somebody sell an Instagram account through, through our site, um, that, that they built a large following and wanted to sell it to, to another kid who wanted to take it over. So, Interesting things like that. Um, nothing crazy weird, but, uh, there's definitely some interesting behavior going on with a young demo.

AI assessment note: “we actually had somebody sell an Instagram account through, through our site”

Q it. Right. So like someone thinking, I want to be the next PayPal, like you're doing it the right way, which is attack a, like a, a very specific niche and see what happens. So what is the next five years look like for you? I mean, if you start seeing people sell Vineyard Vine stuff, do you become like a better run the runway for like young college athletes?

A Um, I mean, the way we think about it is we want to be a resource for every sports family. Uh, and so that means we help them make money on the extra stuff in their house. When we're starting with sports gear, uh, we think we're going to build a large sporting goods brand, um, and then helping them turn the gear that they have into cash. So, right. So whether it's selling or buying, we think we could be a resource for a sports family, but we, we want to build the best possible shopping experience for athletes. That means, you know, there's, there's all sorts of stuff sold in Dick's sporting goods, and we want to make sure we pad out our inventory to provide that range of selection, uh, Um, but that's it. I mean, it's really build, build the best shopping experience for sport, the sporting goods consumer and be a resource for sports families. And there's, there's a ton that we could do to, uh, before we reach that goal, what's the average order value? It's around, it's, it's increasing, but it's around 80 bucks.

AI assessment note: “the way we think about it is we want to be a resource for every sports family.”