Easier Than Ebay
Date: 02/11/2009
Company: Second Rotation
Source: Forbes
Rousseau Aurelien stands inside a 12-foot-high steel cage in a former shoe factory in Boston, surrounded by $200,000 worth of used laptops, cell phones and videogame systems. The firm he founded, Second Rotation, bought the gadgets through a Web site it launched in July called Gazelle. The likely destination: Ebay. “What we’re doing here is buying dollars for 80 cents,” he says.
Aurelien estimates that only 1% of people in the U.S. bother to go online and sell their old electronic goods. He is betting that the current economic downturn will push more consumers to sell their used products for cash.
A customer enters the name of the product he wants to sell on the Gazelle site, rates its condition and gets an automated bid based on Gazelle’s current inventory and its past success in moving that product. If the customer accepts, he is sent a prepaid envelope or box in the mail. The company inspects the item it receives and cuts a check if it’s in the condition that the customer claimed. The company then wipes all personal data off the device before reselling it.
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