Quickable, a Boston-based startup which recently launched its Android app for smartphones, revealed this week that it had already accumulated over $1 million in merchandise listed on its Quickable Marketplace, an online classified site designed around leveraging the tech people already have with them to quickly and easily generate sales listings and auctions with just a few simple steps. With Quickable, users can quickly create listings for items they want to sell, and cross-post items directly to eBay, Craigslist, Facebook and the Quickable Marketplace, which launched just last week.
For those who’ve gone through the process of listing things for sale online, what Quickable provides sounds pretty attractive. Users can use their smartphone photos to provide pictures of what they’re selling, and once something sells, the service automatically takes the other listings down. It also provides unlimited, high-quality image hosting for both eBay and Craigslist sales, as well as PayPal payment options, and a feature that lets users set a special friends-only price for selling on Facebook, while maintaining a different price on eBay, Craigslist and the Quickable marketplace.
“We all carry around, always on, always with you mobile devices, with cameras, barcode scanners, and access to the internet,” Quickable co-founder Doug Brenhouse said in an interview, explaining how the idea for the company came out of the realization that selling on eBay wasn’t fun anymore. “Really everything you need to transact commerce well between two parties who are really motivated. And along with instant messaging, you can really improve the speed of communication and the types of transaction that you have, so we started building this platform.”
The new Quickable Marketplace provides buyers interesting features, too, allowing buyers to quickly communicate with sellers from their mobile devices within the app. It also leverages smartphone features to provide a better experience. You can see how far away you are via GPS, so that you can make a decision based on proximity. If you’re lining up multiple potential sellers of the same item, that’s definitely handy.
And while Quickable is cross-posting to Craigslist, it doesn’t seem to be in danger of running into the same kind of denial of access that scraping services like Padmapper have recently, when Craigslist decided to clamp down on its copyright terms. That’s because it’s actually generating additional listings for Craigslist, not trying to direct people to an alternative site, according to Brenhouse.
“We’re not getting involved at all in their ecosystem,” he explained. “All we’re doing is making it easier for people to list, and then what happens is that you can’t actually buy anything on Craigslist, since it’s really just a meetup service, because we offer the opportunity to pay through our application, what users are doing is if they do list on Craigslist, they no longer have to bring cash to a transaction.”
Quickable is free for all to use, though listing on eBay incurs its usual fees, as does paying via PayPal. The site hopes to generate revenue through brand partnerships, and also through premium features yet to be introduced, so the basic listing services will remain free for the foreseeable future. Additional functions designed to make creating listings even easier are also planned, including a feature that provides pre-written descriptions for common items, so you don’t even have to write anything to list an item for sale. An iPhone version of the mobile app is also expected by the end of this year.
Lately, instant selling online has become a trend with many notable players, including ShopLocket, Gumroad, Kout and more. Quickable is a key player to watch, however, because their approach leverages the major online marketplaces that already have built-in buying audiences, and also because it takes all the tedium out of that process and also combines it with online payment methods. If the startup can keep its basic services free while also building lucrative revenue opportunities, this first $1 million in listings should be just the beginning.
