I recently found Zwaggle and thought it was a great idea. I was interested to find out who was behind the site and how they conceived and executed the idea. I dropped an email to Adam Levy, one of the co-founders, and he was gracious enough to answer my deeply probing questions.
What is Zwaggle?
Zwaggle is an online community where parents can share their kids’ used gear with other parents using a points-based system. Families earn points when they give an item to another family and can use those points to acquire a different item or items that their family needs. No money trades hands between members. It’s a giant, nationwide, eco-friendly sharing network of families.
The site includes pictures and descriptions of items, transaction settlement support, integration with FedEx, the ability to trade privately within a group, locally or nationally, as well as charitable contributions, Google Maps, private messaging, and many other features. Zwaggle combines the best of both offline and online offerings into one targeted, easy-to-use interface.
Where did you get the idea?
The idea came from witnessing the massive amounts of gear that parents were acquiring for their kids. New parents seem to think about the first years being particularly gear intensive, but it never really ends. Once the strollers are out the door, then come wagons, followed by bicycles, skis, video games, etc.
The costs for some of these items are extremely high and only going up, and most of the stuff is only used for a short period of time. It’s wasteful and expensive. We felt there had to be a better way. So we created Zwaggle.
When did it start?
We’ve been working on the idea together since the fall of 2005, although we’ve been thinking about it longer than that. A private beta went live in March of this year, and the public launch took place in August.
Is this a side project or a full time job?
Both Andrew and I have been full time on Zwaggle since the end of last year. We believed so strongly in what we were trying to do with Zwaggle, we decided it needed 100 percent of our attention to make it a reality.
Did you code the site yourself?
The core site was outsourced to a firm in India. We now have a team of both in-house employees and contractors that continue to work on the site.
How many users does Zwaggle have?
We currently have over 2500 registered families in all 50 states.
There seems to be a lot of users from the Denver area, why is that?
I live in Denver, so I have a lot of contacts here who helped get the site started. Denver used to be our largest concentration of users, but, as the site has grown in the past few months, that is no longer the case.
Is Zwaggle a for profit entity?
Yes, Zwaggle is a for-profit company.
Thanks Adam! I highly recommend you give Zwaggle a try to give that stuff your child has outgrown to someone who can really use it and to pick up the stuff you need. All the trades are basically free, you just pay shipping.
You are in line for a review. Also, great site man. I will need to check out Zwaggle. Thanks for the tip!