Carousell: Selling with a story

Whether you went through a bad breakup or just need to declutter and pare down your belongings, sometimes you don’t know where to turn to when it comes to getting rid of your extra stuff. Donating is a good option but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to convert these items into cash. Who doesn’t want some extra money in the bank after all? Enter Carousell, a buy and sell app with a twist.

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Carousell is a Singapore-based company that was started by three people Marcus Tan, Lucas Ngoo, and Quek Siu Rui, who now stand as the company’s president, chief technology officer, and CEO, respectively. And like any company worth their salt, the app was born out of necessity. As Vulcan Post writes, the three co-founders wanted to declutter their homes after coming back from Silicon Valley but they didn’t want to go through the hassle of advertising on forums. So, they built an app on their own So, they built an app on their own (which is available for both Android and iOS).

Carousell adheres to the idea of “Snap, List, Sell” as a response to how the younger generation use products and services these days. “As part of the Snapchat and Instagram generation, we intuitively felt that this was the experience we wanted. We couldn’t get it in the market [so] why not build it?” Siu Rui tells Vulcan Post.

Snap-Sell, Chat-Buy

We’ve come a long way from selling items in classified ads. Online forums for a time was the place to buy and sell items. And then there were Facebook groups and personal online shops, some have even come to platforms like Instagram. Carousell took the best parts of this and placed everything you need to transact within its app.

With a layout similar to what you’d find on Instagram, it’s an easy process to either buy or sell on the site. For sellers, you just need to register and the app will let you “snap” photos within the app of the items you want to sell and you’re in business. Everything happens within the app. You can chat with buyers and sellers there, which means you don’t need to give away your personal number to them.

As a buyer, it’s easy to look for the things you want to buy as these are organized into categories or you can do search or you can look for items being sold within your area (a useful feature for trying to organize meetups to get the item). Plus, Carousell boasts of special interest groups in the app. If you’re a book lover, you can search for buys there. At the same time, you become part of a community where you can talk to others about your interests and sell your precious books to someone you know would appreciate them.

Just like other shopping apps, the ratings and reviews are an important part of Carousell’s DNA. While you have to be wary of fraudulent buys on your own, the app and its users take special care to make sure no one breaks the rules—a self-policing of sorts. Its sellers want to make sure they keep their ratings up. But if things go awry, you can always get in touch with Carousell and have them deal with the rule-breaker for you.

So, if you need to do a bit of spring cleaning, here’s one app that’s going to help you make some money from your pre-loved items.