Company helps sell stuff stress-free on Mercer Island

Published 11:28 am Thursday, January 28, 2016

A new Seattle-based startup is hoping to be the “Amazon of selling things,” according to its co-founder and CEO Adam Dreiblatt.

StuffHopper, which has been in business for a year and is now expanding to Eastside markets including Mercer Island, Bellevue and Issaquah, aims to make it as easy as possible to sell furniture, appliances, tools, electronics, sporting equipment and other items.

“While companies have made it practically instant and effortless to buy stuff, it is a still a huge, time-consuming pain to sell things that we don’t want,” Dreiblatt said.

The company’s expansion is especially timely, he said, as people face their New Year’s resolutions to declutter their lives. The research firm NPD found that the average household has $7,000 worth of unwanted items, and according to the U.S. Department of Energy, a fourth of Americans with two car garages have so much stuff in them, they can’t even park a single car.

There are many do-it-yourself options to sell things, but StuffHopper provides a “convenience play,” with no upfront cost and a simple process.

“Customers tell about their stuff in a few seconds via our app or website, our professional team picks up their items and stores them off site [and] we sell them and the customer gets paid,” Dreiblatt said.

It works like a traditional consignment store, with StuffHopper receiving 50 percent of the profits when items are sold. But the company is able to take in and sell a much wider range of items to a broader customer base than a retail outlet.

“We photograph each item and post them on the selling channels that are best for each thing. So we sell stuff on Craigslist, on Etsy, on Ebay, OfferUp, a whole bunch of channels … to get things in front of the most possible buyers,” he said.

The company has been through three different locations already, the latest of which is a 12,000-square foot warehouse in Seattle.

“We started, literally, in my garage,” Dreiblatt said.

But the company “definitely has plans to expand,” he said, hoping to be in most major cities while maintaining a high level of customer service.

“We’ve helped sell customer items to buyers as far away far away as Australia, France and Russia,” he said.

Not every item is sellable, though StuffHopper works with customers to get the best deal possible, or provide other options.

“Items that we pick up but can’t sell, customers can either take back or we will donate them to charity for them and will provide them with the tax receipt,” Dreiblatt said.

The easiest things to sell are recent electronics and mid-century modern furniture, and the hardest things to sell are China cabinets and dated electronics, he said.

StuffHopper has sold several interesting items recently, including an antique pinball machine, a 6-foot tall knight in shining armor, a commercial grade Italian gelato machine, custom Porsche wheels, Precor Elliptical machines and vintage Star Wars collectables.

For more, see www.stuffhopper.com.