Show HN: I built a website to buy and sell used clothes in Indonesia
preloved.co.id
preloved.co.id
I use Depop and Vinted here in the UK. We also have one called Preloved, which could be problematic.
I also know some vintage clothes sellers and a lot of stock comes from Indonesia. I'm always on the lookout for specific colours and styles of vintage items.
Could you open up your site Internationally somehow? I can already search using English terms. Currency conversion would be relatively easy. The main thing would be shipping. It might only be sensible to collect packages in Indonesia and ship them in bulk to the buyer (so, like Buyee for things from Japan)
I'm familiar with and love Depop! And I'm aware of Preloved too. Luckily, we're targeting different countries, so that potential issue you mentioned might not affect us.
Love the idea of international shipping! The shipping API we partnered with supports it, so it's definitely on our radar for the future. However, our current Indonesian payment provider has limitations. Credit card payments are disabled due to low usage, and the fees are quite high. Maybe we can consider implementing a minimum spending requirement for international orders?
On another note, I'll be kicking off the dev of the mobile app soon, so it might be a while before we can accept international orders.
Thanks for your interest! To stay updated, the best way is to create an account. Once international shipments become available, I'll send an email to everyone since it's a major development.
Their GMV is ~US$ 200 million/year, and their revenues are ~US$ 30 million/year.
I think the popularity comes from the really good mobile experience, that would be a top priority from a service like this.
Totally agree about the mobile aspect. Initially, I focused on making the website mobile-first, but we received numerous requests for a mobile app.
Since I'm not well-versed in mobile development and we're self-funded with a tight budget, I opted to super optimize the website for mobile instead. I figured optimizing for free traffic through SEO would be a fantastic starting point. Surprisingly, I stumbled upon a ton of high-traffic keywords with little to no competition, which got me pretty excited.
Are you comfortable in sharing your MRR? Even ballpark is ok.
If traffic is slowing down, your site might be suffering from that post-runout exhaustion in that channel. I see you are already taking steps to mitigate that. Have you thought about partnering or hosting your inventory on a popular retailer's site? Good luck with your biz.
Currently, the MRR is in the low three figures.
No, I haven't explored that yet. It sounds intriguing, but managing and removing user-submitted content could be challenging since it's all user-driven.
Thanks a lot!
Are you also tapping into other Indonesian sites like tokopedia or the gojek/grab economy?
Edit: It looks as if you are getting data from instagram. Is that correct?
All the content is user-submitted, and we rely on Instagram and Twitter for traffic. Some influencers spread the word and it really got things rolling.
We're actually competing with Tokopedia and Shopee, but they're not exclusively for second-hand clothing, although it's allowed there. We reached out to some sellers and found the turnover rate to be high, but it requires a lot of effort.
For pickup and delivery, we collaborate with couriers like Grab and Gojek. Additionally, we've partnered with a company/API that handles pickups and deliveries when a seller makes a sale on our platform, taking advantage of affordable postage in Indonesia.
Thrifting in Indonesia is booming, with Instagram as the main hub for buying and selling. Surprisingly, there's no (modern) dedicated platform like those in the West for the Indonesian market.
So, I created one, and it gained rapid traction. Now, I'm figuring out how to take it to the next level.
Influencers played a big part initially, giving us a boost by mentioning our platform organically.
Growth has slowed down lately, but I'm going all-in on SEO. Found a bunch of untapped, high-traffic keywords with little competition. Fingers crossed for some serious results!
Do you also ask people if they speak "langue" if you want to know if they speak French?
If you're talking about Indonesians refererring to Indonesian in an English language context, yeah some of them do this too (like the original commenter I replied to above), I can't imagine a context where an Indonesian would ask someone else in Indonesian if they understood "bahasa", because the Indonesian being asked would wonder "Which language do you mean?".
It would be like a Brit asking someone in London, "Do you speak language?".
But just like there's Singlish in Singapore, there's probably Indonesian English. Another pet peeve of mine is Indonesians using "married" as a verb (in an Indonesian sentence) instead of an adjective.
yes, my only source for my previous comment was a passport control officer asking me "do you speak bahasa" at the airport :-)
Looks like CC isn't accepted, but bank transfer is. Curious why that is?
In Indonesia, credit card usage is around 6%, one of the lowest in the region. We prioritize e-wallet payments, with banks as a secondary option. E-wallets have minimal fees compared to credit cards, which are relatively high with our current payment provider. For now, I've disabled credit card payments, but I might enable them in the future for orders above a certain amount.
Just to clarify, 4500000 rupiah is approximately equivalent to 300 USD.
I've added categories, subcategories, brands, colors, and sizes for users to customize their listings. Thankfully, most users are putting in a lot of effort, so moderation isn't a big issue in this area.
I set up a Telegram bot to notify me whenever a new listing is added, which helps me stay on top of things quickly. :)
If you did have to sort clothes from bags though you would probably just do it manually to start with, and if you had to scale up you would probably empty the bags onto a belt conveyor and then have people manually pick and sort into different containers, then put those containers through inspection phases or different disposition routes (ie only a small portion will contain clothing worthy of sale on an apparel site, some will be stained and need to go through a different sales channel, there will be bags of junk or bedsheets that need to be sent for shredding to become industrial rags etc)
Unexpectedly made it to the front page of Hackernews, and now my small server is seriously being put through its paces. It's clear I need to upgrade it ASAP.
Is there a specific reason for sourcing from this country over others?
Though I'm born and raised in the Netherlands, my Indonesian heritage and language skills give me some insight into the market. After doing limited SEO and market research, I saw a great opportunity. So, I hacked together a platform and recently launched it. It's showing promise, but I'm still a bit skeptical.
Indonesia is not very green but technology like this can help address that
I've used VueJS/NuxtJS/Tailwind for the frontend and a NodeJS/ExpressJS/Postgres backend. I've developed everything custom and didn't rely on a headless commerce solution.
Best way to learn imo is to just start with an idea and tackle one task at a time. Before you know it, you'll have a fully functional and impressive creation on your hands