Dawdle, an online market for resold games, consoles and accessories, relaunched this past Fall as a niche eBay competitor of sorts. It’s a place where gamers can get some money back on their old supplies, albeit not through auctions but a straightforward price listing and “buy it now” process.
After amassing a collection of about 5,000 unique items for sale across the site (but not yet amassing much traffic), Dawdle has decided to make things more attractive to independent, brick-and-mortar retailers who might want to sell their excess inventory online. In addition to simply listing your goods alongside everything else on Dawdle, individuals and stores alike can now set up their own virtual, branded storefronts. These are intended to help resellers cultivate their reputations onsite and hopefully ship more units.
Dawdle already has a handful of these storefronts up and running, such as one for BRE Software and another for Magisterrex. Products listed on each storefront can be filtered by type, price, platform, genre, and more. There appears to be no shipping fees or tax for any products, and Dawdle takes a consistent 11.99% commission on all sales.
Seller reputations are built around user reviews and the number of ways sellers identify themselves. Their rankings go up, in particular, the more they link their storefronts to sites that reinforce their identities (Facebook, Twitter, Xbox Live, etc).
CEO Sachin Agarwal says that the items on Dawdle are currently split about 50/50 between newly released products (like those for the Xbox, Wii, PS3, etc) and classic products (like those for Nintendo 64, Genesis, NES, etc.) To generate interest in this new storefront feature, Dawdle has hired a sales team that will actively reach out to independent retailers.
A store without traffic is next to useless. If you want to sell excess inventory, go on eBay or Amazon or Overstock and sell it there in 1/100th of the time if will take you on this site.
They just started; unless they cluster dump thousands of dollars in to ads they’re not going to have tons of traffic.
Even though there are fewer buyers, there’s also fewer sellers to compete with. And let’s be honest, Ebay is an abortion. Here’s hoping this takes off.
And here’s to hoping this is available overseas. I’m sick of trading my “still new” games for next to nothing!
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
GamingJobs
There are some really amazing features to this Web site. As well as great branding execution. I think this is definitely heading into things full steam, I wouldn’t doubt Dawdles huge success in the very near future.
Thank you so much for the kind words!
We’ve spent a lot of time on “fit and polish” parts of the site – StandingOffers, our search screening, the way we handle credit cards, etc. – and it’s always great to have someone acknowledge them.
It’s going to be very hard for them to compete with Amazon and eBay who hold the lion’s share in the online video games sales market.
On a scale of bedroom startup or venture capital based startup ideas, I’d have to say I put this one in the bedroom.
You say this like getting VC actually means that your company will be successful…
I can’t wait for them to add video game trailers and personal reviews to the site. I think an Amazon for video games is a great niche.
Dawdle.com is awesome!!
Well done to you, Sachin, and your team. Can’t wait to see you Friday at the Facebook Developer Garage in Chicago!
regards,
Katy Lynch
WIB Community Manager
Is video game trading a big enough market? There have been a lot of companies that have tried this and have failed. How does Dawdle compete with the ease of brick and morter stores like Gamestop which have a much lower barrier to entry?
Just to be clear, Dawdle is for buying and selling games, systems, and accessories for cash money. We don’t facilitate trades. For trades, we recommend Goozex.
That said, there are over 3,000 independent brick-and-mortar stores and millions of gamers and lapsed gamers in the United States alone. We help all of them sell online for cash money with a site built for the product (just like StubHub does for tickets).
We are very, very bullish about our prospects – niche marketplaces have been able to raise quite a bit of money, even in this economy (Etsy, Foodzie, etc.) as we help bring together disparate buyers and sellers by reducing barriers to entry.
Great site! Dawdle is the best place for buying and selling anything game-related. I rarely play games, but I would use this over eBay or Amazon any day!
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It’s a great site. I actually just recently purchased from it and to be honest, I have never purchased an item and got confirmation in under 3 hours that my product was being shipped. I buy a lot of crap online and it takes average at best maybe a day to get a delivery confirmation. That is what really impressed me with the site. Great job. And if I tried to get my game on Ebay, the last time it took me like 2 weeks and the game was scratched. Bah humbug. So, do it!!! Check it out, you won’t me sorry