After finishing his college career as a lacrosse player at Holy Cross, Brendan Candon was volunteering as a youth lacrosse coach when he kept hearing frustrations around the cost of equipment.
“Around that time I had a conversation with a teammate from high school, my eventual co-founder Anthony Piazza, about buying some of his equipment used rather than replacing my equipment by purchasing new gear,” Candon remembers. “I saved a couple hundred dollars in the process, and that’s when the conversation started for building a website that would make it easy for athletes to buy and sell gear.”
SidelineSwap was soon born with a goal of “making sports gear more affordable.”
SidelineSwap is an online marketplace primarily focused on helping connect buyers with sellers of used sports gear. Since its launch in 2015, the platform has attracted more than 150,000 high school and college athletes as well as sports families. The company also just attracted its third round of funding and has raised $4 million overall.
Candon tells SGB that the founders knew options existed in the marketplace for selling and buying used sports equipment but found them to be limited. While eBay dominates the re-seller marketplace, less than 15 percent of the listings in eBay’s sporting goods category were used merchandise with the wide majority being new product. At the same time, Play it Again Sports, the leading franchisor of used sporting equipment, has closed nearly half its doors since 2000 and never made the transition online.
SidelineSwap’s entry comes as a number of other resale start-ups, all backed by venture capital, are finding strong growth in a wide array of categories. They include ThredUP, RealReal and Poshmark in fashion, Reverb for musical equipment and GOAT for sneakers.
According to ThredUP’s 2017 Resale Market Report, the traditional thrift store market is growing by 8 percent per year while the online resale market is growing more than four times faster at 35 percent per year. That’s 20 times faster than the broader apparel market overall, the largest category in the resale marketplace.
Driving the resale momentum is largely the savings from buying used merchandise given today’s price-conscious consumer. But another factor is environmental concerns. According to the ThredUP report, Millennials are 2.4 times more likely to be motivated by eco-conscious factors when shopping secondhand.
According to a Fung Global study on the trend, other underlying drivers of the resale trend is the appeal of second-hand shopping in general to Millennials, the entertainment factor of the treasure hunt for unique items, decluttering, and greater interest from higher-income shoppers and male customers. Online browsing makes it easier to find one-off items than a cluttered thrift store and many niche online re-sellers have developed rapid fan bases. Wrote Fung Global, “Smaller mobile app platforms have been much more technologically innovative and are taking market share from pioneering digital secondhand marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist.”
Noting that the company still hasn’t seen any other competitors solely focused on sports, Candon said SidelineSwap is looking to corner the market for sporting goods exchanges.
“By building a platform that’s hyper targeted on the sporting goods category, and simplifying the selling process, we’ve been able to attract a ton of athletes who otherwise would have let their gear collect dust in a garage,” said Candon. “In fact, 90 percent of sellers on SidelineSwap have never sold on another marketplace.”
SidelineSwap has two types of sellers. The vast majority are individual athletes and families selling last season’s gear and they typically earn a couple hundred dollars per season on average. Users are predominately high school and college students. Much like eBay, SidelineSwap also has a smaller group of professional sellers that source their inventory from a variety of different channels, including college and pro sports teams. Top sellers earn over $100,000 annually. Buyers save an average of 50 percent on each purchase.
To ensure the gear being sold is in good condition, SidelineSwap encourages sellers to “take great photos and provide detailed descriptions including the condition of the item,” said Candon. Every seller has a feedback section where previous buyers leave ratings. Full-buyer protection is offered on each transaction. Lastly, users can message each other prior to a purchase which allows them to ask additional questions about the product before purchasing.
The mix on SidelineSwap currently features about 70 percent used versus 30 percent new merchandise. The few small to medium sized brands selling new items generally use the marketplace for closeouts.
With 10 percent month-over-month growth during the past year, SidelineSwap now has a larger section of used sports equipment than eBay in several sports. The site has already become a destination for hockey, lacrosse, skiing, golf and baseball equipment but Candon expects to extend into other categories.
“We’ve focused on sports with high cost equipment because that’s where buyers have the most to save and sellers have to most to gain,” said Candon. “But, we also see lots of apparel, footwear, and electronics selling because once somebody successfully sells their hockey skates, they often list other items that athletes would be interested in as well. At the end of the day, SidelineSwap is built to be a marketplace that supports every sport, and we’ll continue to expand our focus as we grow.”
Investors in the new $2 million seed extension funding round included Global Founders Capital, Haystack Partners, Riverpark Ventures and Fullstack Sports Ventures. Others include Maria Thomas, the former CEO of Etsy; Sean Bratches, Formula One managing director and previously the EVP of sales and marketing at ESPN; and The Players’ Impact – an investor group formed by a number of Olympians and professional athletes, including Ryan O’Rourke (MLB), Bryce Salvador (NHL), Hayley Wickenheiser (Olympian Hockey Player), James Farrior (2x super bowl champion) and Randy Newsome (MLB).
“As a parent and a sports enthusiast, I love having a dedicated and reliable place to buy and sell our family’s sports gear,” said Thomas in a statement. “I’m thrilled to support this team as they help athletes stay on top of their games.”
“In terms of the used sports equipment market, SidelineSwap is trying to change how and what products get to the consumer,” said O’Rourke, a pitcher for Minnesota Twins. “To have elite level equipment showing up on youth fields all around the country is a testament to SidelineSwap’s idea, and more importantly the vision.”
Candon said the new funding will help the company make major improvements to the marketplace for both buyers and sellers, attract more users by widening its reach, and add new sports. Said Candon, “We’re proud of what we’ve built to date for the sports industry, but we also recognize we’re only scratching the surface of what we can offer athletes who are looking for discounted gear.”
Photo courtesy SidelineSwap
