Recently I stumbled across an interesting site: SwapitShop - funny enough the guys are flying so deep under the radar that - although I read an obscene amount of blogs - I haven’t heard about them before.

What do they do? They basically took the idea of a marketplace a la eBay and adopted it for kids. As kids can’t be trusted with money (believe me - I know… years and years of watching “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” made that very clear) items are traded against a virtual currency on SwapitShop. You basically accumulate points (niftily called “Swapits”) by offering stuff you don’t need anymore (say your big brothers holy DVD collection) and can in turn spend your Swapits to buy swag from other kids (say their little sisters Barbie collection). I guess you get the concept…

Why are they actually really interesting? Let’s start with the fact that they found an interesting niche and one in which it’s not very likely that eBay will become a competitor (for numerous reasons - see some of the obstacles later). SwapitShop has some interesting traction - by my latest count they had about 13.000 items online and more importantly: A good chunk of them had bids on them. Not bad, really.

Further they tap into the vast array of marketeers who would love to ‘talk’ to kids - by offering Swapits for participation in questionnaires, little games and so on. A slick way to drive down a marketing message to kids and have them engage with your brand. The team from SwapitShop already has secured a number of top brands as partners (Disney, EA, Nickelodeon, etc).

Now let your fantasy go wild - you really can see all the business development opportunities SwapitShop has. From partnering with every single children related on- and offline site to creating an alternative currency which can be used across multiple sites to very innovative marketing opportunities and/or simply creating the next Amazon especially for kids (where Swapits are the currency). There is indeed a bright spot for SwapitShop… if… yeah, if the following issue won’t kill them:

Their biggest issue will most likely be the governance of the marketplace - imagine little Joe putting daddies p**n collection up for sale. Or - even worse - someone with really bad intent reaching out to the kids on the network. That’s a major headache for eBay - and eBay is an organization which is significantly bigger, has some very clever tools and enourmous ressources dedicated to keep this problem in check. And yet they still have enough problems with this topics.

Keep an eye on SwapitShops - the guys are definitely onto something.

Posted in E-Commerce