Swapit Traction Update – March 1st +82% User Growth in One Month

On February 1st we had a great 17,481 users on Swapit. Today on March 1st, 2016 Swapit has made an incredible jump up to 31,810 users!

Compared to our last month’s 94% growth of users, we managed to grow at a steady pace in the past thirty days at about 82% month-over-month.

Have you downloaded Swapit yet? It’s free to join the largest mobile community to trade pre-loved items in Hong Kong: http://get.swapit.la

 

Read up all historic traction updates from us here: https://swapitblogit.wordpress.com/category/traction/

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2,000 Traders – swapit doubled in less than 2 months

Do you remember my blog post on August 18th? It had the title 1,000 Traders – Swapit Just Went 4 Digits. This means in a bit less than 2 months, we were able to grow our user base by over 100%.

We’ve been working hard on recruiting more traders onto our platform. It looks like our growth on that end is accelerating. That’s absolutely great, because we need to ensure our hyper-local marketplace comes with enough marketplace liquidity to sustain.

Other current stats are:

• Current users: 2,067 (previously 1,002 up 106%)
• Items posted: 979 (previously 628 up 56%)
• Value posted: $1,165,498 (previously $482,002 up 142%)
• Chat messages sent: 4,714 (previously 3,153 up 49%)
• Comments posted: 2,005 (previously 1,086 up 84%)

Note: the percentages stated above are in relation to the “previous” numbers published in our 1,000 Traders – Swapit Just Went 4 Digits blog post.

Download swapit for free: http://get.swapit.la

More about swapit:

• Swapit Covered by Jumpstart Magazine
• Swapit got accepted into the TGN BootCamp 2015 – and turned it down
• Swapit beta 9 – Launched – Facebook Groups, 18 New Categories, 中文
• Swapit Secures Support Worth $30,000 from Facebook’s FbStart Program
• $1 Million on Swapit
• Swapit Covered by Top Funded
• Swapit partners with Street Value Asia
• Introducing Swapit Web Teasers
• Swapit Secures Support from Microsoft BizSpark Program
• Seed Round Fund Raising has Started for SWAPIT Hong Kong
• Swapit Secures Support from SoftLayer Catalyst Program
• Swapit was featured in the HK VIBES Magazine for RISE 2015
• Swapit Is Compatible With 95.1% Of All Android Devices

Swapit Secures Support Worth $30,000 from Facebook’s FbStart Program

Swapit has just been accepted into Facebook’s FbStart program which gives us access to $30,000 worth of startup services. With great honor, we appreciate the trust brought towards us by the FbStart team. Here is what FbStart is about:

FbStart is a new program from Facebook designed to help early stage mobile startups build and grow their apps.

At Swapit, we are dedicated to take full advantage of the tools and services given to us. Some might not apply to us, but others are really useful. To give you a quick overview of what we can tap into, here is a list of companies that are partners of FbStart and provide some of their services to us:

Category BUILD – Everything you need to build your app and your business

Parse, Adobe, Appmethod, Asana, Balsamiq, GitHub, Mobile Action, Namecheap, Proto.io, Rocket Lawyer, Transparent Business, UserTesting, Yandiki

Category GROW – Grow your app’s reach and engagement with these great tools

Facebook, Facebook Marketing Partners (Nanigans, Glow, Ampush, AdParlor, Social.com), Desk.com, Hootsuite, MailChimp, Transifex, Workable, Zendesk

Category MONETIZE – Start earning revenue from your app with our monetization partners

Stripe

Here is a quick overview:

Again, we are absolutely delighted to be part of the FbStart eco-system and are looking forward to work together. We have already integrated Facebook into Swapit. We are looking to do much more on that front and revolutionize the way people trade pre-loved items nearby.

Have you tried Swapit yet? Download it at http://get.swapit.la

P.S.: Just in case someone is interested, this is the information I left the RISE conference this year where the FbStart folks talked to me. Seems it worked out to follow up on it.

$1 Million on Swapit

Remember last month when I wrote this blog post about $400,000 on swapit! Now, we have been working in getting more folks on board and use Swapit to trade their goods. At the same time, we have received lots of love from companies like SoftLayer, Microsoft, Street Value and others. It seems to be paying off!

Today the total value of items posted on Swapit surpassed HKD $1,000,000.

That’s a total increase of +115% since our last milestone at $400,000.

We are currently working hard in getting the swapit beta 9 to you. It’s is almost ready and will come with greater ways to buy or sell your pre-loved items. We are looking forward in getting it to you as soon as possible. Stay tuned! Beta 9 will be released very soon!

You didn’t try Swapit yet? Download it for free at http://get.swapit.la

Swapit partners with Street Value Asia

We have started to collaborate with Street Value Asia for the Hong Kong market. Here is a quick overview of their business:

Street Value is a distribution and brand building partner for global lifestyle brands with a tech focus.

Our extensive knowledge of consumers and deep connections into the China market enables us take young and ambitious brands successfully from launch into established category leaders.

In particular, Swapit is providing its marketplace platform and expertise to Street Value for selling overstock items of the brand products Street Value carriers. Here are some brands Street Value is carrying today:

Street Value is usually the sole distributor in Hong Kong for all the brands they carry. So for example, any Marshall headphone you can buy at Fortress, CitySuper Log-on, DG Lifestyle, G.O.D., HMV, Lane Crawford, etc. (view their full retail network here) comes from Street Value.

Now, Swapit gets access to a wide variety of products and brands in Street Value’s overstock warehouse which can be distributed at huge discounts of at least 50% discount.

Some products of exotic brands actually never made it into the retailers mentioned above and are therefore, pretty much exclusively available on Swapit. That even on very attractive discounts.

Let me show you some examples of products that are now available on Swapit at huge discounts.

iRig PRE. At 52% off the normal retail price, this is a serious bargain! It’s brand new, by the way. View the iRig PRE here: http://items.swapit.la/5670976570261504

Eskuché 45s. 82% off the usual retail price. Who wouldn’t be interested in that? View the Eskuché 45s here: http://items.swapit.la/5176418468102144

X-mini Capsule Speaker. 80% off the usual retail price. You can’t get it any cheaper! View the X-mini here: http://items.swapit.la/5156171992268800

Every day, new products will be made available. So stay tuned! There is more to come.

Have you tried swapit yet? Download it for free: http://get.swapit.la

Swapit Secures Support from Microsoft BizSpark Program

Swapit has applied for the Microsoft BizSpark Program and has been accepted right away. We are proud to have been selected by Microsoft to become part of their startup eco-system that allows Swapit access to Microsoft’s vast resources, locally and globally.

Here is how Microsoft BizSpark advertises itself:

BizSpark gives startups 3 years of free stuff – software, services, tech support, and Azure cloud. Your startup qualifies if it is less than 5 years old, is privately held, and earns less than $1M annually. And at the end of your 3 years, you keep all the software you’ve downloaded – at no cost.

Benefits of the BizSpark program Swapit can tap into:

1. MSDN Subscriptions (worth US$40,000)
2. Microsoft Azure Benefits (worth US$27,000)
3. Windows & Windows Phone Developer Accounts (worth US$300)
4. Office 365 Subscription (worth US$1,500)

So in total, Swapit can access benefits through the Microsoft BizSpark program of up to US$68,800. That comes on top of the invaluable network benefits we receive by being a Microsoft BizSpark member.

Related posts:

• Swapit Secures Support from SoftLayer Catalyst Program
• Swapit Covered by Hong Kong Business
• Swapit was featured in the HK VIBES Magazine for RISE 2015

1,000 Traders – Swapit Just Went 4 Digits

Last week we reported a very lucky number – according to Chinese customary belief – of 888 users on swapit. Only 5 days later we have surpassed our next milestone of going 4 digits:

1,000 traders are now on swapit!

That’s a staggering increase of 11.2% over the last 5 days. If the absolute growth in numbers of traders would continue at a linear rate, we would be growing at an avery 70% month-by-month. However, our growth has been exponentially over the past months, and we are currently working on the next release of swapit which will foster that even more. So stay tuned and make sure you have swapit running on your phone. You might find just the right item for you.

Other current stats are:

• Current users: 1,002
• Items posted: 628
• Value posted: $482,002
• Chat messages processed: 3,153
• Public comments posted: 1,086

Download swapit for free: http://get.swapit.la

More about:

• Seed Round Fund Raising has Started for SWAPIT Hong Kong
• Swapit Secures Support from SoftLayer Catalyst Program
• Swapit was featured in the HK VIBES Magazine for RISE 2015
• Swapit Is Compatible With 95.1% Of All Android Devices
• $400,000 on Swapit

Swapit Secures Support from SoftLayer Catalyst Program

Swapit has just joined the SoftLayer Catalyst Program at their highest tier for startups. We are very excited to have been accepted to SoftLayer’s very own startup incubator who’s core mission is

to enable next generation technologies and empower the entrepreneurs that will bring them to market.

We are thrilled to get access to the benefits that come with SoftLayer Catalyst:

1. Access to a significant USD infrastructure credit on the SoftLayer platform.
2. Mentorship access to “pick the brains of the industry veterans and über-genisues”.
3. Incubator Integration, which allows us to collaborate and access more support outside, but affiliated with the SoftLayer incubation eco-system.

We will tap into all three of these benefits to grow swapit as fast as possible.

Since, we have launched our investor outreach for our funding round, we have received absolutely great feedback and accomplished to join several programs that help us cover costs, validate our business model and raise our valuation.

$400,000 on Swapit

Today swapit has surpassed the milestone of $400,000 worth of items posted! I previously wrote about how we are Coping with a Constantly Increasing Flow of Pre-Loved Items. The speed of new item posts is accelerating right now. While it seems that our presence at RISE Hong Kong was quite successful from a business, strategic and investment point of view, we were also able to get some of our startup peers interested in swapit — from a user acquisition point of view.

More and more items are coming to swapit every single day. Some of the popular items on swapit are:

Coping with a Constantly Increasing Flow of Pre-Loved Items

Every day swapit receives many new items being posted all over Hong Kong. Here is a quick map that shows how these new item posts distribute across the main populated areas of Hong Kong:

In simple numbers, swapit’s growth is now:

• 0.7% new users per day (22.7% new users per month)
• 3.5% new item posts per day (107% new item posts per month)

It is great to see that swapit is expanding its catalog of products and user base constantly. We had been actively reaching out our target audience over the past couple of months, but we have stopped doing that about two weeks ago. We wanted to see how our organic growth rates are performing without any additional effort through our outreach efforts. That seems to prove at least some stickiness and value of swapit with our existing user base who is passing information about swapit via word-of-mouth.

To cope with the ever constant increase in users, content and activity on our platform, we don’t actually have to do much additional work. In my previous blog post “Choosing a platform for swapit.” I explained how we considered different platforms and finally went to go ahead with the Google Cloud Platform in terms of backend. This now allows us to focus on the important (business) parts of swapit and not being stuck with technology challenges that many of our competitors are facing.

Swapit has built with hundreds of thousands of users in mind and on an extremely scalable platform that automatically adapts itself to a larger number of users and content.

Stay tuned for the next swapit beta 7 coming your way. We’re moving forward, step by step … sometimes with a jump in between!

Download swapit for free at http://get.swapit.la