Kelly Briggs and Darek Daca want to help people find new homes for their used, unwanted outdoor gear.
The Revelstoke couple are the brains behind the newly-launched Never Tracked Out (NTO) used gear marketplace, now online at https://www.nevertrackedout.ca/. The website serves as a virtual consignment store where people can buy, sell and, sometime soon, rent outdoor gear.
Briggs said she and Daca, both outdoor enthusiasts, got the idea to begin NTO after attempting to sell some of their own gear through different buy and sell options on Facebook and elsewhere. She and Daca found these options unorganized and not always safe for buyers or sellers.
How NTO works is that sellers posting a “pro” listing are required to rate the condition of their gear. Briggs explained how this is significant to the outcome of the sale.
“(Sellers) are advised to rate it accurately because the customer, once they receive it, they can send it back or deny it if it’s not the quality it was listed as,” said Briggs. “So if somebody says it was in excellent condition and the person receives it says it’s not… we don’t pay the seller, and then they can ship the stuff back or get their money back or get a reduced rate. That’s sort of our buyer protection policy.”
Buyers using the pro site submit payment to NTO. Once they receive the item, they have 48 hours to verify they want to keep it. When the 48 hours is up, the seller gets paid and the order is complete. Shipping costs for pro-listings are reimbursed immediately (unless seller chooses a free shipping rate).
Rentals are a work in progress, but would be co-ordinated through the website.
Briggs said NTO will keep 15 per cent commission on pro-listed items and 20 per cent on rentals.
Currently, there’s also an option for free gear listings through which buyers and sellers can deal with one another directly. But Briggs said she and Daca are thinking of eliminating this feature.
The website is intended for in-Canada use only, though Briggs and Daca are thinking globally, not just in the re-use/recycling of gear, but also committing one per cent of their profits to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
“People who care about the outdoors often care about the environment… so we’re able give back a little bit as we all exchange our gear,” said Briggs.
Asked what aspirations they have for NTO, Briggs said she and Daca would like to see other consignment stores consider the website as a portal for reaching a wider market. Longer term, Briggs and Daca see themselves having a presence at events, local and across Canada, where there might be opportunities to collect used gear, either to donate or sell.
“We’re talking about having gear ambassadors around the country, so maybe people who work for us who can attend events, collect gear and then list it on our site and then they take a commission, potentially, from it,” said Briggs. “That’s an idea we were tossing around the other day. We would have to get a little bit bigger first, so people kind of recognize us at events.”
While the website has only been active for a week, Briggs is pleased to see people are catching on and putting it to use.