In this consumption-crazed world we live in, buying things has never been easier. Retailers have made the purchasing process so convenient that, oftentimes, buying new stuff only takes one click. Hell, in some cases you don’t even have to click — you can sign up to have crap delivered to your door on a recurring schedule if you want.
Getting stuff is easy, but for some reason, selling, disposing, and donating your stuff isn’t quite as streamlined a process as acquiring it. As such, we all tend to accumulate crap at a faster rate than we get rid of it. Go ahead and laugh at those people on Hoarders, but we’re all guilty of it. Even with sites like Craigslist and eBay, you’ve still got to go through the tedious process of making a listing for each individual item, which, if you’ve got a particularly large collection of old junk, can be a rather daunting task.
Gone is an upcoming startup from Austin, Texas that aims to simplify this process and make getting rid of things a little less arduous. Think of it as a sort of app-driven concierge service.
To use it, you just download the app and snap a picture of the items that you’d like to disappear, then add a brief description. Gone takes care of the rest. It’ll set the sell price for each item, and then list everything on an array of different marketplaces. When it finds a buyer, Gone sends you a box to stick the stuff in, and then returns the next day to pick it up and ship it to the recipient. If it can’t track down a buyer, it’ll still send you boxes so you can easily donate your stuff to charity. Snapping a few pictures and packing up your items is literally the only effort you have to put into this.
Of course, the company takes a small cut of the profits for each item it sells, so if you’re looking to maximize the money you get back, you’d probably be better off listing the items yourself. But that’s not what Gone is about. It isn’t geared toward penny pinchers — it’s made for anyone looking to clear out a bunch of stuff without spending time posting dozens of listings and negotiating with potential buyers. What you lose in profits you gain in convenience.
Unfortunately, since it’s still just a fledgling startup at this point, Gone is only available in Austin, TX and San Francisco, CA. However, the company has already attracted some attention from angel investors, so it’s undoubtedly got big plans for expansion in the near future.
