Got something to sell? Have a unique niche market in mind to sell it to? Great. But where do you go to make the sale?
Serial entrepreneur and technology consultant Jibril Sulaiman is convinced that he has the answer for consumers looking to sell their goods or services.
Last April, Sulaiman and his team launched Spendwith, a new mobile marketplace app that aims to target buying and selling within specific cultures in a centralized, organized fashion. Spend with enables consumers of color to spend their dollars with vendors of color.
Similar to platforms like Letgo, 5miles, OfferUp and Craigslist, Spendwith allows users to quickly take a photo of an item to sell or offer a service. Similar to its competitors, the app is free to use, free to post and allows sellers to accept payment for services or items sold, outside of the app.
However, Spendwith aims to target buying and selling within specific cultures or demographics by providing a dedicated app for members of that demographic community.
“For two years I pondered on how to increase intra-cultural commerce in the Black community,” Sulaiman said. “After researching commerce trends in other demographics, I realized that many other nationalities, ethnicities, and groups also promote the need for commerce within their respective communities.”
Ultimately, Spendwith seeks to take the sporadic nature of Facebook groups and newsfeeds, strain out all the extra noise and gossip, then provide users with a streamlined, attractive and easy-to-use app where they can buy products and services from sellers within their cultural groups.
“Many times when these posts happen, after we posting about cat videos and different meals that we’ve eaten, those culturally relevant posts about these businesses are pushed out of the feed,” Sulaiman explained. “Spendwith provides its users with a permanent place to import posts from other social media sites, create new posts, sell products within the platform itself or follow people who post regularly within the app. Think of us as Pinterest plus culture plus commerce.”
In a period from September through the end of October, Spendwith was able to raise $47,000 utilizing equity crowdfunding.
“We didn’t just go after venture or angel funding,” Sulaiman said. “Instead, we gave out equity in our company in return.”
