There’s a multitude of headaches associated with moving in and out of Boston. Even if you’re lucky enough to avoid the dreaded September 1 moving day, you could still be plagued with a number of dilemmas. For instance, what the heck do you do with your unwanted furniture?
While some people opt to abandon their furnishings on the curb, a new Boston startup - Dibind - is offering a superior alternative. Dibind is an online marketplace where folks can buy and sell used furniture - and it has a few standout features that put it a tier or two above Craigslist and the like.
“We have certain features that set us apart from other online marketplaces,” Mateo Alvarez, who co-founded Dibind with Martin Izurieta and Alvaro Perez, told us.
Dibind provides both pickup and delivery services for its platform users. So you don’t have to worry about working out the logistics to lug your furniture from one end of the city to the other. The online marketplace also guarantees that sellers will be able to get rid of their furniture before moving day, even if no one ends up buying it.
“If a seller is a student or young adult who has to move because of graduation or a lease ending, they need to get rid of their furniture,” Alvarez explained. “If they aren’t able to sell the furniture in time, we have a feature called Dibind Donate, where we will pick it for free and donate it to a local charity.”
Additionally, there’s a feature ideal for more nomadic city dwellers called Dibind Boomerang. Basically, when users buy a piece of furniture through the platform and know they’ll be moving again within a certain timeframe, they can opt into this feature and have Dibind automatically repost the piece of furniture for sale 30 days before they have to move. That way, they have one less item on their to-do list.
The Dibind co-founders are trying to decrease the stress surrounding moving because they’ve experienced it first hand. As students at BU, Northeastern and Suffolk, they personally encountered the troubles associated with buying and selling furniture for a pricey Boston apartment about a year ago.
“We needed furniture and, obviously, we didn’t have a lot of money to spend on it because our apartments were expensive,” Alvarez said. “We started looking to buy furniture from young adults and students who were moving and we realized there are a lot of them trying to get rid of their furniture. But everything was spread around the city, and we couldn’t find a way to get it.”
With a problem identified, the group of students decided to start selling furniture for people, picking pieces for themselves along the way. They began to make a profit and realized they could make a platform that would take on the brunt of the logistics.
Dibind is placing an emphasis on quality furniture. Even though it’s used, the furniture will be filtered out based on its condition and quality.
And, in general, the startup is looking to reduce waste generated by abandoned furniture, for the sake of the environment and the city. Alvarez said, “Our slogan is ‘resold, reloved’. We’re creating awareness about the amount of trash that’s furniture in the streets this time of year… It’s around $10 million of trash that’s furniture left in the streets of Boston [each year].”
Dibind is launching its open beta the first week of August. It’s free to post and browse furniture, but there are fees associated with transactions. If you sell a piece of furniture, Dibind charges a handling fee, which ranges from 12 to 20 percent depending on the cost of the item. And buyers are responsible for paying shipping charges.
The team is working on Dibind's mobile app and has been bootstrapping the business. Boston will be the venture’s first market. It then expands to New York, D.C., Chicago and Philadelphia.
