Move Loot

Market position

Move Loot positioned itself as a curated, logistics-inclusive alternative to Craigslist for pre-owned furniture, and framed its ambition in press coverage as challenging both Craigslist and IKEA. Competing or adjacent players cited in sources include AptDeco, a Y Combinator alum from the same cohort focused on peer-to-peer furniture and home decor resale. Coverage placed it within the broader on-demand and sharing-economy sector, where high growth costs and thin margins were noted as structural challenges.

Its principal differentiators were end-to-end handling of pickup, cleaning, storage and delivery in place of buyer-seller coordination; curation and quality standards on listed items; an integrated B2B channel and reverse-logistics offering for retailers; and in-house operation of delivery trucks rather than outsourced logistics.

Technology

The core technology was a web marketplace for listing, appraising, purchasing and scheduling delivery of used furniture, coupled with an operations layer covering pickup, warehousing and last-mile delivery with company-operated trucks. Sources do not describe proprietary technical systems in further detail.

Go-to-market

The company launched city by city, opening warehouse-and-delivery operations in one metropolitan market at a time, beginning in San Francisco and adding North Carolina markets, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. It supplemented consumer supply with retailer partnerships and used press coverage and partnerships such as the #UberMovers initiative with Uber in Raleigh. In March 2016 it went national through a shipping-platform partnership.

Individual consumers moving homes or redecorating who wanted to sell or buy used furniture, plus, from late 2015, furniture retailers, independent vendors, antique shops and consignment stores seeking an e-commerce outlet and logistics support.

Geography

United States only. Markets served included the San Francisco Bay Area (headquarters), New York, Los Angeles, Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte in North Carolina, Atlanta, Chicago and the Washington, D.C. area, with nationwide shipping added in March 2016.

History

Founded in 2013 in San Francisco, Move Loot went through Y Combinator's Winter 2014 batch and raised a $2.8 million seed round announced in June 2014, followed by $9 million in February 2015. It expanded from the Bay Area into North Carolina, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles (June 2015), and in spring 2015 shifted to a "hub and spoke" warehouse-and-delivery distribution model. In October 2015 it launched Trade by Move Loot for retailers, and in November opened the marketplace to third-party stores. The same month brought the first of two rounds of layoffs, the second of which eliminated entire city teams. In March 2016 the company expanded to Chicago and Washington, D.C. and began nationwide shipping under a peer-to-peer model. By May 2016 the only remaining staff were the founders and a few senior managers; the company stopped accepting listings in late May and stopped tweeting on May 13. On June 10, 2016 the CEO confirmed acquisition talks, and on June 29, 2016 Move Loot ceased operations and sold access to its customer list to Handy. Wikipedia and Failory date the closure to July 2016.

Risks & controversies

Reporting attributed the failure to the economics of the logistics-heavy model: after shifting to a hub-and-spoke warehouse model in spring 2015 and opening New York and Los Angeles to meet expansion targets tied to a conditional funding offer, costs ran at more than double expectations while revenue lagged. Two rounds of layoffs followed in late 2015. Ex-employees on Glassdoor cited inexperienced management, and a former employee described repeatedly moving to new models before validating prior ones. In 2016 customers publicly complained that the site stopped accepting listings, that purchases were undelivered or cancelled without explanation, that refunds did not materialize — prompting credit card disputes — and that customer support lines went to voicemail. Sellers said the marketplace closed without warning. Failory characterizes the cause of failure as a bad business model.