Bay start-up on to a winner

Vince Edwards, Peter Howell and Brendan Howell.

A Tauranga start-up is utilising Facebook integrated technology to help drive a new smartphone shopping concept, which is already experiencing significant interest internationally in countries as diverse as Italy and Mongolia, say the partners behind SellShed.co.nz.

SellShed is a free mobile ecommerce platform that matches buyers and sellers in their local communities. The company hopes to generate revenues from advertising revenue and possibly from adding premium services in the future.

SellShed's co-founders Peter Howell and his brother Brendan run a business that wholesales items to online retailers. Peter and web developer Vince Edwards, who also does IT for the brothers' wholesale business, began brainstorming the mobile trading concept a year ago.

Mr Howell said other social trading and mobile ecommerce approaches required users to be tech savvy or made it difficult to upload new products on smartphones.

The team initially developed an iPhone app, which was launched six weeks ago, but found there was more demand for an Android mobile app than they had anticipated, so they ramped up their website, which launched two weeks ago, and are now finalising the Android app.

"It was all pretty even between iPhone and Android when we started, but things have moved quickly and now we see that everyone wants Android," said Mr Edwards. "It's taken over the market."

The SellShed app saw more than 4000 international downloads in the first week the website was live and the Facebook page has close to 5000 followers, said Peter Howell.

"We set out to create a platform for consumers to trade in a way that is natural to them," he said.

Once a seller listed an item on SellShed it was placed on the browse stream, which was searchable in a Facebook style framework and could be added to the seller's own Facebook page as well, said Mr Howell.

SellShed currently employs seven local staff and has plans to increase this number to 20-plus as uptake of the app expands internationally.