This is awesome, well done!

I use Depop and Vinted here in the UK. We also have one called Preloved, which could be problematic.

I also know some vintage clothes sellers and a lot of stock comes from Indonesia. I'm always on the lookout for specific colours and styles of vintage items.

Could you open up your site Internationally somehow? I can already search using English terms. Currency conversion would be relatively easy. The main thing would be shipping. It might only be sensible to collect packages in Indonesia and ship them in bulk to the buyer (so, like Buyee for things from Japan)

Thanks a bunch!

I'm familiar with and love Depop! And I'm aware of Preloved too. Luckily, we're targeting different countries, so that potential issue you mentioned might not affect us.

Love the idea of international shipping! The shipping API we partnered with supports it, so it's definitely on our radar for the future. However, our current Indonesian payment provider has limitations. Credit card payments are disabled due to low usage, and the fees are quite high. Maybe we can consider implementing a minimum spending requirement for international orders?

On another note, I'll be kicking off the dev of the mobile app soon, so it might be a while before we can accept international orders.

+1 for international orders, would love to get notified once that goes live. I noticed that there doesn't seem to be a shopping cart to check out with multiple items at once, even if they're all from the same seller. Suppose that's not a big deal yet until I'm actually able to get orders shipped to USA, though. Good looks so far, very promising stuff!

Absolutely! I'll prioritize working on the shopping cart soon.

Thanks for your interest! To stay updated, the best way is to create an account. Once international shipments become available, I'll send an email to everyone since it's a major development.

Nice, well done! Btw, there's a public company in Brazil that does exactly that: https://www.enjoei.com.br/

Their GMV is ~US$ 200 million/year, and their revenues are ~US$ 30 million/year.

Thanks for sharing the website. It's truly inspiring, and I'm loving the clean and intuitive design!

There is a similar company in Europe: https://www.vinted.com/

I think the popularity comes from the really good mobile experience, that would be a top priority from a service like this.

I'm also from Europe, and Vinted is awesome!

Totally agree about the mobile aspect. Initially, I focused on making the website mobile-first, but we received numerous requests for a mobile app.

Since I'm not well-versed in mobile development and we're self-funded with a tight budget, I opted to super optimize the website for mobile instead. I figured optimizing for free traffic through SEO would be a fantastic starting point. Surprisingly, I stumbled upon a ton of high-traffic keywords with little to no competition, which got me pretty excited.

Your site logo has a 8 bit flair. Are you a Minecraft or Mario fan?

Are you comfortable in sharing your MRR? Even ballpark is ok.

If traffic is slowing down, your site might be suffering from that post-runout exhaustion in that channel. I see you are already taking steps to mitigate that. Have you thought about partnering or hosting your inventory on a popular retailer's site? Good luck with your biz.

I used to be a gamer, but I have to give credit to my partner for creating the logo, haha

Currently, the MRR is in the low three figures.

No, I haven't explored that yet. It sounds intriguing, but managing and removing user-submitted content could be challenging since it's all user-driven.

Thanks a lot!

Looks good, how did you get your initial content on there? Did you reach out to some influencers or used your own local network?

Are you also tapping into other Indonesian sites like tokopedia or the gojek/grab economy?

Edit: It looks as if you are getting data from instagram. Is that correct?

Thank you!

All the content is user-submitted, and we rely on Instagram and Twitter for traffic. Some influencers spread the word and it really got things rolling.

We're actually competing with Tokopedia and Shopee, but they're not exclusively for second-hand clothing, although it's allowed there. We reached out to some sellers and found the turnover rate to be high, but it requires a lot of effort.

For pickup and delivery, we collaborate with couriers like Grab and Gojek. Additionally, we've partnered with a company/API that handles pickups and deliveries when a seller makes a sale on our platform, taking advantage of affordable postage in Indonesia.

Thrifting in Indonesia is booming, with Instagram as the main hub for buying and selling. Surprisingly, there's no (modern) dedicated platform like those in the West for the Indonesian market.

So, I created one, and it gained rapid traction. Now, I'm figuring out how to take it to the next level.

Thanks for your elaborate answer and good move to build this. I think there are a lot of opportunities there for new digital products like this that fit niches. I think making a basic app out of your website would be a great move.

Have you thought about promoting your service via StyleDoubler ?

https://www.styledoubler.com/

No I haven't, wasn't aware of them until now. Thanks for the suggestion, will definitely look into it.

Nice site. The hard part is growing the user base. Have you started and how is it going?

Thanks! Yup, almost hit 10k sign-ups!

Influencers played a big part initially, giving us a boost by mentioning our platform organically.

Growth has slowed down lately, but I'm going all-in on SEO. Found a bunch of untapped, high-traffic keywords with little competition. Fingers crossed for some serious results!

It's cool that you're doing SEO and SEM in Bahasa. On your own or with a team?

My pet peeve: people calling it "Bahasa". It's called Indonesian. Or "Bahasa Indonesia". Bahasa just means "language".

Do you also ask people if they speak "langue" if you want to know if they speak French?

Indonesians themselves call it "bahasa". I guess the user you responded to is either Indonesian, or has been there.

LOL, sibling comment voted to death, because I guess HNers know better than 2 native speakers (I am also one).

If you're talking about Indonesians refererring to Indonesian in an English language context, yeah some of them do this too (like the original commenter I replied to above), I can't imagine a context where an Indonesian would ask someone else in Indonesian if they understood "bahasa", because the Indonesian being asked would wonder "Which language do you mean?".

It would be like a Brit asking someone in London, "Do you speak language?".

But just like there's Singlish in Singapore, there's probably Indonesian English. Another pet peeve of mine is Indonesians using "married" as a verb (in an Indonesian sentence) instead of an adjective.

> If you're talking about Indonesians refererring to Indonesian in an English language context, yeah

yes, my only source for my previous comment was a passport control officer asking me "do you speak bahasa" at the airport :-)

Correct. I launched a product in Indonesia and our operations team there referred to the language as Bahasa.

Doing it on my own. I'm running the platform, along with my girlfriend. She handles design and social media marketing, while I take care of development and SEO. Team effort! :)

Great site! Had a brief look and the clothes look great.

Looks like CC isn't accepted, but bank transfer is. Curious why that is?

Thanks!

In Indonesia, credit card usage is around 6%, one of the lowest in the region. We prioritize e-wallet payments, with banks as a secondary option. E-wallets have minimal fees compared to credit cards, which are relatively high with our current payment provider. For now, I've disabled credit card payments, but I might enable them in the future for orders above a certain amount.

Nice website. I am just curious to know what web stack (front and backend) you used to develop this website

Thanks! I've used VueJS/NuxtJS/Tailwind for the frontend and a NodeJS/ExpressJS/Postgres combo for the backend.

Great stack! Is it performing well? Are you using a VPS?

Yes! The platform is currently running on a smaller DigitalOcean droplet. I've already upgraded it once and handling some DevOps tasks along the way. The Hackernews traffic is giving the server a serious stress test. As it continues to grow, I'm considering switching to render.com, especially when more expertise is needed to handle the increased demand.

What's the decimal format of Indonesia, I am seeing price like Rp 4.500.000, how much is that?

Much of the world uses . and , in the opposite way we do in the US. So the dollar store here would have 1.00 prices here, but 1,00 elsewhere. Rp 4.500.000 is 4.5 million rupees, which is currently about $54,865.00.

You're right about the commas, however, Indonesia uses the Rupiah, which sounds very similar to the Rupee used in India.

Just to clarify, 4500000 rupiah is approximately equivalent to 300 USD.

4.5 million rupiah is USD300

How do you automate sorting clothes? I assume you're getting huge piles of random stuff.

It’s like eBay - clothes are listed and shipped by users.

If you did have to sort clothes from bags though you would probably just do it manually to start with, and if you had to scale up you would probably empty the bags onto a belt conveyor and then have people manually pick and sort into different containers, then put those containers through inspection phases or different disposition routes (ie only a small portion will contain clothing worthy of sale on an apparel site, some will be stained and need to go through a different sales channel, there will be bags of junk or bedsheets that need to be sent for shredding to become industrial rags etc)

Surprisingly, we only had a couple of random submissions out of thousands.

I've added categories, subcategories, brands, colors, and sizes for users to customize their listings. Thankfully, most users are putting in a lot of effort, so moderation isn't a big issue in this area.

I set up a Telegram bot to notify me whenever a new listing is added, which helps me stay on top of things quickly. :)

Awesome stuff! Any plans on getting investors on board or get funding for team expansion etc.?

Thank you! While it's not in my immediate plans, I'm definitely intrigued and open to learning more about it, especially if the platform keeps growing.

The site seems to be having some loading issues right now. Lots of images failing to load.

Yes, sorry for that!

Unexpectedly made it to the front page of Hackernews, and now my small server is seriously being put through its paces. It's clear I need to upgrade it ASAP.

I'm curious: Why Indonesia?

Is there a specific reason for sourcing from this country over others?

The platform is exclusively for the Indonesian market, allowing transactions within Indonesia only.

Though I'm born and raised in the Netherlands, my Indonesian heritage and language skills give me some insight into the market. After doing limited SEO and market research, I saw a great opportunity. So, I hacked together a platform and recently launched it. It's showing promise, but I'm still a bit skeptical.

Literally tons of used clothing gets sent here.

Indonesia is not very green but technology like this can help address that

Not any more. The ban on clothing importation was recently enforced and my friend lost their business, and their shipments were seized. This will likely affect the business discussed in this post.

Exactly this

I'm guessing ease of shipping locally. I'm very curious too - there must be some practical or legal obstacle?

Yep, local shipping companies here are great! They offer pickups and deliveries for around a dollar, sometimes even less within the same city. When sellers make a sale on our platform, their item gets picked up from their address and delivered, usually on the same day, depending on the chosen delivery option.

wow this is great job! Congrats. Curious if you can share your tech stack for this? Did you use any headless commerce to speed up development?

Thank you!

I've used VueJS/NuxtJS/Tailwind for the frontend and a NodeJS/ExpressJS/Postgres backend. I've developed everything custom and didn't rely on a headless commerce solution.

it's amazing you built a complex marketplace/commerce site all from scratch. big kudos! if you ever do a paid course on your development, I am more than happy to pay!

Awhh, thank you! I don't have plans for a course, but feel free to hit me up on Twitter if you need any help or advice, haha.

Best way to learn imo is to just start with an idea and tackle one task at a time. Before you know it, you'll have a fully functional and impressive creation on your hands

Great website! I really like the endeavor.

Thank you! :)

Great Job! We need more Indonesian web here in HN. It load fast, and has many items posted. As a native Indonesian, I am curious are you based on jakarta?

Hey Rizky, thanks a lot. I agree, and yes, I'm in jaksel! :)