A Virtual Garage Sale Takes on Craigslist

Every Sunday at 4 p.m. about 300 cars gather in the parking lot of Clearview Mall in New Orleans. No one goes inside to shop—they’re meeting to exchange used clothes, furniture, and electronics being sold through an app called VarageSale. “This is pretty much my job now,” says Hope Thibodeaux, a 32-year-old mom who volunteered to help organize the weekly meetups. She’s bought and sold a steady stream of baby clothes and other items using the app. With the profit, she says, “I’m able to supplement our income enough to make it feasible for me to stay at home with my son.”

VarageSale is one of a few startups taking up a difficult mission: unseating Craigslist as king of local e-commerce. Craigslist’s 30 employees run online bulletin boards in more than 700 cities in 70 countries, offering a ton of stuff for sale. The site, which doesn’t charge fees for most transactions, looks like it hasn’t had a fresh coat of paint since the mid-1990s, when programmer Craig Newmark created it in San Francisco. It doesn’t incorporate social media services, and most listings on its mobile version are cut off and tough to read. Craigslist declined to comment for this story.