Brooklyn Startup Launches SwapOMatic The Bartering Vending Machine

Just the other day we were talking about, and tweeting out how hot bartering was. We even ran an interview with the founder of Arizona startup Kwiddy which is an online site to facilitate person to person bartering or trading (as in real life).

Well this Brooklyn startup has taken a concept art piece and turned it into almost a viable startup. The SwapOMatic machine doesn’t accept credit cards, cash or change. Instead, if you see something cool in the machine that you want, you can swap it for something that you’re willing to give up.

For now the machine operates on the honor system and doesn’t give a monetary value to anything in the machine because value depends on how bad someone wants something.

However, with all the publicity and interest the SwapOMatic team has picked up, they are currently reworking it for the next design. This machine is part concept art, but it is an actual working machine. In fact they have it sitting at the Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn, where anyone can swap anything for the stuff inside of the machine.

On the company’s website it gives you a text base map of what’s currently inside the machine. Take a look below:

As you can see it’s a wide variety of things. Everything from YiGiOh trading cards to hand written poems have lived in the machine and traded for other stuff.

The SwapOMatic team has a kickstarter project going on now for $135,000 so they can do more research and development on how to actually make this a viable business and a product to promote bartering. They have raised $34,529 (at the time this article was written) of the $135,000 goal. There are 10 days to go.

Bartering is becoming hotter by the minute. Bartering goes back to probably the stone ages where people would trade their goods, like vegetables and milk, for meat and clothing. Bartering has taken on a new life of it’s own thanks to the internet and sites like Craigslist and now Kwiddy which offer online bartering solutions.

The trading and bartering phenomenon is so hot that A&E has just launched a new show called barter kings.

We’re hoping that the SwapOMatic team can either raise this $135,000 or other angel money so they can develop this idea. We could see a day where you could swap your iPad nano for a baseball card you’ve always wanted. Or a stack of cd’s for something else new and more interesting.

Linkage:

SwapOMatic Website

SwapOMatic’s Kickster Page

Source: Tech.li

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