Where Do You Sell Stuff From The Internet?
The Internet makes it easier to become a buyer and seller but it doesn’t necessarily solve the why and how of making every transaction. There are plenty of ways to buy things on the Internet; but, few ways (and fewer places) to make a sale, or to buy something from someone that isn’t a store. How do you exchange money for goods? I don’t mean you fancy retail resellers with your Amazon payment accounts or entrepreneurial artisans on Etsy. I mean, let’s say you have an old phone gathering dust and you want to turn it into some cash — what do you do?
I had that issue once. I owned an android that had no more ‘droid to live for. I posted it on Craigslist. A guy contacted me immediately. He offered me cash once he verified if I “speak English”. After settling on a price, he didn’t ask where we should meet to do the deal. He asked, “which Starbucks is closest to [me].”
As it happened, there was a Starbucks every half mile for a three mile radius. I chose one. A few hours after posting the goods, I was at Starbucks waiting on a stranger for a reason other than a coffee date. The customer pulled up as I grabbed a seat on the patio. My seat selection was very strategic. If he was going to a) knock me over the head b) kill me or c) try to pay me in bitcoin he would have to do it in front of the plate glass window and with foot traffic all around us.
It turns out that he was just as cagey about me. He relaxed a little when I was (just?) a woman. He buys, rehabs and resells phones and phone components. It is his side hustle. He said it is how he got his wife. He could afford her.
After a quick check-over, he handed me cash and left. The whole deal took less than ten minutes.
We collect a lot of tech that becomes junk. We also collect a lot of junk. Some of the junk is technology and some of the junk we have is a byproduct of technology that makes it really easy to buy more junk. It is really hard to get rid of junk. I tried to get rid of junk when I was moving across country. There are different junk processing rules for different types of junk. You don’t get rid of batteries the way you get rid of mattresses the way you get rid of old coffeemakers. The Salvation Army does not want all your junk. They have standards. No one, it turned out, wanted my mattress no matter how much protective foam I wrapped it in. I sat there, poor in both time and money, unable to move my junk.
I sold what I could. I did not sell what I could for the money. I do not have a wife to afford. I really would have given the old phone away but, alas, trying to sell it was easier. And as it turns out, when you sell stuff, you still need a way to conduct the transaction. Unless you’re going into the digital storefront business, you need a place.
There was a brief moment where eBay resellers encountered the place problem. Shopping centers were dotted with storefronts where sellers could package and ship their goods. These have declined as resellers have become more organized, many serving as digital storefronts for traditional small retailers (and aspiring retailers). And eBay drop off centers have been disrupted, professionalized and made profit-centers in their own right.
But why Starbucks? There is the “third place” theory:
“The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people’s more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends…They are the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grassroots of democracy, but sadly, they constitute a diminishing aspect of the American social landscape.” — Ray Oldenburg
But, it is not a foregone conclusion that Starbucks would be a corporate quasi public square. Libraries are quiet places. They are not conducive to haggling. Parks are weird places to sell things. The space is too open and if you sit there with a bag of stuff too long people can wonder about you. That is why we go to transactional places to make sideline transactions. We go to Starbucks.
On Twitter, author (and publishing darling) Angela Flournoy recently witnessed a Nike shoe deal go down at Starbucks.
Sneaker transactions are big business. I learned this from a friend. And you want to see the sneaker. You cannot trust online retailers, my friend says. Sneaker buying is a tactile transaction with a lot of money and status riding fine details that you cannot always see online. Sneaker heads like to touch the shoes before they hand over the cash. The whole endeavor is an example of the issue of trust in online transcactions. That is a big issue, especially as we collectively engage more exchanges (and more critical exchanges) online.
Some economists argue that transparency in online exchanges makes it a more rational shopping experience than “real life” transactions. But, there is more to economic exchanges than price. People are more likely to enter an economic exchange when there is a social exchange of trust. Whether the shopper trusts the brand, the platform, or the seller trust facilitates economic activity. And, when the Internet makes it easy to misrepresent who is selling what, we collectively seek out new symbols of trustworthiness.
Trustworthiness is not universal. Culture matters to what forms of trust different buyers and sellers offer and accept. As I was discussing this essay online, someone mentioned that a police department recently advertised their station as a “safe place” to conduct online transactions. Given the state of race, racism and policing in the U.S., I feel safer at Starbucks. “Come on down and sell your junk at the police station” feels like a Dateline ruse.
At various scales, online transactions do not flatten space so much as they seem to move it around. Right now, Starbucks is as good as any place to feel safely ensconced in normcore while trading junk for cash.
