And here’s the craziest part: It still makes a ton of money. Welcome to the strange world of Decluttr.
Someone once gave me a CD of heavy metal Hanukkah songs called Gods of Fire. It was funny for a minute. Then it sat on a shelf for years, because I didn’t want to throw it away and it’s not like anyone on eBay would buy it from me, but I finally found a taker. The new company Decluttr paid me $2.85 for it, which, when combined with a bunch of other crap I sent them, netted me a total of $45.95. Decluttr buys anything–because that’s their business model. They will literally buy any CD, DVD, or video game you want to mail them. And they pay the postage, too.
The company began life in the U.K. in 2007 as musicMagpie, and now receives 100,000 items there every day. Its two British co-founders officially launched a U.S. expansion this past January; they hired Lauter, the one-time CMO of Wine.com, to head up the operation. Lauter’s first move: change the U.S. version’s name to one Americans can understand. (The magpie reference only works in the U.K., where people commonly know it as a bird that picks up shiny objects.) Although it’s done very little marketing, Decluttr is already buying 10,000 items a day from people. Lauter expects to reach profitability by the end of the year.