Teahorse

Teahorse was my first foray into building a business, and the idea was to give clothing more lives before entering the landfill. This was accomplished by creating an online marketplace of high quality, great condition, pre-owned fashion that people contributed to and traded within. If you liked an article of clothing, and the person who owned that piece liked one of yours, you'd automatically be paired up for a trade. I built a python algorithm + CSV database to automatically identify trading opportunities at the end of each day.

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Here's what the marketplace looked like:

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When you clicked into a listing, you'd get more pictures, and details about the brand, size, and materials used. Here are some example images:

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I used tools for removing image backgrounds, a common practice in the industry, to get a clean look:

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Generally, a big challenge with growing marketplaces is the chicken and egg problem. How do you get people interested when there aren't any listings, but how do you get listings without people? Teahorse was no exception, and I used lots of strategies to get around this issue, most of which involved some form of putting up listings on other people's behalf. I even scheduled events where I'd show up and handle photography for people to reduce friction:

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Unfortunately, I started Teahorse just a few months before the onset of Covid. That, plus some additional challenges (overcoming the desire people have to get new items whenever they want them, people who own luxury clothing tend to be less cost conscious, sustainability not a top factor for many consumers) ultimately prompted me to step away from Teahorse and look into other ventures. It wasn't a roaring success, but a great lesson on the challenges of finding product-market fit.