Brendan Candon played sports his whole life.
After graduating from College of the Holy Cross in 2010, where he played lacrosse, Candon (below) kept up with the sport through a men’s league and started coaching youth leagues as a volunteer.
Candon’s lacrosse equipment was getting pretty old, however, so to keep up with his young players, he began searching for some new gear. Seeing that great lacrosse sticks ran north of $250, Candon reached out to his old teammates. He ended up purchasing a gently used stick from a friend for just $50.
That’s when the lightbulb went off.
Sports gear is expensive. Last year consumers spent $60 billion on used sporting goods because a full set of equipment for sports like hockey, lacrosse, skiing, or baseball can cost $500 or more.
“I thought, ‘Athletes are buying and selling from each other all the time; we should make this easier to do,’” Candon said.
Most individuals and families weren’t selling on eBay, Candon added, since that’s more of a platform for stores, and he noticed that many of the mom-and-pop sports storefronts of his youth were closing down because they hadn’t moved online.
Candon created SidelineSwap, a peer-to-peer marketplace where any athlete in North America can upload equipment or apparel and sell it online at up to 80 percent off retail. He went through the MassChallenge incubator before working in the Harvard Innovation Lab.
The startup provides a platform where users can message each other back and forth about the quality of the equipment, and also offers buyer security. Each seller receives a prepaid shipping label, and payments for equipment are held in escrow till the gear has arrived in the condition promised.
To attract young athletes, Candon said they do the listing process in a manner “closer to Instagram than Craigslist or eBay,” so users can upload pictures and descriptions of equipment in an instant.
Most users are currently in high school and college, and Candon said the average buyer saves about 50 percent on their sports equipment. Meanwhile, the average person actively selling on the site can earn around $500 per year.
Sports gear featured on the site varies from hockey and skiing, to lacrosse, baseball, golf and more.
“Our goal is to build the number one marketplace for sports and to make sports more affordable in the process,” Candon added.
SidelineSwap’s latest initiatives include launching their iOS app and then overhauling the whole product.
In August 2016, SidelineSwap raised $1.5 million in seed funding, which Candon said will be used to revamp the platform, making it streamlined and more efficient.
Though Candon is now a bonafide entrepreneur, he said he didn’t start SidelineSwap because he wanted to run a company; he just always had an entrepreneurial mindset.
“I was always starting little businesses in high school and college,” Candon said. “I’m always looking to fill my free time and enjoy building things so when this opportunity came up, it seemed like a natural fit so I ran with it.”
Photos via social media
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