Bargain hunters paradise: one website pulls Craigslist, eBay, others together for shoppers, sellers

It all started as an idea for getting rid of the junk left behind when relationships dissolve. But now breakupgoods.com has become the go-to site that pulls together items from Craigslist, eBay, AutoTrader, and other sell-your-stuff websites, and lets shoppers and collectors arrange their wish lists into Pinterest-style boards.

Tom Liravongsa, a computer programmer, came up with the idea in 2010 after two friends purchased expensive used cars at hugely discounted prices because the cars had been left behind after relationship breakups.

But back in 2010, the developer tools to pull information from sales sites automatically wasn’t available. Liravongsa pulled a few thousand items manually, then the site went viral with over two million users in a month, and the supply just wasn’t there.

“The important piece is that the site knows the general location of where you are and shows all the products for sale near you,” Liravongsa says. “You don’t need to now look at all these different websites — it pulls from hundreds of websites where people sell items — we find that users are using it as a search engine to search Craigslist, eBay, and others all at the same time.”

Breakupgoods.com also offers a “tag it” button that resides on your browser bar and acts much like the Pinterest “Pin It” button: when you’re on a site and see something you want to buy, you simply tag it and add it to one of your boards on breakupgoods.com.

The site searches by location to find items for sale near the user’s location. Users can also search by category or city and state. And users can post items to sell.

Liravongsa says the site received a $95,000 investment boost from Start Garden and re-launched in December 2013. In its first month, breakupgoods.com drew some 260,000 users.

Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor