Ari Kimmelfeld - Commonplace
About the Guest
Ari Kimmelfeld is the founder and CEO of Commonplace, a New York–based marketplace for buying and selling bulky, high-value secondhand goods (fitness equipment, hot tubs, appliances, furniture and more) with inspection, payments, delivery and warranties built in. A lifelong secondhand shopper who was buying and selling snacks at summer camp at the age of eight, Ari studied accounting before joining a management consulting firm. There he first did due diligence on businesses that private equity firms were looking to buy, then spent most of his time helping Fortune 100 companies build corporate-backed ventures across product, engineering and go-to-market. Commonplace began during the pandemic as a two-button website for secondhand Pelotons. In under three years it has grown into a managed marketplace with more than 3,000 trained drivers across the United States.
Episode Summary
Everyone has a Facebook Marketplace horror story. Commonplace has a sign in its office asking people to share theirs, and the team takes it out onto the street to collect them. In this episode of Shape the System, host Vincent Turner speaks with founder and CEO Ari Kimmelfeld about why buying and selling big secondhand items is still so painful. They also cover what it takes to make a used fridge or hot tub as easy to buy as a new one.
The idea grew out of a pandemic-era glut. Locked-down Americans bought Pelotons in droves, and once gyms reopened many of those bikes became very expensive clothes racks. Ari is a keen cyclist. He bought one secondhand, took a cab to collect it, hauled it down five or six flights of stairs, and got it home with the resistance broken. He saw an opening and put up a website called Trade My Spin with exactly two buttons: buy a Peloton, sell a Peloton. Google picked it up, and tens of thousands of sellers from across the US submitted bikes. The business sold them for US$499, roughly 75% off retail, with delivery, a warranty, and the shoes, mat and weights included. Ari isn’t a developer. He admits the stripped-back first version was born of necessity, but it worked because the demand was already there.
Ari is clear about where existing platforms succeed and where they fall short. Local marketplaces like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace work well in big cities with deep inventory. Shipping-based platforms like eBay suit smaller items such as collectibles or podcast gear. Both break down over long distances, with physically large goods, and when an item’s value is high but the buyer can’t inspect it first. The consequences are real. A seller might pay a few hundred dollars for junk removal on a fridge, or US$600–700 just to move a hot tub, even when the item has most of its working life left. Meanwhile, buyers face cash-only deals, no financing, no warranty and the job of organising movers themselves. As Ari puts it, there’s simply no “connecting the dots” between someone’s unwanted fridge and the person about to buy one new.
Commonplace’s answer is to rebuild the experience of buying new, layer by layer, around used goods. All payments run through the platform. Buyers reserve an item for US$1 and pay nothing until it’s delivered and installed. Before pickup, sellers refresh their photos, videos and description for the buyer to approve. A driver then carries out a 30–50-point inspection on collection, and the buyer can even FaceTime in to watch. If the item doesn’t match the listing, it stays put and the buyer isn’t charged. Drivers complete category-specific training courses and quizzes, and they unlock more technical categories, such as connecting a hot tub’s electrics, as they upskill. Every purchase comes with a free two-month parts warranty, and there’s an optional 12-month parts-and-labour warranty for big-ticket items. For hot tubs, Commonplace has even layered in the electrician, plumber and concrete pad that a new-tub dealer would arrange. Buyers save around 65% off retail on average.
The economics are simple. Sellers pay a 20% fee in about 95% of categories, rising to 30% for jobs like swim spas that need a crane. Delivery is free within 100 miles (about 160 km), and nationwide shipping is available, with a treadmill from New York to Los Angeles costing around US$1,100. Add-on revenue comes from accessories, warranties, a “Store to Sell” service that collects items from people who are moving within 48 hours and sells them later, and paid promotion that pushes listings out to other platforms. Sellers also set a floor price up front, and any offer above it is accepted automatically, which ends the endless back-and-forth of “is this still available?”. On growth, Ari’s approach is to show up wherever buyers already shop. Vincent compares it to Airbnb’s early days on Craigslist. Gyms and med spas have started listing equipment, but the focus remains on peer-to-peer consumer sales, with Canada next, then Europe, then Australia.
The conversation closes on the personal. The name Commonplace came from Ari’s wife, whom he describes as effectively a co-founder, after earlier names Trade My Spin and Trade My Stuff. It reflects his ambition for secondhand to become a mainstream shopping channel, the way ordering on Amazon became an alternative to going to the store. Raised Orthodox Jewish and still religious, Ari treats that future as inevitable, and he says this helps him take the bad days in his stride, like the dropped hot tub or the treadmill that arrives broken. His favourite part of the job is the creative freedom of building quickly. He describes a donation portal for the New York City Fire Department, which has no budget for gym equipment, that the team built in about two hours. His least favourite is the operational complexity, which only multiplies as the platform grows.
Key Takeaways
Notable Quotes
“It really breaks down, I think, when there are long distances involved, when the items are very large. And then the third thing is when the value is high relative to the lack of proof or inspection.” — Ari Kimmelfeld
“Every single transaction goes through Commonplace, which is why I say it is impossible to be scammed on Commonplace.” — Ari Kimmelfeld
“That’s really how we built each category — thinking, if I’m a consumer looking to buy a used hot tub, what are my hesitations? Why wouldn’t I buy it used? And why would I pay three times more to go buy it new?” — Ari Kimmelfeld
“You just want to buy the damn thing. Can’t there be a buy now button?” — Ari Kimmelfeld
“When it is an actual shopping channel, it’ll be commonplace.” — Ari Kimmelfeld
“Showing up to work, I kind of feel like I’m playing with Legos, and that is such a blessing.” — Ari Kimmelfeld
“The more transactions you have, the more problems you have. But that’s business — problems are opportunities in disguise.” — Ari Kimmelfeld
Resources