If you’re looking to buy or sell furniture within the greater New York area, you might want to look at AptDeco. This online furniture marketplace allows people not only to buy and sell furniture, but also to benefit from door-to-door delivery, secure payment handling, and insurance to protect your items during the transport process. In New York, especially, moving furniture is a hassle — AptDeco makes it simple.
In this article, we’ll give you a brief look at AptDeco, then do a deep dive into how it works. From there, we’ll look at the areas AptDeco serves, then briefly go over its pricing model. By the end, you should know whether AptDeco is right for you when it comes to buying or selling your next piece of furniture.
What Is AptDeco?
AptDeco is an e-commerce site and delivery service that allows people to buy and sell used furniture online. The online furniture marketplace distinguishes itself from competition by offering secure online payment, as well as pick up and delivery service. It also saves users the hassle of figuring out how to transport large and ungainly furniture.
Co-founders Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis met at the Wharton Business School, then led AptDeco to Series A funding through the prestigious Y Combinator startup accelerator. The company’s team members work out of the company’s office space in New York City where most of AptDeco’s sales take place.
Why Use AptDeco?
For New Yorkers, AptDeco is a great service in that it takes the hassle out of furniture moving. While people have gone online to sell furniture for years via Craigslist and other sites, they usually had to either rent a truck and figure out how to move it themselves, or hire a third-party moving company to do it for them. In New York, this was either expensive or a major hassle — often both. AptDeco takes care of all of that for you.
On top of that, the company can offer secure payment processing, as well as insurance to cover the delivery of the item. While other platforms can help you buy or sell, you may not feel safe traveling with large amounts of cash to pay for an item, or you may not want to deal with issues that arise if an item is damaged during transport. AptDeco simplifies the process.
How AptDeco Works
AptDeco lets you buy and sell furniture all from one platform and makes it easy for all involved, no matter what you’re looking to do.
Buying
If you’re looking for furniture on AptDeco, you can filter your search by furniture type — a drop down menu lets you pick the exact piece of furniture you’re looking for and see only results for sofas, beds, tables, etc.
You can also filter by brand. The website has separate categories for furniture from high-end places like Crate & Barrel, West Elm, Restoration Hardware, and more.
To find what you’re looking for, first go to www.AptDeco.com. Across the top of the page, you’ll see a list of categories. It looks like this.
You’ll see the first one says “New.” The “New” category is where all their new listings are placed (not new furniture!), and you’ll see that you can select brands from that list as well.
Once you find something you like, you can review the price, its condition, and where the item is located by zip code. They’ll also have a few photos of the item that you can review. If you like what you see, you can add the item to your cart and make a purchase request.
AptDeco does purchase requests, as opposed to immediate sales, because it wants to allow owners a little leeway in case they’ve already sold the item to someone else, or something else has come up. Once you make a purchase request, the seller has 24 hours to either confirm or cancel the sale. After 24 hours, if the seller hasn’t confirmed the sale, it will be cancelled at no cost to you.
Selling
Listing items on the site is easy. You name your item and provide as much information as possible, the company helps you with the visuals, and then up it goes.
To create a listing, you just head to this page on their site. From there, you provide the category, quantity, brand, and link to the item if there is a listing online. (This helps them get relevant images to help sell your item and give you a recommended cost to sell your item for.)
From there, you can also provide photos, a description, dimensions, and possible pickup dates.
It looks like this:
Decide on your price, get the listing to your liking, and then post. Once someone requests to purchase it, you’ll have 24 hours to confirm the sale. Then all you need to do is be there to let the delivery guy in.
Scheduling
Once a purchase is confirmed, AptDeco will work with the buyer, seller, and delivery team to coordinate a time that makes sense for all parties. They have an exclusive partnership with a delivery service in NYC that prioritizes their clients, making pickup and delivery scheduling easier than you’d think.
Paying
After the purchase is confirmed, the buyer will send money to AptDeco via a secure online transaction. The company will hold the payment until the delivery has taken place. Once the delivery is through, they will issue the payment to the seller via direct deposit within 2-5 business days.
Areas AptDeco Serves
AptDeco is currently limited to New York City and the surrounding areas, which includes Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Westchester County. They do allow delivery outside of this range, but the cost may be prohibitive for most people.
Their pricing model for deliveries outside of their coverage range is a $99 flat fee plus $2 per mile. So, for example, if you ordered a piece of furniture from Brooklyn and had it delivered to Washington, D.C., that would be $99, and then $460 ($2 times 230, the miles between Brooklyn and D.C.). So that would be $559 just to get the item delivered. If it’s a special Eames chair or other very high end item, perhaps it would be worth it to have it delivered. But for most customers, the service makes the most sense within the NYC area.
Fees And More
AptDeco has fees to list and sell, as well as fees for delivery. Selling fees are, obviously enough, covered by the seller, while delivery fees are covered by the buyer. (The seller does have the option to cover delivery fees, as well.)
Selling fees vary but are based on the price of the item you’ve listed and will always be disclosed to you before you list your item. They say that their selling fee allows them to offer “customer support seven days a week, advertise your item(s), handle payment processing (i.e., credit card fees), returns, and the necessary insurance.”
These fees can be a decent percentage of the total price. For a $400 listing, we saw a nearly 25% seller fee ($100) for one item with AptDeco. This may scare some people off, but for others who want to avoid Craigslist meetups, uncomfortable price negotiations (AptDeco prices are set), or figuring out delivery, the fee may well be worth it.
Delivery fees are a flat $65 for most items within the delivery range. Very small items can be delivered for $35, with extra large items potentially going for as much as $119. If an item is large enough to take two or more moving people to move, odds are that you’ll get hit with an additional fee. Most items, however, will have a delivery fee of $65.
Buying and Selling Furniture With AptDeco
If you live in the greater New York City area and are looking to buy or sell used furniture, you should check out the AptDeco site. With door-to-door delivery, secure payment, and insurance coverage, it removes much of the hassle of buying and selling furniture.
While the fees for selling and delivery are higher than competitors like Craigslist, AptDeco provides much more protection, takes the hassle out of buying and selling, allows for returns, and provides insurance in case items are damaged or destroyed during transport. The fees may well be worth it for many buyers and sellers looking for peace of mind.
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