A new way to sell on Reverb, reducing the friction of selling. Sell your gear instantly and drop off at a participating shop near you.
Customer Problem
As an individual seller, creating a listing, shipping, and delayed payout are major barriers in my decision to sell. As a dealer, I have trouble acquiring used gear and bringing in more foot traffic.
Business Opportunity
A change in the macro economic environment has shifted the musical instrument industry away from new gear manufacturing with more dealers willing to stock used gear, cultivating the circular economy where Reverb is well positioned to help bridge this gap.
Timeline
2025 - Present
Role
Lead Product Designer
Collaborators
Sell in-store
I led design on this 0→1 product initiative, defining a human-centered local resale experience in close partnership with product and engineering.
Beta release
Informed by two previous attempts at a local trade-in pilot, we launched in May 2025, in four cities.
Trade-in beta, in motion.
We initially launched with 'Trade in locally' positioning. Light and Dark Modes available on iOS and Android.
Eligibility
Select eligible categories include Electric Guitars, Amps, Effects and Pedals in very good condition or better, with no modifications. Eligibility in select cities – Manchester Music Mill (Manchester, NH), Palen Music Center (Springfield, MO), Tone Shop Guitars (Addison, TX), ProAudioStar (Brooklyn, NY).
Metrics
Used Published Listings and monthly accepted trade-ins.
Challenges
We needed to build a working solution within three months in order to reduce costs, while finding product market fit. This forced us to cut a majority of scope and required us to handle some aspects of the experience manually, including financial monitoring and dealer onboarding.
Learnings
Post beta release we began monitoring success across our three seller cohorts: New Sellers, Active Sellers, and Lapsed Sellers. We continued to iterate in an effort to find product market fit. We built a trade-in management view for sellers to track their progress and payout, as well as integration with other products within our ecosystem such as Gear Collections.
Scaling Sell in-store
In September 2025, after seeing some slowness with encouraging Active Buyers to become New Sellers we conducted more research and pivoted our product framing from Trade in locally to Sell in-store. We introduced new eligible categories: Acoustic Guitars, Basses, and Keys & Synths. We also broadened shop locations and geo-location radius for eligible shops.