Building a Marketplace for the Big Stuff: Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith
Commonplace founder Ari Kimmelfeld joined Keith Newman on Liftoff with Keith to talk about why trust beats price, why Commonplace is logistics first, and what building a marketplace for big secondhand items has taught him.
On Liftoff with Keith, a show about the builders, founders, and operators turning ideas into real businesses, host Keith Newman asked Commonplace founder and CEO Ari Kimmelfeld what made the hassle of selling a Peloton, a hot tub, or a sofa a business worth building, and what it takes to run a marketplace for the big stuff.
Listen to the episode: How Commonplace Is Reinventing the Secondhand Marketplace, Liftoff with Keith with Keith Newman, aired October 20, 2026. Listen on YouTube.
The episode is also on Spotify, and Keith wrote it up on his Substack.
Key takeaways
- Ari's starting hypothesis: people would buy more secondhand if it felt as easy as buying at retail.
- Trust and convenience can matter more than price. That is why people pay full price at a store.
- Commonplace is logistics first. Without its own crews to pick up, deliver, and install, listings alone would not earn trust.
- Every new category needs its own playbook. Hot tubs taught that lesson.
- In a marketplace, sellers, buyers, and every category want different things, so every part has to be tailored.
- His advice to founders: find people who will actually pay before you build more features.
From buyer to builder
Keith asked what made this a business and not just an annoying consumer problem. Ari started with his own habits.
As a user, my entire life, I've been buying things that were used. And you can save so much money buying it secondhand, yet for a lot of my friends, my mom especially, it was never considered like a real shopping channel.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 03:08
It's just so much easier to just click once, add to cart and order it on Amazon and pay retail versus finding it locally and going to pick it up, meet up with a stranger, have the cash at hand, have a friend help you put it in a truck that you rented, and then hope it shows up in one piece once you get it home.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 03:30
My hypothesis was pretty much that people would buy more secondhand if you made it a lot easier and similar to a retail experience... So if you add all of the layers to make it convenient, the channel is there and people would use it more. You just have to build it.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 03:48
Trust beats price
Keith had a hypothesis of his own: trust matters more than price. Ari agreed.
I do think that trust and convenience is even more important than price sometimes, and that's why you see people paying full price retail and going to a retailer or buying it on Amazon, because you get convenience and you get trust even though you're paying sometimes double the price.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 04:24
He has used Craigslist for as long as he has had an email address, and he likes a lot of what is on Facebook Marketplace. But:
You never know who you're meeting up with, and it really doesn't feel like a retail experience. You don't get warranties, you can't use a credit card, you have to send a bunch of messages. If you're selling, you get a bunch of messages and it kind of becomes a part-time job.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 05:01
More in how Commonplace compares to Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and OfferUp.
Two buttons and a Peloton
When we launched, it was just Peloton. And we launched with a super simple website. It was two buttons. First button was buy a Peloton, second button was sell a Peloton.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 05:57
At that point, I kind of knew that this was a real business because you'd have people selling and people buying. And we established a logistics network to enable the delivery, the white glove delivery, to set it up and build the trust.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 06:29
The full story is in how Commonplace started.
Logistics first
Keith asked what kind of company Commonplace really is: software, marketing, or logistics.
The foundation is really a logistics business, because nothing that we do is possible without having our own logistics crew. And that's really what adds the trust, which like you said, is even more important than price.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 08:43
We also built a very sophisticated dispatch system that automatically dispatches a correct pickup driver... So we know exactly whether somebody can do an appliance, a hot tub, a piece of fitness equipment, or just furniture.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 07:44
We expanded that slowly, brick by brick, the hard way. There's no real fast way to do that.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 08:03
More in is Commonplace a logistics company and how Commonplace delivery drivers are trained.
A merchant from the start
Asked about his background, Ari said he is a merchant at heart.
I remember going to camp with one suitcase full of clothes and one suitcase full of snacks that I would sell. You know, and I was the canteen, and I would make sure to beat the canteen and sell out first.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 09:51
So it's kind of a mix of being a merchant and understanding how to build a catalog, how to price things, how to offer things to consumers, and then also being a user of a lot of these platforms and building something that is consumer first.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 10:28
Every category has its own playbook
Keith asked about the biggest assumption Ari got wrong.
I thought that expanding into new categories would be easy. You know, you have all these drivers and somebody can pick up and deliver a Peloton. Well, why can't they do that for a hot tub? Turns out some hot tubs need a crane, and you got to lift it over somebody's house... and you need plumbing for that, and you need electrical for that, and you need a concrete pad that needs to be there first.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 14:58
I spoke to a ton of different hot tub dealers, appliance dealers, furniture dealers, asking them everything that they know about selling their products, servicing their product, and then thinking about the customer feedback that we were getting on the things that were going wrong and seeing how we could fix that.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 15:33
Getting a new category right took, in his words, "a lot of hard work, a lot of tough lessons, but I call it tuition." And he does not walk away from a category once he is in it:
You can enter a category the wrong way, but if you keep learning and you keep figuring out how it's done, especially if it's already being done, there is a way to do it correctly. So we don't back out of categories, we just tailor how we do that category to do it correctly and effectively at scale.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 17:44
More in the hardest part of building a marketplace. Shopping for one? Read how to inspect a used hot tub before buying.
The metric Ari likes best
The most fun metric is new listings, new listings and new listings per category, because these are real people, real photos, real videos, real details. Products are oftentimes part of people's lives.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 18:41
There's a story behind it and somebody in the other part of the country was looking for it. And so like each listing is like a story. It's an opportunity for somebody to be a part of that story.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 19:13
And the most overrated one? Website traffic and social media views. For expensive items, a few of the right viewers beat a big audience: "They just have to be the right viewers."
Why sell on Commonplace
Keith asked for the pitch: why list a Peloton on Commonplace?
Number one, you don't want to deal with strangers showing up to your house, usually haggling last minute. Managing listings is a part-time job. You don't have to manage anything. We manage everything for you. We pick it up. We pay you upon pickup.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 20:32
You can easily take a photo of an entire room, whether it's a garage, whether it's a living room, whether it's a kitchen. We'll give you pricing suggestions automatically based on our price index, and you can list multiple products at once.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 20:49
That is Sell Your Room. Sellers can also choose optional promotion, for a small percentage of the listing price, to promote an item on Google, Facebook and Craigslist. Read how to list on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist at once.
Ari's last point was reach. For a high-value item, the best buyer may not be local:
Well, if you're not in New York City or in a big city like New York, there might not be a buyer right in your backyard.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 21:26
And so we find buyers all over the US. It's not just in your local backyard, which is kind of what the local marketplaces are for. And we add that trust layer that somebody who's buying a high value product would be interested.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 21:41
Ari said Commonplace launched nationwide delivery the week of the interview. Delivery is free within 100 miles, and past that the price is shown before checkout.
Where secondhand goes next
Big and bulky is not getting any easier. So there's still somebody that needs to pick it up, pay this high value, offer a warranty, deliver it, install it. And AI is just making discoverability much better.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 22:47
More in can AI help you buy and sell secondhand.
What Ari would tell other founders
We probably should have expanded into more categories sooner... We probably stuck in fitness for too long and I should have had the foot on the gas on expansion into categories.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 26:02
The number one thing, I think you have to find somebody that's actually willing to buy or pay for the thing that you're doing... But like, you really got to find the small community, even if it's just a handful of people that are willing to purchase, use your product or service.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 26:59
And because it was so narrow, our KPIs, what we were looking for, was very focused. And I think a lot of people, they're shipping a lot of stuff and features and adding new things, but they're not necessarily the things that move the needle or that people actually want to pay for.
Ari Kimmelfeld on Liftoff with Keith, at 27:42
Commonplace is the Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and OfferUp alternative for big items. Listing is free, and Commonplace handles pickup, inspection, delivery, secure payments, and a free two-month parts warranty. Delivery is free within 100 miles, and Commonplace ships nationwide. See how it works.
FAQ
What is Commonplace?
A marketplace for big secondhand items, like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, or OfferUp, with payments, inspection, and delivery handled by Commonplace. Listing is free, a $1 hold reserves any item, and delivery is free within 100 miles.
Is Commonplace a logistics company?
Ari calls it logistics first. It is a marketplace, but it runs on its own pickup and delivery crews, and he said that is what makes the trust possible. Read more.
What if there is no buyer near me for a big item?
Ari said the right buyer for a high-value item may live far from you, so Commonplace finds buyers across the US instead of only in your area. Delivery is free within 100 miles, Commonplace ships nationwide, and the price past 100 miles is shown before checkout.
Can I list everything in a room at once?
Yes. With Sell Your Room, you take one photo of a room, get a price hint for each item, and list the ones you pick together.
Thank you to Keith Newman for having Ari on Liftoff with Keith. Quotes are from the episode, lightly edited for reading. Listen to the full conversation on YouTube.
More from Ari's podcast interviews: questions Ari answered on podcasts and every show he has been on.
Have something big to sell?
List it free on the Peloton, hot tub, washer and dryer, or furniture sell page. We inspect it, pick it up, and pay you at pickup.