Recording - July 2017 - 18

welcome to
it on Reverb if you are a fan of the
Beatles' "Revolution".

Money money money

The main thing that drew me to selling
on Reverb was the easily understood,
no-hassle fee structure. Many popular
auction sites and online gear brokers have
become both high-priced and cryptic with
their fee structure. They have listing fees,
make your ad pretty fees, add bold type
fees, fees for extra pictures, fees when it
sells, and on and on. It can easily add up
to them taking a significant chunk of your
money when all is said and done.
On Reverb, it costs zero to list your
piece. Taken straight from the company
website: "List as many items as you want

for free. If they sell, Reverb's selling fee is
only 3.5%-no matter what."
When the item sells, you have two
choices for collecting money: Paypal,
which takes a 2.9% commission plus 30
cents per transaction, or Reverb's own
Direct Checkout system, which has a
2.7% commission and 25 cents per
transaction and also offers wonderful
levels of seller protection.
The only other fee at this point is called
Reverb Bumps, an optional system to keep
your item at the top of the heap and current
in daily searches. I can't detail the tiered
structure here, other than to say that if your
item does not sell it costs nothing, and if it
does, you only pay for the number of Bump
impressions your item received. All in all it's

CEO and
Founder David
Kalt On Reverb,
Past And Future

I was a recording
engineer in Chicago
right out of college,
doing a lot of house
music, working with
bands like Ministry.
During my studio days,
I got into software and
taught myself to code...
I started and sold my first software company-a customer relationship management program for the travel industry-in the
1990s. I then went into online brokerage, and that startup went
public and eventually sold to Charles Schwab. I loved building up those companies. I'm a product guy; if you blow the customer away with a great product, everything else falls into place.
Fifteen years away from music and two public companies
later, I decided to get into the MI space. I approached the
owner of a beautiful vintage guitar shop, Chicago Music Exchange, with my vision for how to grow the business, and
I bought it from him. I had no idea what I was doing, but I
jumped in head first and learned the ins and outs of selling
guitars.
Then I expanded the line, opened a drum shop, developed
an online presence, and along the way, I found a pain point:
selling gear online. I heard this from other folks at guitar shows,
and I experienced it myself firsthand: the fees were high, the
service was bad, and the user interface was crappy. That's all
18

RECORDING July 2017

about 4 to 6 cents per impression on average, based on the price of your item and
the Bump package you choose.
Reverb also helps generate receipts,
help arrange shipping if you want, and
track sales at your online store.

content content content

Just like Customer Engagement on the
buyer side, sellers have a team of behindthe-scenes gearheads led by Director of
Content Dan Orkin. These guys look through
listings to make sure the photos look good,
the gear is listed in the correct categories,
and descriptions are correct and engaging.
Think of them as online curators who want
your gear to sell just as much as you do.
According to Dan O., "We enforce
our standards because they help people
sell stuff more effectively. Our mission
is to make listings consistent to benefit
everyone in the transaction. Objectivity
and balance permeates every corner of

I needed to know. I realized that this was a huge opportunity
to build an all-in solution for the industry. By lowering fees and
margins and offering price transparency, gear leaves the marketplace in three days rather than three months. All the money
that would have been wasted when unused gear sits on the
shelf is put back in the musician's hands.
My mission became to make Reverb's growth not about taking market share from other dealerships, but to teach and empower musicians that it's really not all that hard to pack and
ship a guitar, to flip pedals you're not using any more even if
you don't have a store nearby. Take a few pictures, click, click,
sell it... it takes all of the risk out of buying and selling online.
My goal was liquidity: lots and lots of buyers and sellers, and
a very diverse marketplace. It's our vision since day one, and
now it's our vision for Europe, Japan, and beyond. Shipping
costs aside, a mic is a mic, a pedal is a pedal. Musicians all
over the world want them, but pricing is all over the place. We
want to be a global destination for musicians, engineers, DJs,
and more. We want to level the playing field and allow people
to get top dollar and not overpay for what they want. We're
making used gear more transparent and more relevant for more
people.
People used to be hesitant about buying used gear, but
we're adding a whole layer of trust, of buyer protection. We
have a whole staff that you saw in Customer Engagement...
They make issues disappear. We have a staff cleaning listings,
we have people getting rid of jerks and making our ecosystem
fun and pleasant to be in, and we have tech people making the site feel magical, so you can find whatever you want.
We've built this fun little marketplace where musicians can go
gaga, find what they want, and learn more. That's the vision!

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2017