Removing household clutter turns into business for Christchurch student

Christchurch engineering student Zac Hemmings developed a second-hand selling startup after seeing family members struggle with decluttering their homes. The University of Canterbury fourth-year student, 23, is helping more people get through this with his Cluttr platform. Clients visit a website to scan and get an AI valuation of belongings and are linked to reselling contractors who buy and sell them in one lot. Software powered by AI identifies items and provides an estimate of their value based on online data in Australasia and the United States within 30 seconds. An algorithm works out a fair price for the client and reseller and Cluttr takes a commission from the money resellers provide upfront for items. Mr Hemmings said initial clients had made thousands of dollars from clearing space in their homes. His own experience of moving flats many times shed light on the hassle of selling surplus belongings. "I’ve watched family members having to deal with their own clutter at times of moving homes or in life changes and it usually ends up with good stuff being thrown away or being sold super cheap because they can’t be bothered dealing with it.’’ He said Facebook Marketplace selling could also be an “absolute nightmare’’ so he started Cluttr. [Missing Credit]University of Canterbury engineering student Zac Hemmings is the founder off Cluttr, a second hand selling business app. Photo: Supplied He plans to bootstrap the business without outside investment and expand beyond Christchurch at the end of the year by recruiting more resellers. The entrepreneurial student started a property maintenance business in his first university year. That helped him learn from mistakes, gave him practical experience as well as the confidence he could be a business owner. Cluttr was launched about a year ago, initially as an app helping people realise the value of their possessions. "I quickly realised that although this was cool it didn’t really solve the problem of getting rid of the stuff when you need it gone so there has been a lot of iterations and learnings in the last year.’’ Today’s platform goes beyond this by connecting customers with a reseller who buys all of their items and takes them away after they are scanned. He said the reseller’s job was to sell them at the maximum possible value, usually on sales platforms such as Marketplace and TradeMe, to increase their earnings. "The people who are decluttering are selling the stuff and getting it out of their way without the time and energy it takes. They can take individual photos and write descriptions and figure out what it’s all going to be worth and then figure out the messaging, but to do that for a bunch of items is a skill and will take you absolute weeks.’’ They also avoided strangers coming on to their properties during pickup and the risk of being scammed. Resellers were vetted and had a profile based on performance ratings rather than “some random’’ person arriving at a client’s home, he said “Even better, the resellers are aspiring young student entrepreneurs so you are turning your problem into an opportunity for someone else.’’ Clients tracked the job status and received a notification when a reseller accepted the job. Mr Hemmings began by becoming Cluttr’s first reseller, collecting and photographing items, negotiating sales, managing customers and building software with volunteer developers. Cluttr has progressed since its first pilot when about eight items from six customers sold for between $500 and $12,000. Some items would otherwise have gone into landfill. They included a profitable trip selling the possessions of a New Zealand woman with a storage unit in Australia. As Mr Hemmings approaches the end of his degree he has decided to bypass becoming an engineer and become a full-time entrepreneur. He received an innovation award after attending the university’s Centre for Entrepreneurship summer startup programme and represented New Zealand at the Red Bull Basement World Final in San Francisco. The civil engineering student is among three finalists vying for the momentum student entrepreneur category at the KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards. Fellow student Mark Campbell has developed glasses adapted to protect people with light sensitivities such as epilepsy, migraines and brain injuries. The KiwiNet winners from a total of 18 finalists will be announced on October 8.