Tiptop has a list of about 50,000 products available for trade-in, according to Lehmann. The company takes things like old cell phones, laptops and strollers, but some items can’t be traded in because shipping costs are too high (refrigerators, sadly). Behind the scenes, Tiptop uses some algorithms to dynamically estimate the value of every product on the list based on market price and depreciation adjustments. The trade-in prices offered will naturally vary. Lehmann says the average discount for all devices that have gone through Tiptop’s system so far is about $287.
Tiptop has been enabled as a payment gateway for Shopify, which means any online merchant who uses Shopify can enable Tiptop as a payment option. Tiptop is already in use by sites like Nothing and Phonedaddy, baby storage company Cradlewise, game controller maker Backbone, and King of Christmas, a store that sells just that: products. Merchants who sell products pay a fee to Tiptop, just like any other payment processor, which Lehmann says ranges from 5 percent to 12 percent depending on the value of the item being traded in.
Union
Tiptop’s creation came about after Uber acquired Postmates in 2020. Lehmann says he was taking some time off to be with his family and wondering what life would be like after Postmates. The answer turned out to be close to home.
“After a while, I started to realize my house was getting cluttered with stuff,” he says.
Not only that, but it was full of the kinds of things he says are getting harder to get rid of. Today’s consumer electronics typically have very short upgrade cycles, with companies desperately trying to convince customers to buy the latest thing every year. And once you buy the latest thing, there’s not always a good way to get rid of last year’s stuff you no longer need. Marketplaces like eBay and Craigslist require some effort: you take photos, write a listing, post it, communicate with buyers, and eventually ship it yourself or meet someone in a parking lot to hand it over to you. Trade-in programs offered by manufacturers like Apple and Google are limited to products sold by that manufacturer and sometimes come with conditions, like promising to buy another device or service plan, or only getting store credit. Rather than deal with these limitations and hassles, people often just put their old devices in a box or drawer and leave them unused.
Lehman sees everything in her home as a resource.
“Simply put, what TipTop is trying to do is give American households access to bank accounts they didn’t know they had,” Lehman says. “If you want the new stuff, you’ve got to do something about the old stuff.”
TipTop may help usher in a new era of reusing devices, but it could also do the opposite: Lucas Gutterman, director of the advocacy group US PIRG’s Designed to Last campaign, worries that making new devices cheaper for people will encourage them to replace them more frequently, perpetuating the demand for rapid replacement cycles that Lehman says are part of the problem.
