// ABOUT
Built by a player. For the players.
TradeSoft did not start as a business plan. It started with two decades on the field, a community left without a home, and a stubborn belief that Kiwi airsofters deserve somewhere proper to buy, sell and trade. Here is where it came from, and where it is going.
Meet the founder
Hi, I'm Dale, better known online as TheBauer, the screen name I carried across the old UK airsoft forums like ASCUK and Arnie's Airsoft, where I moderated the Sniping Haven. I started airsoft back at the beginning of 2004 in the UK, first with a Maruzen APS2, then a G-Spec in early 2005.
Sniping and concealment were my thing. I got more of a rush from being within five metres of an enemy squad, completely undetected, than I ever did from pulling the trigger. I have been stood on more than once by players who thought I was a log. One of them got quite the fright.
In 2006 I wrote what became the first guide on converting a VSR for left-handed players and published it for the community. Players all over the world used it as a reference for years. That was the moment I realised the thing I loved most about airsoft was not the kit, it was helping the people playing it.
Why I built New Zealand's airsoft trading community
After moving to New Zealand, I saw a scene that played hard but had nowhere central to trade. NZ is not like the UK or the US. There is no single big forum that everyone uses. Most clubs and venues run their own separate site, and the one major national forum only lets you see gun sales if you belong to one of its affiliated clubs. That was around 16 clubs out of close to 30 across the country, so more than half the community was locked out of seeing what was for sale.
Then in February 2016, social media announced a ban on listings for airsoft replicas, and overnight a big chunk of how Kiwi players bought and sold gear simply disappeared. So I built a dedicated, open trading platform for New Zealand, shaped by the players themselves and what they actually asked for. It became AirsoftTrader, and over the next decade it grew into the home of buying, selling and trading airsoft gear in NZ, free to use and made by the community, for the community.
Why the change to TradeSoft
After ten years, the platform had outgrown what it was first built on. Rather than keep patching an ageing system, I wanted to do it properly: a complete rebuild and a genuine re-imagining of what an airsoft marketplace should be, designed mobile-first for the way people actually buy and sell today, from their phone.
The new name reflects that fresh start. TradeSoft is shorter, easier to say and easier to build a brand around, with room to grow beyond New Zealand in the future. Same mission, rebuilt from the ground up.
Community trust, built in
The biggest thing a marketplace has to get right is trust. TradeSoft builds it in from the start. Optional phone verification and trader feedback help you see who you are dealing with, and the new Clubs feature lets New Zealand clubs manage their own members and events, while giving you confidence that a trader is a genuine, active member of a real club. It is trust that comes from the community itself, not from handing over sensitive personal documents.
