Season One wrap-up: the podium, the numbers, and what 10 weeks of TradeSoft looked like
Season One has closed. Meet the podium, and see how the first ten weeks of TradeSoft went: over $100,000 of gear traded, almost half of all listings sold, and a perfect 5.0 feedback average.
Season One is in the books
On 21 July, AirsoftTrader became TradeSoft. Ten weeks later, the first leaderboard season has closed, so this is a good moment to crown the winners and look back at how the move went.
Short version: it went better than we hoped. Since launch, over $100,000 of gear has changed hands between players.* Almost half of everything listed has already sold. Every single piece of feedback left was four or five stars.
Here's the full picture.
The Season One podium
Season points are earned by trading, leaving feedback and helping out around the community. By close, 723 players had made it onto the board, sharing 30,761 points between them.
Three players finished clear of the pack.
- 🥇 1st: Shinsoft · Brigadier · 1,070 pts. First to hit Brigadier, and the one everyone else was chasing all season.
- 🥈 2nd: OFPBYVINBF2 · Brigadier · 985 pts. Kept it close right to the end, finishing on the same rank as the winner.
- 🥉 3rd: Teerak · Colonel · 811 pts. Rounding out the podium, and well clear of fourth.
Congratulations to all three. Enjoy your bragging rights, and your Season One podium medals are now on your profiles for everyone to see.
A big thank you as well to everyone else who placed. Every trade, every review and every answered question helped get this marketplace up and running.
How the relaunch went
Moving a community to a new platform is always a risk. People have habits, and nobody enjoys learning a new app. So thank you, genuinely, to the more than 1,000 members who've been active since the move, from AirsoftTrader regulars to the 411 players who signed up for the first time.
Here's what the first ten weeks looked like.
Gear changed hands
- Over $100,000 of gear exchanged between players since launch*
- 314 trades covering 328 items, which works out to around 30 trades a week
- $200 median sale price
- 22 want-to-buy posts fulfilled, so posting what you're after works
Listings moved quickly
- 528 new listings posted since launch
- 48% sold, so almost half of everything listed has already found a new owner
- About 3 days median time from listing to sale
Replicas led the way, as you'd expect: 276 listed, 147 sold, $68,279 exchanged, at a median price of $400. Equipment came next with 73 sales, followed by apparel and parts.
Sunday is the big day for new listings, with nearly a quarter of the week's listings going up then. If you're hunting for a deal, Sunday night is when to check.
The whole country is trading
Auckland was the busiest region by a distance, with half of all sales, followed by Canterbury and Wellington. But gear is moving all over the country. Waikato, Northland, Hawke's Bay and Southland players all bought more than they sold, which is exactly what a nationwide marketplace should do.
People are talking
- 773 conversations started between buyers and sellers
- 8,965 messages sent, which is roughly 125 a day
- 85% of conversations got a reply
- 51 minutes median wait for that first reply
Under an hour to hear back is a big part of why things are selling so quickly. The mobile apps deserve much of the credit: messages now arrive as push notifications, so nobody has to keep checking a website to see whether a buyer has replied.
Trust is building
- 308 pieces of feedback left, averaging a perfect 5.0 stars (307 five-star, one four-star)
- Over 570 phone-verified members
- 32 clubs on TradeSoft, vouching for 117 verified members
Most trades here are bank transfer and courier, which means sending money to someone you may never meet. Feedback and verification are how you know who you're dealing with, and every review you leave makes TradeSoft safer for the next person.
Club verification is already paying off. 17 of the 32 clubs on TradeSoft have started vouching for their members, which is more than half. Club-verified sellers got their full asking price on 9 in 10 sales, compared with about 7 in 10 for everyone else.
Is your club on TradeSoft? If it is, ask them to verify you. If it isn't, point them our way at tradesoft.app/nz/clubs and we'll get them set up.
Keeping scammers out
This season an organised scammer tried to use TradeSoft several times. Our automated checks look for patterns across a range of signals and get sharper with every attempt, and their most recent attempts were blocked before they'd interacted with anyone in the community. As we understand it, no money was lost, and police reports have been filed alongside the members affected.
No system catches everything, though, so a few rules of thumb:
- Don't be rushed. If a seller is pushing for fast payment or telling you other buyers are about to snap it up, and they're not club-verified, slow down. Don't let the pressure make the decision for you.
- Check who you're paying. The name on the bank account should match the person you're dealing with.
- Only leave feedback once the goods arrive. Feedback is what other members rely on, so don't leave it early.
- Report anything that feels off. Use the report button. We look at every report.
Selling something big?
We looked at how Featured listings performed against free ones in the same price range. For gear priced $400 and up:
- 9 in 10 Featured listings drew multiple interested buyers, compared with 1 in 4 free listings
- More than twice as many buyers enquiring on average (2.6 vs 1.1)
- More than twice as many people watching (5.0 vs 2.0)
- More of them sold, roughly 6 in 10 compared with 4 in 10
If you're listing a replica or a big kit bundle, Featured puts it in front of more buyers. You choose it at the final step when you post.
What's next
TradeSoft launched with a lot in it, so for now we're focusing on refinement rather than piling on new features. We'll keep listening to players and clubs about what's working and what isn't.
If something bugs you, or there's something you wish TradeSoft did, add it under Community > Feature Requests so others can vote on it, or email us at [email protected].
Thanks for making Season One what it was. See you on the board.
Dale
* Sale prices are recorded when a seller marks an item as sold. We collect them so we can understand how gear actually sells, and so that in future we can show sellers what similar items typically go for when they list.
